Last year’s champion apprentice returns to action at Lingfield Park for the first time since injuring his neck in JanuaryThe Lincoln Handicap at Doncaster will launch the Flat campaign on turf a week on Saturday so the timing could hardly be better for Jason Watson, last year’s champion apprentice, as he returns to action at Lingfield on Friday for the first time since injuring his neck in a fall at Kempton in early January. Watson was injured just a fortnight after being appointed as first jockey to Roger Charlton’s Beckhampton stable, at the end of a title-winning season that included a memorable short-head win on Gifted Master, the top-weight, in the Stewards’ Cup at Goodwood.In recent seasons, Oisin Murphy and...
Wales captain’s act of kindness on Saturday did not go unnoticed and there is plenty of evidence to suggest sometimes it’s still OK to meet your idolsAn image that will linger from the final round of the Six Nations was not a dazzling run or shuddering tackle, but a small act of kindness that almost went unnoticed.As Ireland had asked for the roof of the Principality Stadium to remain opened – in the hope that the elements might help them to beat their Welsh hosts – a vicious wind swept in from Tiger Bay and along the assembled ranks of players before the kick-off. Alun Wyn Jones, who will have had bigger things on his mind – like battering the...
Equine fatal injuries inflicted deep sadness and it took Thursday’s drama and joy, and then some statistics, to raise positivity about jump racing’s futureFor a few minutes on Tuesday evening at Cheltenham this week, the chance that we would head home three days later riding even a gentle wave of positivity seemed to be receding by the second. The screens were up on the landing side of three of the fences after the National Hunt Chase as fallers were attended to by vets, while out in the Atlantic, Storm Gareth seemed poised to wipe out the second day altogether.There were, of course, downs as well as ups over the course of the next three days. The death of Sir Erec...
New documentary highlights women who have made their name in the often cut-throat, brutal and downright dangerous sport of horse racingAs Rachael Blackmore was led back to the Cheltenham Festival winner’s enclosure on board A Plus Tard after the pair bolted home in Tuesday’s penultimate race, one of Racing TV’s commentary team noted how refreshing it was to see that a woman booting home the winner of a major horse race is no longer considered a particularly big deal. The sight of Blackmore taking the plaudits of racegoers has been a regular one in Ireland this season – the 29-year-old has ridden an astonishing 84 winners on the domestic front and currently sits a close second behind Paul Townend in...
Animal welfare is just one problem for a sport that will have its moment in the sun at the Cheltenham festivalThirty years ago this week, after Desert Orchid had winged up the Cheltenham hill as if auditioning for a role as Pegasus, the Observer’s Hugh McIlvanney noticed something unusual: everywhere he looked tears were being shed by people who didn’t normally cry.“The flood of emotion was so extraordinary that it invited us to wonder how many human champions, let alone horses, have ever commanded such undiluted devotion from the British public,” he wrote after Dessie’s stunning Gold Cup victory, lauding the horse as the embodiment of what makes racing “an irresistible sport to so many”. Related: Harry Cobden: ‘The more...