“2023 a year to save racing” - the Racing Post headline kicked off what promised, and still promises to be twelve months, even if not revolutionary, certainly where upheaval will, must, come. Some retorted “2023 a year to save the Racing Post” – its declining readership rejecting the sport`s trade paper`s descent into little more than a bookmaker`s cheat sheet – while its cover price soars.

But the existential threat we thought would come from the Gambling Review, publication of which, after two long years` dragging its feet, has spawned the Gambling Related Harm All Party Group; the Parliamentary All Party Betting & Gaming Group; and the Peers for Gambling Reform all with the avowed ambition of stopping punters losing their money. The Gambling Commission`s Deputy Chief Executive Sarah Gardner vowed “less haste more speed”. Perhaps Ms Gardner should be a race reader - those employed by the Racing Post nowadays do their analysis from their television sets sat on their sofas at home.



Once punters had the daily Press on their side with extensive racing coverage for guidance – even when, at the same time, multi-million selling newspapers were dismissed, derogatively, as “tomorrow`s chip paper”. Parliament`s White Paper on gambling was today`s chip paper.

To stop punters going skint “Frictionless enhanced financial checks” are, we are told, the answer - another step to the ‘Big Brother` dictatorship George Orwell envisaged in ‘1984`. We`re nearly four decades on beyond Orwell`s seminal year but nevertheless on a slippery slope where our lives are not our own. The imminent threat from the Gambling Review, curtailing betting, was that it would decimate racing`s income by making losing money that much harder. Actually betting would then have gone underground; collecting tax revenue would have been the hard job.

The truly urgent problem is the threat from Animal Rights/Rebellion and their cohorts. We call their protests ‘sabotage`; the police terminology is “conspiracy to commit a public nuisance”. Either way they cannot be ignored. As long ago as 1991 protesters troubled the Grand National and two years later caused a false start to “the race that never was” – the result nullified. The IRA bomb threat in 1997 caused a forty-eight-hour delay. Fourteen minutes was all the pink jacketed protesters put back the world`s biggest steeplechase this year. They`re threatening a ‘Special Mission` (shades of Putin`s Ukraine adventure) for Saturday`s Derby. The Jockey Club has been granted an injunction against them – the sort of thing you get to stop harassment by an abusive partner. Stopping an as yet unknown number of ‘abusers` invading Epsom is going to take an army. Most famously Emily Wilding Davison threw herself in front of the King`s horse at Tattenham Corner ensuring the 1913 Derby as the most notorious ever. She had a return train ticket to London – which wouldn`t be any use to those ‘surviving` the excesses of this year`s Derby day because there`s a rail strike.

Time racing ‘woke` up. The word woke was coined in ‘black` America activists exhorting their race to ‘keep awake` to ‘existential` dangers from colour prejudice. Prejudice against the LGBT+ community in Britain has been pushed back and they`ve been granted their own enclosure for Epsom`s big day. Why not, then, a separate parade ring and saddling boxes for LGBT+ horses? This farce could escalate: protesters could be ‘corralled` – the police call it ‘kettling` which is their method of controlling demonstrations. It`s hard to see how disruptions can be restrained on the open acres of Epsom Downs. The metropolitan constabulary is notoriously understaffed so where are they going to find the manpower to link arms round the whole of Epsom`s horseshoe course and at the same time separate ‘tanked up` (over-refreshed, drunken) Manchester City and Man United supporters, never the best of enemies at their ‘Derbies`, not many miles north at Wembley.

It`s a good day for burgling in the counties in the South of England.

DERBY DONE AND DUSTED?

Returning to more important matters, finding the winner of the Derby first run in 1780. If there`s a meaning to the title “The People`s Race” it applies to the Derby (sponsored by bookmaker Fred Done) and also the Randox Grand National. Their fables are what sustain the game. In 1893 Isinglass became the sixth Triple Crown winner. He was out of Dead-Lock who had worked as a carriage horse – pulling a dogcart and his owner to market. The 1908 National winner Rubio had broken down and was retired to pull an omnibus for a Towcester pub. Every year brings its own unique chapter.

