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if a horse fall you dont remount so there is no grey area
ive fallen off horses i am schooling and remounted but that is not at racing pace which is a totally different matter.
<br>Surely this illustrates exactly that there is a grey area?  Very few falls will be like Kauto Star’s.  Many falls where a jockey would consider remounting to be feasible and worthwhile are soft falls or unseats, where prizemoney is easily available. ÂÂÂ
If a horse is hacking round at the back, 3rd of 3, no chance with the leaders and just has to jump the last to get the money, they are not going to be travelling at racing pace.  Nor will a horse be going racing pace if they are the only one left in the race.  A blanket ban does not take any of these scenarios into account – situations where any everyday experienced horseman would be happy to check the horses over, hop back on and trot over the line.
Jockeys need to be told in the strongest terms that they will face huge penalties if an injured horse is remounted, and given clear guidelines that remounting should only be in the softest circumstances.
But a blanket ban? If we always wanted to be  ‘just on the safe side’, racing would not be allowed at all.
France-Galop has a colour check system – put in the colours and it tells you if they are registered, or who they belong too.  mergecolourHowever, it only covers France. :( <br>(It’s quite fun, though).
The only owner with the yellow/grey combination as described is Gerard Andre, but he hasn’t had any runners in Britain recently, nor in the three races that Fretwell’s horses have competed in abroad recently.
Can’t see a recent race it could be here, but still looking.
Totally agree Adrian.  Friends’ relationships amaze me, where one won’t let the other watch football on the telly (unless its an international match), or he won’t watch the films she likes, or where one works in racing and the other thinks the sport is cruel.  How do they make it work?
Great list Wizard – American Gods is excellent, but I found Blood Meridien to be too difficult for me (the horses suffering in the desert was unbearable).
I really enjoyed Ghostwritten, and David Mitchell’s new one, Cloud Atlas, is meant to be even better.
Love Three To See The King by Magnus Mills – not as keen on the Restraint of Beasts though.  Quarantine by Jim Crace is similar too, and good if you don’t mind the religious angle.
My favourite B-movie equivilent of a book is anything by Christopher Brookmire (tuning out some of the more energetic political ranting) – One Fine Day in The Middle of The Night, and the Sacred Art of Stealing.
I remember enjoying Unbearable Lightness, and some Kafka, but strangely can’t recall much else about them.  Have the Mind Police been at work?
I liked Twist and Turn too, Elaine, even though he lost me money in the Strensall Stakes.  He’s had some success as a sire in India, but haven’t heard anything for a few years now.
Bad news about Greenhil Tare Away though Zoz, he died in 2001, after a couple of seasons pointing.
It’s entirely within the spirit of democracy to campaign against a law that you don’t agree with, Ian – there is no requirement to ‘grin and bear it’ until the next election.  Laws on the death penalty, votes for women and Prohibition got changed through strength of protest.  Democracy only works if people (from both sides) make their voices heard, so that their representatives find out what people want.  ÂÂÂ
Maybe if you had been more vocal and pro-active in your objections to whichever laws you mean, rather than just grinning and bearing it, the Tories wouldn’t have been in power for so long?
Corm, the problem is that morality is, by definition, a very personal thing – what you believe is right and wrong.  Some things are easy to agree on and have been part of civilisation for centuries, ie law against murder, theft etc.  But this can have too many grey areas.
Personally, I find boxing repugnant and can’t understand the mentality of cheering as two humans batter each other to a pulp.  I also have disgust for people who refuse to make any effort to recycle, whilst munching their way across the world like locusts.
There are also people out there (and plenty of them) who feel the way you feel about hunting about other subjects, such as smoking, adultery, animal testing, abortion, eating meat and horse racing.  All these things have persuasive arguments against them as they all hurt individuals who have no say in their participation.
But you reach a point where it is the individual freedom to decide your own moral code that is important.  I don’t feel I have any right to tell a woman having an abortion that she is misguided, or that, as a vegetarian I should then pass a law forcing others to not eat meat.
Cormack, I’m worried about where you get these images from.
The people I know who go hunting are normal, rational human beings, who love animals, especially their horses and dogs.  One was blooded on her first hunt (50 years ago!), but none have shown any psychopathic tendancies over the years.
The difference may be that they are used to the deaths of animals in a way that you may not be – whether hitting a rat with a spade that has been in the feed bins, disposing of squashed piglets, sending lambs to be slaughtered or scraping rabbits off the tines of a plough.  They deal with these things in a practical, sensible manner as part of their daily lives.  I can never imagine them "whooping it up in delight and taking pleasure in the fact that they’ve achieved another ‘kill’".  That’s not the way it is for them.
