Owing to the state of my Information Technology I cannot provide my usual critique of the facts of life in Britain’s Racing Industry.

This is a good thing: I have spent far too long being disgusted by the performance of the BHA. My only consolation in this regard is the increase which I think I notice in the number of fellow critics who seem to be coming out of racing’s woodworks with equally disgusted comments about racing’s Great and Gormless.

I have also got fed up with waiting for signs of improvement in the arrangements for Big Field Starts under NH rules. Eleven years of constructive suggestions about an improper process at a vital stage in the arrangements (which could have been put right in five minutes) is eleven years too long.

Some of MY LONG SUFFERING READERS  may not have been alerted to the publication of SPORT 129, but it has been available since 13^th May. Might be worth a glance to fill an idle moment. Do you think they have picked up the phone?

Who is they? The BHA.

Who would they be ringing?

Barry Hearn, for advice on financial planning.

Oooooh, I doubt it.

Oooooh, I think you’re right.

Let’s change the subject. Lester has gone to Jockeys’ Heaven and it was good that he left us just a few days before the Derby…. his race. I met him once, fifty years ago. There he sat, looking pretty dehydrated, across a little tea table from Jeremy Tree, who was pinker and plumper. Jeremy was my boss at the time and he introduced us. I got a friendly smile from Lester, I remember it well.

So many photos of the great man…. The one I liked best showed him as a kid leaning against a fence with his father, both wearing flat caps, and each of them had the most charming smile for the other.

One of the anecdotes had someone asking him why his bottom was so high above the rest of him when he was riding, and he said, “I had to put it somewhere.”

Coincidentally enough I have always suspected that the few jockeys that win all the races (I am generalising) do so because they keep their weight in exactly the correct position so that it is the lightest burden on the horse. The ordinary jockeys don’t.

Best wishes,

Donec.