The exhibition, titled “In her own voice: the art of Lucy Kemp-Welch,” will be open from Oct. 21 through Feb. 25, 2024. Several of the paintings are on display to the public for the first time and visitors to The National Horseracing Museum can view over 60 pieces from Kemp-Welch's lifetime, several on loan from private and public collections, including The Imperial War Museum, The Tate, Bushey Museum and Art Gallery (where she studied under Hubert von Herkomer) and Southampton City Art Gallery

The exhibition is included with general admission. For more information visit the National Horseracing Museum website.

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Racing faces different problems in different jurisdictions and, from an outsider's perspective, it is hard to get fully behind racing in America when a number of its major participants remain overly reliant on medication. But if you read Cynthia Holt's wonderful account of being at Belmont 50 years ago to bear witness to arguably the greatest-ever performance by a Thoroughbred as Secretariat went for the Triple Crown, it is impossible not to wish for that situation to improve and for racing to be able to hold its head high. The only way it can survive and thrive around the world is if everyone involved pledges to do the the very best for the horses who make it possible to work in such an engaging and vibrant sport.

That is why the result of the 155th Belmont S. was so uplifting. For a start, it heralded yet another important marker in the advancement of women within the sport, with Jena Antonucci becoming the first female trainer of the winner of an American Triple Crown race. But more importantly, Arcangelo's victory was a major triumph for a smaller trainer who is apparently prepared to prioritise the welfare of her horses above all else. Coming with a horse who cost his owner Jon Ebbert $35,000 at the Keeneland September Yearling Sale, it is also a result which sends a message to other small operators: it can be done.

It should not be underestimated how much stories of this ilk are needed, and how much rarer they are becoming. It is hard now to imagine a trainer like Joe Janiak, a former taxi driver, turning up at Royal Ascot with his cast-off sprinter Takeover Target (Aus) and waltzing off with one of the week's biggest prizes. In three years and six starts at the royal meeting, the gelding with chipped knees was never out of the first four in the major sprints. And yes, his success had no bearing on the betterment of the breed, but what a battler, what a story. 

Somehow, it is harder to get behind the horses owned by major investment syndicates, and that is not to denigrate the people funding those runners. Financial investment is vital for racing to continue, and for the breeders to be able to go on producing the goods, but emotional investment is just as important, and that is what you hear and feel when you read Jena Antonucci's story. The spotlight should always be on the horses, but racing is so much more compelling when you can root for their people, too.

I will confess that, until this past week, I knew barely anything about Antonucci. Some engaging interviews following her Belmont S. victory led me to her website and I was taken by one of the sub-headings on her homepage which stated 'Statistics aren't the only indicator of success'. It was an apposite line to read following the release of a video by a major syndicate trying to sell shares in a new recruit, in which the manager pours scorn on the record and percentages of the horse's former trainer. It was an act of quite staggering ignorance, bad manners and, ultimately, self-harm. 

The colt in question is New Energy (Ire) (New Bay {GB}), who until last week was the top-rated horse in Sheila Lavery's stable. He is a horse who, since this time last year following his second-place finish in the Irish 2,000 Guineas, has been running with an official mark of 112 or 113. In other words, consistent and classy. Those two facts are surely the reason he was such a desirable purchase, and he was likely bought for many multiples of the £65,000 it took for his trainer and Ted Durcan to secure him at the breeze-up sales two years ago.

He's not a one-off for Lavery, either, for she regularly gets a good tune out of horses who could be overlooked in bigger yards. Four years ago, she trained the €15,000 weanling purchase Lady Kaya (Ire) (Dandy Man {Ire}) to run second in the 1,000 Guineas at Newmarket. I can still hear the devastation in her voice when she spoke of that filly's fatal injury on the gallops in the countdown to her next appearance at Royal Ascot. She will have been almost similarly upset to have lost New Energy to an Australian stable which has hundreds and hundreds of horses on its books. Lavery will have understood, though, that the horse had a greater chance of being a high earner in a jurisdiction endowed with plentiful prize-money, and in a sector where he may encounter weaker opposition than he has done in Europe. 

Lavery and Antonucci have had 59 and 52 starters this year respectively, and it is well within the bounds of possibility that we will see Lavery follow Antonucci in becoming a Group/Grade 1-winning trainer. That of course becomes harder to achieve for every smaller operation as the good horses get whisked away by those with large cheque books. But in the cases of both women, and many other trainers of a similar size, a strong argument can be made for them not to be overlooked in the stampede towards the superstables.