No, Cormack, I wasn’t suggesting that the hunt followers were riding purely for altruistic reasons such as pest control.  From my (limited) experience of hunt followers they go for the thrill and unpredictability of riding across country.  For many of them, hounds catching the fox (particularly a troublesome one) would bring the satisfaction of a job done, but I haven’t known anyone screaming in blood lust or being desperate to see a carcass at the end of the day.
Do you accept that it is ok for a pack of hounds to chase a fox, in the interests of pest control?  And it is ok for riders to follow a pack of hounds that are chasing a scent (a drag hunt)?  So why can you not combine the two, particularly, as I suggested earlier, when the people involved would be less emotionally damaged by the death of an animal, given that death may make up a large part of their everyday lives?
The problem with that Cormack, is that the death of animal will occur anyway, whether it is treated as a sport or not.  Most people with a degree of land management knowledge would agree that the fox numbers need to be controlled, preferably by culling the select old and sick animals that are the worst vermin.
If hunting with hounds is the most efficient (and natural) way of doing this, would you be happy for it to continue if it were relabelled ‘pest control’ rather than ‘sport’? ÂÂÂ
If people then choose to go out riding at the same time to follow the pack of hounds, but as an earlier poster mentioned, see very little of the fox, then why is this a problem?
Fox hunting is in two separate parts, the hounds catching the fox and the hunt riding across country.  No-one has a problem with drag hunting.  Few have problems with the need for pest control.  Why is it such a big deal when both are done simultaneously?
Just to add another vote in – I don’t hunt, but am against a ban.
I think countryside workers who regularly have to kill turkeys, lambs, calves and chickens to go onto the supermarket shelves have a slightly different perspective on the circle of life than that of people who’s contact with meat is to put their frozen burger in the oven.
Controlling the fox population is done to protect livestock and preserve the balance of the countryside – and as that is for the good of the country in general I personally don’t care what colour clothing the participants wear or whether they go to the pub afterwards.
As for the protests – surely the point of a democracy is that everyone’s voice can be heard?  If we don’t agree with a government decision we are free to protest against it (within reason).  Better than living in a military dictatorship! ÂÂÂ
No further contribution to this, just putting in my vote.
Or is there a bias because Aidan O’Brien has so many Sadler’s Wells and refuses to run them on ground faster than good-to-soft? :biggrin:
I’m joking, I’m joking…
The main influence stallions have on going preferences is through the type of conformation passed to their offspring.  If the sire tends to throw animals with more fragile legs or with a high knee action then his progeny will tend to do better on softer ground, or low actions and smaller hooves will cope better with fast.
Some stallions pass on conformation traits much more strongly than others, so a pattern will not necessarily develop for all sires.  Additionally, sometimes a stronger genetic influence for conformation will come from the dam, or from the grandparents, so even sires who ‘stamp’ their stock will occasionally have oddities. ÂÂÂ
It is usually best to look at each individual animal first without reference to it’s breeding, but if they confirm in appearance to a type (a ‘typical Sadler’s Wells’, a ‘typical Selkirk’), then you can usually make a good assumption about their ground preferences before watching them race.
Expand your horizons Ian!
I agree some of the arabic names are too similar to each other for comfort but I think quite alot of ‘english’ names are dull and nonsensical too. (Sadler’s Wells ex Ivory Bride? Ivory Wells. Yawn.)
Why stick to popular global culture?  As I said before, there is a limited supply of names and if someone can come up with something a bit different that has personal resonance then good for them!  Some of the classical Greek and Roman names won’t have recognition in the ‘popular global culture’, yet they make cracking names for racehorses once you know the stories behind them.
Interestingly enough, many Japanese racehorses have names that include English words, whether their breeding includes English words or not, as do Turkish, Scandinavian and Italian racehorses, and sometimes these English words are much more obscure than you would expect. ÂÂÂ
BTW, you still haven’t mentioned how you feel about Irish Gaelic names for horses trained in Britain.  Or did you put that in a belated edit to a post that I have missed?
No, I’ve read that 4 times (even after the editing) and it still doesn’t make sense.
Last time I looked, Nijinsky was a Russian word.  Was that the language of the country the horse was in training in? ÂÂÂ
No good suggesting that it is a proper name, as many of the Arabic names are names of people or places, taken from religion or history – it is just that they are not as familiar to many people in this country as Nijinsky.
I enjoy finding out origins of names – before I heard of the horses I didn’t know that Salsabil was a sacred fountain, Baryshnikov was a ‘northern dancer’ and Lammtarra meant invisible like a bride in the snow.
