UK Horse Racing Tips

In his heyday in the early Eighties, Dermot Browne was an accomplished amateur National Hunt jockey. Much like someone adapt at best online casino games, he twice became Irish champion amateur and famously won the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival and the Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle on Browne’s Gazette in 1984. At the end of his riding career, Browne followed in the footsteps of his father, Liam, by becoming a trainer in Lambourn, Berkshire.

However, his new career was short-lived because, in October, 1992, he was found guilty of six breaches of the Rules of Racing, including passing ‘inside’ information to a bookmaker for financial reward, by the Jockey Club Disciplinary Committee and ‘warned off’ for ten years. His original ban – which precluded him for entering any racecourse, being employed in any racing stable or dealing, in any capacity, with racehorses – was due to expire in October, 2002.

However, by that stage, Browne had gained even greater notoriety after claiming, in a television documentary, that he had coordinated the administration of the fast-acting tranquilliser acetylpromazine, or ACP for short, to 23 horses between August and September, 1990. Quite a scene, and a worldaway from  casino sur internet . One of the horses involved was Bravefoot, who finished last of five, when 11/8 favourite, in the Champagne Stakes at Doncaster.

Browne apparently administered the drug at the behest of Brian Wright, who was, himself, warned off for twenty years by the Jockey Club Disciplinary Committee in 2002, while still a fugitive from justice. In 2005, Wright, nicknamed ‘The Milkman’, was arrested on an International Arrest Warrant in Spain and subsequently tried, convicted and sentenced to thirty years’ imprisonment for masterminding a multi-million pound international cocaine smuggling operation. Browne, for his part, was warned off for a further twenty years and only escaped being banned for life by virtue of a letter, exposing further corruption, which he left with the Disciplinary Committee.

According to the dictionary, ‘equinoctial’ means ‘pertaining to an equinox or the equinoxes’ or, in other words, the two days each year when day and night are of equal length. Unlike choiceonlinecasino online casino which is at hand day or night. However, celestial matters aside, unless you’re a horse racing anorak, you’re probably unfamiliar with the horse called ‘Equinoctial’, who wrote his name into the record books at Kelso Racecourse, in the Scottish Borders, on November 21, 1990.

The five-year-old bay gelding had won a maiden point-to-point at Askeaton, in Co. Limerick, the previous February, when trained by Eric McNamara, but had already passed through the hands of Michael Hourigan and Michael Dods before finally arriving with Norman Miller, based in Co. Durham. On his first three starts for his new trainer, all over fences, Equinoctial was tailed off when pulled up Perth, fell at the first fence at Southwell and again jumped poorly at Catterick, where he was pulled up just after halfway. Indeed, he fared little better when put back over hurdles on his fourth at Hexham, weakening from the second-last flight to finish eighth of the ten runners, beaten 62 lengths.

Equinoctial subsequently lined up for Grants Whisky Novices’ Handicap Hurdle at Kelso, for which he was allocated just 8st 13lb in the long handicap and therefore carried 15lb than he should have according to official ratings. His burden was reduced by the 7lb weight allowance claimed by his conditional jockey, Andrew Heywood. Nevertheless, the combination of his desperate form and weight disadvantage led to him being disregarded by just about everyone and sent off at eye-watering odds of 250/1. Thekind of odds you’d dream of coming up at French Casinos.

However, ‘the horse doesn’t know what price it is’ is an oft-repeated phrase in horse racing circles and, remarkably, having chased the leaders from the fourth-last flight, Equinoctial stayed on under pressure to lead on the run-in and win by 3½ lengths. In so doing, he became the longest-priced winner in the history of British horse racing.

Joshua Thomas Gifford, almost universally known as ‘Josh’, is probably best remembered as the trainer of Aldaniti, whose fairytale win in the 1981 Grand National, under cancer survivor Bob Champion, later became the subject of the 1984 film, ‘Champions’. However, before turning his hand to training, at the comparatively early age of 28, Gifford was a highly successful National Hunt jockey; he was, in fact, Champion Jockey on four occasions, in 1962/63, 1963/64, 1966/67 and 1967/68, and rode a total of 642 winners. As much luck you could say, as an online blackjack champ.

Gifford was encouraged to become a trainer by his former employer, Captain Henry Ryan Price, whom he duly replaced at Down Stables in Findon, West Sussex in 1970, when Price moved to nearby Soldiers Field Stables to concentrate primarily on the Flat. In the next 33 years, Gifford saddled 1,586 winners and, while he never became Champion Trainer, was awarded an MBE for his services to horse racing in 1989. At the time of his death, in February, 2012, BBC horse racing correspondent described him as ‘the most colourful of characters, much-loved and admired throughout racing’.

Aside from Aldaniti, whom he nursed back from what were widely considered career-ending injuries, Gifford trained many high-class hurdlers and steeplechasers. Notable horses to pass through his hands included the talented, but enigmatic, Vodkatini, winner of the Grand Annual Challenge Cup in 1988, Deep Sensation, winner of the Tote Gold Trophy Handicap Hurdle in 1990 and the Queen Mother Champion Chase in 1993, Bradbury Star, back-to-back winner of the Mackeson Gold Cup in 1993 and 1994 and Brief Gale, winner of Sun Alliance Chase in 1995.

In his final three seasons as a trainer, Gifford saddled just 13, 20 and 16 winners respectively, with his yard failing to recover the effects of a virus in the late Nineties, which hastened his retirement, at the age of 61, in April, 2003. Nevertheless, his training career ended on a high note, much like an online casino new zealand fan, when his final runner, Skycab, came from a seemingly-impossible position to lift the spoils in the atheraces.co.uk Handicap Chase at Sandown Park on the final day of the season.