Al Asifah a Potential Star for Shadwell

There is no such thing as a quiet week in racing, but with Royal Ascot now only a week away, and Epsom a week behind us, the fare of the last seven days has been more muted. However, there have been plenty of impressive performances to note, and none perhaps more so than the win of Shadwell's Al Asifah (GB) in the Listed Weatherbys/British EBF Agnes Keyser Fillies' S. The daughter of Frankel (GB) and Aneen (Ire) (Lawman {Fr}), herself a half-sister to Irish 2,000 Guineas winner Awtaad (Ire) (Cape Cross {Ire}), may have missed most of the Classics but it would be no surprise to see her engaged in Group 1 races before too long, despite her inexperience. 

Similarly, it was hard not to be impressed by the performance of Beautiful Diamond (GB) (Twilight Son {GB}) in her winning debut for Karl Burke and Sheikh Rashid Dalmook Al Maktoum at Nottingham. A pinhooking triumph for Tradewinds Stud, she went from being a 30,000gns yearling to a £360,000 breezer when becoming the most expensive filly sold at the Goffs UK Breeze-up Sale in April. 

Richard Fahey spoke eloquently in these pages last week of his approach to two-year-olds, and he has plenty of his stable's youngsters firing ahead of an important week. That was particularly notable by his twin strike at Beverley on Saturday with Midnight Affair (Ire) (Dark Angel {Ire}) in the Hilary Needler and Bombay Bazaar (GB) (Kodiac {GB}) in the Two-Year-Old Trophy.

From Rome to Hokkaido 

Three nations combined in the winner of the Tattersalls-sponsored G2 Oaks d'Italia. Trainer Stefano Botti won the race for the fifth time since 2012 with Shavasana (Ire), who is now unbeaten in five starts, including the G3 Premio Regina Elena (Italian 1,000 Guineas). This time, however, she was ridden by Britain's Hollie Doyle, whose first Classic success came aboard Nashwa (GB) in last year's Prix de Diane, and won in the colours of leading Japanese owner/breeder Katsumi Yoshida, who bought the filly after her first Classic win.

Remarkably, Botti's first three wins in the Italian Oaks came in consecutive years with the half-sisters Cherry Collect (Ire) (Oratorio {Ire}), Charity Line (Ire) (Manduro {Ger}) and Final Score (Ire) (Dylan Thomas {Ire}). Another of their half-sisters, Sea Of Class (Ire) (Sea The Stars {Ire}), later won the Irish Oaks, making their dam, Holy Moon (GB) (Hernando {Fr}), a most prized member of the broodmare band owned by the Botti family's Razza del Velino, who also bred Shavasana.

The Holy Moon family and the Oaks d'Italia are also clearly prized in Japan as all three of those aforementioned winning half-sisters are now in the ownership of either Katsumi or Teruya Yoshida. 

Straight Ahead to Hamburg

The G2 Union-Rennen at Cologne provided the latest shake-up to the market of the G1 Deutsches Derby on July 2, which is now headed by Straight (Ger) (Zarak {Fr}). The Gestut Karlshof homebred has every right to be considered a serious Classic prospect, not just on his win in the 188th Union-Rennen but also for the names found on his page. 

Straight's fourth dam Sacarina (GB) (Old Vic {GB}) has been a key player in the success of the Faust family's Karlshof operation. His third dam Sahel (Ger) (Monsun {Ger}) is a full-sister to the Deutsches Derby winners Samum (Ger) and Schiaparelli (Ger) as well as to the Preis der Diana winner Salve Regine (Ger). Another sister, Sanwa (Ger), is the dam of the 2014 Deutsches Derby winner Sea The Moon (Ger), who is in turn the sire of the another of the leading fancies for this year's race, Fantastic Moon (Ger), who was champion two-year-old last year in Germany. 

Another Zarak colt from the immediate family of Straight also features in the Derby betting: Sirjan (Ger), a Group 3 winner in Italy last year, was also bred at Karlshof and is a half-brother to Straight's dam Seductive (Ger) (Henrythenavigator).

It is a family which has already tasted Classic success in Europe this season as yet another of Sacarina's daughters by Monsun, Sortita (Ger), features as the grand-dam of the G2 Derby Italiano winner Goldenas (Ire) (Golden Horn {GB}).

