Sunday Review: A comprehensive view into the inner workings of one of Britain's biggest stables

Horsepower on BBC iPlayer
All four episodes of Horsepower are available on the BBC iPlayer. The first two episodes were broadcast on BBC Four last week and the final two episodes will air on the same channel from 10.15pm on Tuesday, July 16.

Any sports documentary has a very fine line to tread. How do you introduce and engage viewers unfamiliar with the subject matter while also ensuring the final product is deep enough to appeal to the core fanbase?

It is a balancing act which Horsepower, the Amazon Prime documentary following Oisin Murphy and Andrew Balding first released in 2022 and now available on the BBC’s iPlayer, navigates with aplomb. Fans of slow-motion camera shots will certainly not be disappointed.

The four-part series follows the ups and downs of team Kingsclere, taking us from Kameko’s Classic-winning season in 2020 through to a marvellously successful Royal Ascot in 2021.

From stud life to sales ring, race planning to winner's enclosure, practically every element of racing life is covered. Horseracing jargon can be impenetrable to the outsider at times, but information is passed down in a swift and easy-to-follow manner.

Even your writer came away feeling a little more knowledgeable. Growing up in the north of Scotland, I am very familiar with winter coats, but I now feel better able to understand the term and the impacts on a horse when a trainer relays concerns over the amount of time taken to shed their protection against the cold weather.

The Baldings, who are presented very much as a team with Andrew’s wife Anna Lisa also taking a starring role, come across as warm, friendly, and genuine, and credit to them for opening the doors of Kingsclere in a sport that too often fails to pull back the curtain.

Oisin Murphy and Andrew Balding: the stars of HorsepowerCredit: Edward Whitaker

We are thrust straight into an unwelcome reminder of Covid times with Andrew Balding unable to give Murphy as much as a high-five after winning just his second British Classic in the 2,000 Guineas, the jockey’s first. It feels like looking through a portal to a different universe.

But much more welcome are the moments we spend behind the scenes with the team of grooms, work-riders and head lads and lasses at Kingsclere. For those of us who have visited yards and follow the sport daily, it will come as no surprise that they are the real stars of the show.

International travelling groom Maddy O'Meara's relationship with her beloved Bangkok is portrayed beautifully, although the most powerful of these side-stories belongs to groom and Sudanese refugee Abdul Kareem Musa Adam, who quickly becomes a valued member of the team before making the difficult decision to return to his home land in search of his long-lost brother.

Abdul’s story is an important one, but it also feels underdeveloped. It would have been nice to have more time with the unsung heroes of the Balding team, who all make fine impressions.

The elephant in the room for us dyed-in-the-wool racing fans is Murphy. Much of the first two episodes deal with his controversial three-month cocaine ban issued by France Galop in late 2020. Anna Lisa Balding expresses her hope that it is "a little blip" and that we are seeing Murphy "at his lowest".

Unfortunately, we know that not to be true. He missed the entire 2022 season following a cover-up of Covid breaches and multiple positive alcohol tests in a story that rocked the sport and which emerged only after filming had been completed.

But there is little point reflecting on what the series is not. We should celebrate what it is, which is a comprehensive and well-made view into the inner workings of one of Britain's biggest stables.

And given the openness with which all parties approached that first Murphy ban, there would be plenty of interest should the producers wish to return to this story in the future.
Sam Hendry

How 'Strongholds of Satan' added weight to Westminster debate on affordability

Strongholds of Satan, Volume II, The South-West
£80, plus £10 p&p, from www.mainholmpress.co.uk or contact william@mainholmpress.co.uk or 01576 510347

If the sheer weight of this magnificent tome is not enough to convince you of its merit as a lovingly researched record of all Britain's defunct racecourses then its strategic use in the Westminster debate on affordability checks earlier this year serves as a timely signpost.

David Mundell MP pointed out that the title “Strongholds of Satan”, a book by his constituent William Morgan, derives from how racecourses were described when "racing was a potent combination of national sport, fair, local holiday and gambling opportunity; religious leaders were outraged and politicians were constantly trying to restrain all the shenanigans among the crowds, gamblers and horse owners.

"Mr Morgan sets out how, from 1654, governments have sought to regulate and interfere with racing and shows that many of the measures that were introduced had completely unintended consequences. That is a significant concern about what is being proposed now."

Strongholds of Satan by William Morgan

This is the second volume in a series of four which have been researched and crafted over a period of 40 years and it covers England's south-west counties and Wales. Anyone who has already purchased the volume on the south-east region, published last autumn, will be fully aware of the merits of the series and will surely want all four volumes to form the cornerstones (literally) of their racing library.

Sir Mark Prescott provides the foreword, with a reminder of the now defunct tracks at which he rode: "Buckfastleigh, Folkestone, Rothbury, Towcester, Woore Hunt and Wye (where I broke my back). I had saddled or led up runners at another five courses – Birmingham, Hurst Park, Lewes, Lincoln and Manchester. I had trained winners at the two other tracks in this category, Alexandra Park and Stockton, where I had trained my first winner."

As Devonian Prescott will be fully aware there were 48 meetings in that county alone, including Buckfastleigh which hosted Princess Margaret on Whit Monday 1949, with more than 19,000 there to witness the event, the largest crowd at a West Country meeting since World War II. 

It was, however, not exactly Prescott's favourite course. "There and Wye were the worst two tracks I rode at," he recalls. "After jumping the first you had to turn sharply right and if you jumped it too well you were on the road."
John Cobb

A colourful journey round British and Irish racecourses

Course For Horses by Nicholas Clee
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, can be purchased here for £10.99

Courses For Horses may seem like an extensive guide to Britain and Ireland's tracks but those purchasing the book with that in mind may come away disappointed. 

Nicholas Clee's latest book is not about quantity but rather quality, charting his racecourse visits over a two-year period to uncover the delight of racing from those at its heart. 

Clee, author of the 1998 story of Eclipse, turns his pen to tales of the track, using his experiences of 30 racecourses to capture the brilliance of a day at the races in a way few can. 

Starting with a trip to Wetherby in 2019, Clee's journey is not only a slice of life from Britain and Ireland’s tracks but a unique moment in history for the sport, with his chapters covering the Cheltenham Festival and Kameko's Guineas win at Newmarket told through the lens of the lockdown before the return to normality in his visit to Windsor in May 2021. 

Each chapter provides not only the course's history but Clee's own relationship with the track as a cast of racing personalities lend their insight to the charming idiosyncrasies of each venue. 

Trainer Christian Williams is the focus of a trip to Fakenham and Lydia Hislop at Salisbury, while racing at Exeter with Richard Hoiles and Ayr with Ryan Mania are just some of the more colourful insights within the book. Alongside these big names are lesser known ones too, with bookmarkers, racecourse chiefs and stewards all captured in Clee's entertaining and anecdotal prose. 

Now released in paperback, Courses For Horses is an engaging tale of racing in Britain and Ireland capturing Group 1 days and Class 6 days in equal measure. For those racecourses you have yet to visit, Clee's book will serve as an appealing substitute.
Catherine Macrae

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