All Speaker's Corner Articles

There’s a wonderful line in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises when a character named Mike is asked how he went bankrupt. “Two ways,” he replies. “Gradually, then suddenly.”

  The problem facing our beloved sport is that there is a growing hole in racing’s finances. Racehorse owners are responsible for the largest inflow of revenues into racing, spending £369 million a year (33 per cent of all UK racing expenditure). But they are a dwindling bunch: their numbers dropped by 15 per cent...

It is advisable to look both ways before tinkering with Formula One. I know from experience that serious petrolheads treat their sport more like a religion than a gas-guzzling and noisy (well it used to be) spectacle. But that’s fair enough. Formula One has a long and fascinating history, with heroes, great settings and triumphs...

This year’s St Leger resulted in the Doncaster stewards demoting Simple Verse for interference caused to second-placed Bondi Beach. On appeal the British Horseracing Authority panel reversed that finding and reinstated Simple Verse as the winner. Inevitably, some have suggested that this reversal implied criticism of the Doncaster stewards. The suggestion is misconceived. The stewards...