And Now For Something Completely Different

If you wander into the National Horseracing Museum in Newmarket, you might expect to find exhibitions pertaining to the horse in some form or other. 

This summer, however, the museum has spread its wings to become involved in a show named The Urban Frame: Mutiny In Colour, which opened last week and is being staged across three venues in Suffolk. The exhibition includes more than 50 works from some renowned contemporary artists, including Banksy, Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.

The street artist and international man (or woman) of mystery, Banksy, is also represented at the National Horseracing Museum in The 7: Banksy Under Siege, which features replicas of life-size 'walls' created during the artist's visit to Ukraine last year. 

It is a world-first for this exhibition, which runs until October 1. Who says Newmarket is boring? 

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“The Hall of Fame is a great initiative that promotes the best in our sport and stimulates further interest in the National Horseracing Museum in Newmarket,” Prescott said. “I'm surprised and honoured to be invited to join such a tip-top Hall of Fame judging panel, and to be tasked with making such important decisions.”

Inductions are decided upon by a panel of horseracing experts. This year's class will be announced ahead of the QIPCO Guineas Festival, while the ceremony will take place during that event in May. The National Horseracing Museum in Newmarket will also unveil an updated Hall of Fame exhibition at that time.

Click here for more information.

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“Deciding upon a final list of retired racehorses was a gradual process, but I wanted to achieve a balance across several factors–code of racing, gender, distance specialism, plus a variety of colours,” said Ward. “It was also important for each individual not only to be either well-known itself, to have a recognisable achievement or a connection to a famous horse, but to have gone on to a happy and productive phase of life after retirement from racing.”

“The title given to each of the foal studies represents the mood of the painting and the impression that I hope it gives to those who see it, and not the subject's registered name.”

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ARC will specifically support the work undertaken within the Rothschild Yard at Palace House, historic home of NHRM. Working with Retraining of Racehorses (“ROR”), NHRM utilise the facilities at the Rothschild Yard to educate the public on the work that goes into retraining Thoroughbred athletes after their racing careers are over. In addition, NHRM holds daily displays and talks for visitors.

David Thorpe, Chairman of ARC, said, “We are absolutely delighted to announce this partnership and our support of the fantastic work done by the team at NHRM. The Rothschild Yard is a tremendous facility that does an incredibly important job for British Racing in helping to showcase the aftercare that horses receive and really promoting it to the public.”

Anne-Marie Hogan, Director of NHRM, added, “Our thanks to ARC for this new partnership, which will allow us to continue to promote how well British racing looks after horses after their racing careers have finished.”

For more information regarding NHRM, please visit their website.

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Odell, one of just 600 Fellows of the Royal Photographic Society, lives in the centre of Newmarket, her home backing on to one of its most historic yards. This prompted a five-year project devoted to studying the beating heart of the town, which is the everyday training of thoroughbreds.

“I moved here and I got hooked on it,” she says. “Seeing the horses out in the morning and the whole rhythm of the town.

“I realised we were behind Charlie Fellowes's old yard. We started to hear the sounds of the yard and I got a bit intrigued and then started going out to take pictures and gradually built up a body of work. The love grew and then the opportunities seemed to grow from that.”

Love is a theme which runs through the substantial monochromatic exhibition, from the photographer's own eye for a subject she clearly finds absorbing, to the day-to-day interactions between the horses and those charged with their care, and the extraordinary attention to detail that goes into the routine of every stable yard.

“Look at pride in their work,” Odell exclaims as she guides TDN through the exhibition. “I love the things that go on in the background behind the racing itself–the farriery, the valets, saddle makers and all the traditions and crafts that are involved behind the scenes. I wanted it to be a fly-on-the-wall snapshot of life behind the world of horseracing, behind the glamour of race days.”

Her work certainly conveys not just the bond between man and horse, but also the camaraderie of the stable staff. And it acts as an important social history of the town that provides the fabric on which so much of the heritage and tradition of horseracing has been woven. In essence, not that much has changed since the days that the court of King Charles II set up a sporting home away from home in Palace House, just across the road from where these images are on display. Horses are still the lifeblood of Newmarket and much of the town's business now hinges on the breeding and racing of these finest of creatures. 

