On the final day of his latest gruelling ultra-marathon challenge to fight motor neurone disease (MND), Kevin Sinfield drew his support staff together to talk about teams. Teams in sport, he reminded us, share many glories: trophies, medals, money, victories, praise. That brand of happiness is shared by players, coaches and fans. But the team [...]

At the start of each season the late Sir Henry Cecil would buy a large notebook and divide its final pages into squares, “like a crossword puzzle,” to be filled in, one by one, when he trained a winner. Group wins were inked-in in colour. Each victory would send him to the trainers' championship table [...]

On a bright autumn afternoon at Ascot, Oisin Murphy raised and then kissed a silver trophy that symbolised the arc of his redemption. Banned for 14 months for twice failing breath tests and misleading the British Horseracing Authority over a trip to Mykonos during Covid, Murphy stood on Champions Day as the embodiment of a [...]

All season we seem to have been marvelling at 'another brilliant ride by Ryan Moore.' But the man himself chuckles at the idea that this has been a special year for him. “I suppose looking back there've been good days, but you only remember the last day,” he says. “We didn't win the Arc – [...]

With €20,000, you could buy a full ISA top-up, a good second-hand car or a fancy kitchen. Or you might spend it on a filly capable of beating the illustrious Inspiral in a Group 1 race at Newmarket. If only it were so simple. On any Arc weekend, the focus is on the mighty breeding operations, [...]

If the first half of the Flat season is for graduation ceremonies, this is the bit where Masters and PhDs are handed out. To see Ryan Moore sit so beautifully on City Of Troy – and this year's best horse race round Southwell so fluidly – was to feel a surge of anticipation greater than [...]

You wait ages for one gelding capable of spicing up the Arc field to appear – then two come along at once. Expediency is the obvious backdrop to France Galop's move to reconsider the ban on geldings in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, but the debate nevertheless goes to the heart of what sport [...]

There are seven basic plots in fiction – and around the same number in sport. One is the removal of doubt. In language that no actual person ever used, Fleet Street newspapers used to love a win that “silenced the knockers.” Racing is not short of those narratives but is unique in attaching them to [...]

A weight was lifted off Kieran Shoemark at Deauville. He was not the reason Inspiral had stopped winning. Shoemark was a spectator as Cheveley Park Stud's distinguished Frankel mare was soundly beaten into third behind Charyn in Sunday's Prix du Haras de Fresnay-le-Buffard Jacques le Marois. The ride on Inspiral had passed to Ryan Moore [...]

With more on his mind than most of us could bear, the BBC's racing commentator texted his understudy at Ascot with a few technical tips about the box he would be calling the big race from. On King George day, Darren Owen wasn't expecting help from John Hunt. Who would? On 9 July – 18 [...]

In the 1960s British racing had the chance to own bookmaking. But it's happening the other way round. Bookmakers are moving closer to owning racing. Betfred's headline sponsorship of all five Classics – the 1,000 and 2,000 Guineas, Derby, Oaks and St Leger – from 2025 is manna to racecourse execs whose job it is [...]

Royal Ascot is a week for stepping up, but there's a lot of stepping down going on in British racing. A power vacuum is heading the industry's way as leaders depart – voluntarily, or with a shove from within. Some are making delayed withdrawals (look out for a hell of a joint-leaving do this winter). [...]