The day horseracing lost its marbles

Watching Royal Ascot yesterday I saw one of the greatest horse races I've ever seen.  The ex-Aussie 'wonder horse', So You Think, went off at 4/11 - that means if you wanted to win £4 you'd have to risk losing £11 - in the Prince of Wales's Stakes.  That made him probably the hottest favourite of the week, and before the race his trainer, Aidan O'Brien oozed confidence, telling us that this was a very special horse.

However, things didn't go according to the script as Frankie Dettori gave Rewilding one of the best rides I've ever seen any jockey give a horse (no, I didn't back him so I'm not talking through my pocket), to edge it in the final strides.  Rewilding was hugely brave, and Dettori was inspired - it was the sort of spectacle that makes racing the great sport that it is.

How then do we explain to racing's audience the nine-day ban that Dettori got for using his whip 'with excessive frequency'?  It was totally absurd to ban a jockey for winning the race by getting his horse to give every ounce of effort, but that's the way that the crazy rules work.

Racing's rulers have made an abject surrender to the well-intentioned but misguided do-gooders who don't like seeing horses hit with the whip.  It's the job of the trainer to get his horse really fit, and then the jockey has to get it to try its best to win.  If a horse is being mistreated it will dig its heels in and not show its best - Dettori did not do anything that damaged Rewilding in any way and should not have been banned.

Dettori weighs less then nine stones soaking wet, and when he's riding he isn't allowed to let his lightweight whip be delivered from above shoulder height - try it for yourself and see how much, or rather, how little effort can be applied from that position.  I don't know what Rewilding weighs, but it's a damned site more than nine stones and I seriously doubt that the horse felt pain from Dettori's whip - if he had then he'd have stopped trying his heart out.  Was it the legendary trainer George Lambton who described Flat racing as little men on big horses?

There are times when the whip can be abused. and on those occasions the jockeys should be punished.  An exhausted National Hunt horse being whipped at the end of a three-mile race in the mud is an unedifying spectacle - and those jockeys are bigger, can hit harder, and the races are longer.  But in Flat racing?  No, I don't believe I've seen anything that I would describe as abuse.

Sport is about winning, and the best horse won yesterday.  When Dettori used his whip he was encouraging / asking Rewilding to try his hardest for him, and it was a joy to see the horse's obvious desire to give his partner everything he could, and show an indomitable will to win.  The authorities need to get a grip, and fast, as they're making a mockery out of a wonderful sport, and sadly they're doing it to appease a minority.

If you want one final, and totally damning piece of evidence that shows that there's nothing wrong with using the whip in racing, then here it is: John McCririck, plainly a total madman, would like the whip banned.  The defence rests its case.

The i's have it

I've like i, the Independent's concise, cheaper, and better younger brother, ever since it appeared.  It has now started to publish on a Saturday too, so hopefully that means it's doing well and will survive.

I've found something else to like about recently, and that's the 'Letter from the editor', Simon Kelner, that appears on page three.  On Friday he devoted it to some complaints that he'd received about the paper's coverage of the funeral of Olympic diver Tom Daley's father.  In its coverage the paper showed a picture of the funeral, and a number of readers asked whether that was truly necessary.

Kelner concluded that there hadn't been a need to do it - an editor listening to his readers and acting upon their suggestions?  He's clearly not cut out for the job!  He went on to make the distinction between the recent situation when they used pictures of Sir Henry Cooper's funeral: Cooper was a public figure and there was public interest, whereas Daley's father was not a public figure.  As Kelner put it, "The funeral of a national figure is a news event in its own right, but this was not that - it was the funeral of the father of a national figure".

Kelner concludes that the coverage that i gave the event was possibly 'prurient' and 'intrusive' - well done him for having the courage to admit that, and for telling his readers that in similar circumstances in the future, the paper will err on the side of caution.  Oh that other editors of nationals were half as brave and sensible.

  

Can anyone explain to me why the Archbishop of Canterbury's pronouncements get such wide publicity?  One look at the man tells you that he's as mad as a badger, but the press hangs on his every word.



I have no time for any brand of superstition, and therefore I tend not to listen to the brand managers when they decide to issue press releases, which is what Rowan Williams latest effort is.  Of course, if you spout often enough and long enough then it's inevitable that you'll be right once in a while, and the old duffer is on the money for once when he criticises the Coalition.  Don't you just love it when one establishment figure has a pop at another one - Dave v Rowan wrestling it out over three rounds, with Gideon and God as their respective seconds !

Williams is guest editing the New Statesman this week - what on earth were they thinking about when they invited him?  Who next, a White Witch or a member of the Flat Earth society?

Amateur hour at the Labour party

I've just watched Ed Milliband speaking on the subject of the NHS - dreadful.  No, not what he said, but the way that he looked while he was talking.  He was either in terrible pain, or, more likely, his people hadn't bothered to think about the lighting in the room.  His face had a permanent grimace, with his eyes screwed up, as though he was terribly constipated or the lights were shining right in his face.

It wouldn't EVER have happened to Tony Blair, as his team would have made certain everything was right for the boss to look good on television.  Even Gordon Brown's people would have spotted the problem, but the 'wrong' Milliband looks more and more like a buffoon every time he opens his mouth.

Things are going pear-shaped for the Coalition and it should be easy for Labour to capitalise on their problems, but there's a real danger that they'll miss the boat.  Ed M must go, and Labour should beg brother David to step into the breach.  It's not as simple as just saving the Labour party, it's about saving the country from the likes of Dave, Gideon, Nick and Vince.

We don't serve your type in here

'Mind your p's and q's', 'Out of sorts', 'Coin (Quoin) a phrase', are all sayings which have their origins in the world of printing.  I recently visited Robert Smail's print workshop in Innerleithen in the Scottish Borders, and it's a wonderful place.  The Smails were inveterate hoarders, and the workshop, owned now by the National Trust for Scotland, is a treasure trove of their work over more than a century.  They saved everything: labels for parcels of wool that went from the mills to customers across the world, the local newspaper, notices of meetings, wedding invitations, and so on - it's great.



You start with the archivist who is painstakingly working her way through a roomful of documents, and then move on to the typesetting room where you set up your name - I of course got it wrong and first time around was gaoB niloC!  The room has the trays of sorts - the name for an individual piece of type - and if you run out then you're out of sorts.  The trays have the capitals in the upper case, and the rest in the lower case - hence the terms we unthinkingly use today. Sorts are a mirror image of the letter they're meant to print, and they're loaded upside down in the composing stick, so it's easy for even an experienced printer to get his p's and q's mixed up.

You then move on to the print room where there are four wonderful old presses which still work - the printers who tell you about the machines actually use them because the Trust runs a small printing business. 

It is a wonderful place to visit and it doesn't half give you food for thought.  We change fonts all the time on our PCs, and we use italics and bold as a matter of course: at one time every one of those changes involved a different set of trays.  I'm reading Andrew Garfield's 'Just My Type' at present and it reminded me that it was as recent as 1984, when the first Mac was launched, that different fonts became available to anyone who wasn't a printer.



The book is fascinating, and Smail's makes for an absorbing visit - if you're ever up north of the border don't miss out on visiting it.