horse racing

Evening Standard

Highs and lows: Nicky Henderson with his Gold Cup hopeful Long Run and Binocular, who was forced to miss today's Champion Hurdle. Image courtesy of Evening Standard

Forget the Cheltenham Festival being about the Irish, their horses and their wonderful punters.

The racing world is convinced that this year’s meeting is really a fight between two contrasting Englishmen.

In the blue corner is old Etonian Nicky Henderson – one race at the annual gathering is named after his father, Johnny Henderson.

In the red corner is Paul Nicholls, the son and grandson of policemen who hated school.

Read more >

Evening Standard

On the lookout: top jump jockey Ruby Walsh surveys the scene at Leopardstown and has plenty to say about the future of racing. Image courtesy of Evening Standard

Ruby Walsh, nursing yet another injury — a double-leg fracture while riding at Down Royal five weeks ago — may not be seen on a horse until Cheltenham is almost upon us. But, on Sunday, he will be glued to his television in County Kildare, hoping Tony McCoy becomes the BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

“It will be great for him but not just for him. For racing. No jockey has ever won this prestigious award. We are not high up in the pecking order of sport. Racing has a limited following, a select group of people follow us and not everyone likes us. AP’ absolutely deserves it, 15 times champion jockey and he has won the Grand National.”

Read more >

Evening Standard

Dukes are not natural revolutionaries. But there can be no doubting the Earl of March and Kinrara, who will one day become the 11th Duke of Richmond, when he calls for a horseracing revolution.

We are sitting in his office in Goodwood House. Outside on the driveway you can still see the debris of the motor- racing Festival of Speed held earlier this month. On the floor are the helmets of Emerson Fittipaldi and Barry Sheene and on the shelves a facsimile of the first rules of cricket drawn up on 11 July 1727 by the second Duke of Richmond and a Mr A [Alan] Brodrick.

Read more >

The Evening Standard

Ahead of Saturday’s Epsom Derby, the head of racing urges other governing bodies to get to grips with growing problem of “fixing”

ASK Nic Coward for his favourite moment in football and he picks David Beckham’s brilliant curling free-kick that took England to the World Cup in Japan in 2002.

Ask the 44-year-old for his favourite sporting moment and “nothing”, he says, “can rival the incredible thrill of your horse winning a race”.

Read more >

The Evening Standard

Picture the scene. Sir Alex Ferguson and Paul Nicholls had just met and they are driving back from Cheltenham to Nicholls’s yard in Ditcheat. The weather is foul ,which is why they are in the Audi and not a helicopter, and Sir Alex is comparing football to horseracing.

Two years later Nicholls has a precise recall of a conversation during what he considers the most memorable car ride of his life. For all the differences, Sir Alex told him, their jobs are awfully similar – he has a squad of players and Nicholls a squad of horses: “The only difference is you have got a lot of owners to answer to, I have one.”

Read more >