If this really is horseracing`s talisman Frankie Dettori`s last season would he have chosen Arrest? The betting public probably will. It would be a third Derby for him and a fourth Blue Riband for Juddmonte. Arrest was touched off by the Johnston`s Dubai Mile at Saint Cloud at two and the former`s promotion in the Derby betting this spring came as result of winning on heavy ground – a feature of most of the trials - at Chester. Arrest will probably start favourite in the way that Lester Piggott`s mounts usually did – and not because some smart-alec bookmaker will offer odds about the ‘double` with the number of police arrests.

Dubai Mile drew attention with his fifth in the Guineas. All Dubai Mile`s eight siblings are winners – none at a mile and a half. Mark Johnston hadn`t won a domestic Classic since Attraction in 2004. It would be ironic if his son Charlie, in his first full year, were to improve that record.

Dubai Mile had finished second to The Foxes in the Royal Lodge: The Foxes is on the up while the football club for whom he is named, Leicester City, are going down, relegated from the Premier League. The Foxes relegated many of this Derby field in the Dante – but only just. Time we had another grey Derby winner? The last grey was Airborne at 50-1 in 1946. The very pale grey Dante runner-up White Birch`s owner had the 50-1 winner of the 2015 Oaks, Qualify.

Sir Michael Stoute looked a lost soul at Sandown last week when his 2022 Derby winner Desert Crown was downed in the Brigadier Gerard – which doesn`t alter Stoute`s chances with Passenger, supplemented to the Derby this week at a cost of £85,000. (The 2021 winner Serpentine was the latest to be supplemented). More horses have won the Derby after being beaten in the Dante than have won at York so Passenger`s supporters need no more despair than those of White Birch and Continuous. Stoute`s jockey Kingscote blamed himself (some blamed him for Desert Crown`s Sandown downfall) for Passenger`s Dante defeat. He debuted in the Wood Ditton maiden at the start of the season and would be the first winner of the double – that race and the Derby - since Slip Anchor in 1985.

Sprewell wouldn`t leave a dry eye (always providing tear gas and Tasers haven`t done what clouds of red smoke did last year) in the house since his universally popular trainer Jessie Harrington is dealing with cancer. Sprewell beat five O`Brien`s (Aidan, three, Joseph and Donnacha) in the Leopardstown Trial though he has to make up ground on White Birch from their first season encounter.

This would be Aidan O`Brien`s ninth Derby success but we are being asked to back Auguste Rodin on the trainer`s word alone – beating two in the Guineas is hardly reason enough despite Auguste Rodin being talked back into near favouritism, as he had been for the Guineas. Come May and Coolmore finally had its first Group 1 of the season when Paddington took the Irish Two Thousand Guineas.

"We`ve always felt Auguste Rodin was different, we always felt he was a middle-distance horse, and we always felt the Guineas was going to be tough for him," explained O`Brien. Those who say we`ve heard it all before may be labelled cynics and the genius trainer should never be gainsaid. O`Brien hasn`t had a placing in the last two Derbies.

The opposition is more extensive than usual though not without its fallibilities. As already noted most trials have been held on heavy ground. In the case of the favourite at the time of writing, Godolphin`s Military Order, his have been on heavy and on sand. The story of Military Order`s brother Adayar being beaten in the Lingfield Trial before taking his Derby two years ago will add to Derby lore. Military Order winning, impressively, the same race at Lingfield - but not the same course – the switch this year was made to sand, because of all the heavy ground.

Somebody will know when was the last horse to win the Derby wearing boots; Military Order does. Trite observances such as ‘Military Order and the police put the boot in` aren`t worthy of this publication. We can only hope the occasion is worthy of its history – and has a future.