Irritatingly, I couldn’t make it to the two big races over the weekend, but watching from home didn’t diminish the experience of seeing three bright lights dominate the first Classic of the European season, writes Tony Stafford. Bow Echo, his young trainer George Boughey and barely-out-of-his-teens rider Billy Loughnane, treated Newmarket to its finest hour […]
Careful. By the time you read next week’s words here the 2026/27 jumps season will already be four days old, we’ll be 40 per cent through the 2026 UK Classics, and only seven weeks short of the longest day of the year, writes Tony Stafford. And what of the 2025/26 season? Well, that was pretty […]
One of the most upwardly mobile jump trainers in the country is undoubtedly Jamie Snowden, writes Tony Stafford. Over the 17 seasons since he first took out his licence in Lambourn, Snowden has consistently improved both number of wins and prizemoney, and this term is the first time he’s exceeded £1 million in earnings. The […]
Have you ever needed to get somewhere but have found yourself stuck in traffic, writes Tony Stafford. Of course you have. At £1.90 a litre for diesel (if you’re lucky) you would imagine there would be fewer than usual cars out on the North Circular Road in London, early on a Saturday April afternoon, but […]
Are you bored with the Grand National? I am and I would never have believed it could happen in the days when I used to make my selection in the Daily Telegraph for the race straight after going to the weights press conference, writes Tony Stafford. That started, believe it or not, when Red Rum […]
Few UK trainers have been as consistent over recent years as the Crisfords, father Simon and son Ed, writes Tony Stafford. Between 2022 and last year they maintained a strike rate not far off 20%, consecutively earning £1.3million, then £1.7million, and then £1.4 million the last twice. Those four campaigns brought a total of 294 […]
The first weekend after the Cheltenham Festival, also a fortnight before the Aintree Grand National meeting, has evolved into a special opportunity for mares (and sometimes four-year-old fillies) at either end of the country, writes Tony Stafford. Kelso, two, and Newbury, one, offer valuable races exclusively for females, but the biggest individual prize is the […]
They say talk is cheap, writes Tony Stafford. Well, there was plenty of it going around at Cheltenham on Thursday with Willie Mullins and JP McManus both being highly critical of the state of the going. It was the basis of their late decision to withdraw last year’s winner and red-hot favourite Fact To File […]
The days are getting appreciably longer, writes Tony Stafford. We’ve already snatched back three and a half hours of daylight from the miserly spans of midwinter, and Cheltenham starts tomorrow. In other words, 2026 begins now. Two septuagenarians, Messrs Henderson and Mullins, have for decades been the major forces at the meeting, and neither is […]
You may have got the idea on reading these ramblings over the past ten years or so that I must have comfortably exceeded my historically allotted three score years and ten lifespan, writes Tony Stafford. A letter through the post last week confirmed it. It was from the Pensions Service and informed me that as […]
Almost exactly a year ago, I was invited by my friend Malcolm Cain to attend a Cheltenham preview meeting on a Saturday evening in Central London, writes Tony Stafford. It was a great do, very close to the event itself, and much debate focused on whether Constitution Hill would be able to regain the Champion […]
You might wonder whether the dream of Saudi Arabia’s rulers to dominate the world’s most watched sports at the highest level is wearing a little thin, writes Tony Stafford. Golfers and soccer players have been enticed by unfathomably large sums to join the Liv Tour and Saudi Pro League respectively, but even after no more […]
Come on Paul, make a stand, writes Tony Stafford. Persuade owner Colm Donlon to pay the £18,000 supplementary fee and put Tutti Quanti in next month’s Champion Hurdle! In some ways the parallels are obvious. On February 8th 1997, Make A Stand, ridden by A P McCoy made all to win the Tote Gold Trophy […]
Normally we would have had both days of the Dublin Racing Festival to reflect upon this not so bright Monday morning, but it’s rather like the 1997 Grand National, writes Tony Stafford. Then, at the height of the IRA’s bombing campaign in the UK, a bomb threat led to 60,000 racegoers (including me) being evacuated […]
On a weekend when the hot favourite for the Champion Hurdle pulled up halfway round his trial and the two top horses in the world continued their merry way in Hong Kong, there was still only one contender for the lead in today’s article, writes Tony Stafford. I stress that I have not been put […]