Indeed, one of the most striking images is that of former trainer James Eustace, keeping an eye on his string on a bitter winter's morning, his breath backlit by the rising sun. It is an almost timeless image but in those 400 years since the royal patronage of Newmarket began, so much has of course changed. And in many ways it has changed slowly. Khadijah Mellah, the first British Muslim woman to ride a winner, is also the subject of one of the portraits at Fellowes's stable, and while her victory at Goodwood was considered a breakthrough moment because of her ethnicity, it was only as recently as 1972 that any women was allowed to ride in a race in Britain.

“It's a body of work that I'm still going to expand on and look at from slightly different angles, but I hope it will be a legacy for the town, really,” Odell explains. “Because we do want to see, in future generations, pictures of how things are now. With social media and things like that, it's a very transient, and it's current today, but tomorrow it's old hat. But images that stand the test of time and that record that moment in time, I think are really important.”

Apart from the glorious Heath itself, nothing has stood the test of time in Newmarket quite like its equine inhabitants, who of course play a vital role in Odell's collection which has a section devoted to the four seasons.

“The horses are the timekeepers of the town,” she says. “So I wanted to depict the whole year, almost like a film strip of different conditions from winter through to spring, summer, and then autumn, and the fact that the horses are training all day, every day, all weathers, all conditions.”

Officially titled Time and Motion: Capturing the Lifeblood of a Racing Yard, the exhibition will continue at the National Horseracing Museum throughout the sales and racing season in Newmarket until early December and, within easy walking distance of Tattersalls, it is recommended to all visitors to the town this autumn. 

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Money raised this year will be donated to the long-term charity partner and main beneficiary Racing Welfare, as well as the National Horseracing Museum, Newmarket Day Centre and the Newmarket Heath Ambulance, a fundraising initiative to purchase a quick response unit for work riders on Newmarket Heath.

“Last year we saw huge numbers of visitors to Newmarket during the Henry Cecil Open Weekend. It was fantastic to see and for everyone to experience all that our town has to offer,” said Charlie Fellowes, Chairman of The Henry Cecil Open Weekend. “A huge thank you must go to all those who continually support the event and enable the Open Weekend to happen. A particular thanks to all the trainers, racing staff, volunteers and participants, without whom the event would not be possible.”

For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit The Henry Cecil Open website.

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In some strange way, the horse can get lost in all this. I mean the horse in general–not a single Classic contender, but all the horses, the roughly 2,500 Thoroughbreds who live in Newmarket.

Racing is unique among elite sports because of the horse. The horse brings something extra to the party–a mystery, because anything that lives across the species barrier will always retain a haunting mystery; a pure aesthetic, because the Thoroughbred will make even a Vogue supermodel look ordinary; and an element of relationship and connection, because the women and men who can get into the horses' minds will always get the most out of them. 

What I mean is that it's a whole lot more than: extremely rich person buys the most fabulous breeding on the planet and sends the resulting colt or filly to a famous trainer in a storied yard and everyone starts counting their money. I'm being reductive, but I'm doing that on purpose, because sometimes it seems to me that this is the story that gets told the most. That's the nature of news; that's how headlines work. But still. It leaves something out.

Of course there have always been dominant yards and great sires and owners with vast chequebooks. I've just been round the National Horseracing Museum, and there they all are, the titans, with their hats and their frock coats and their deferential servants. There are the earls and baronets, the Duke of Portland and Lord Rosebery, the only sitting prime minister who bred and owned a Derby winner. There is the skeleton of Hyperion, an astonishing sight and, in the empty rooms of Palace House, the Stubbs pictures of the fine thoroughbreds of the eighteenth century. 

He put the horse at centre stage. There is no fabled owner or breeder; there is just the horse with a lad. That's the focus and locus of beauty, so alive that it holds the gaze and the imagination. That's how it all started, and that's how it is still, for me.

I drove the 500 miles from Scotland because I wanted to see the horses. I grew up in a National Hunt yard and Thoroughbreds were my first memories and my first love. There's no racing in Aberdeenshire and I can only watch the beauties on the television. To come south for these first Classics of the season was a treat not because of the betting markets or the form or even the headline acts. I wanted to see them all–the fillies and colts close-up in the pre-parade ring, the strings of unknowns up on the Heath, perhaps a glimpse of an old favourite out at exercise.

I am staying with friends who have a small stable in the middle of the town. I wake up to the sound of gentle, clopping hooves as the horses come out for first lot. It's a relaxed place and the horses are happy and friendly. (They all want to come and say hello, a terrific sign in my book. They think humans are A Good Thing.) This is keen pleasure for me, even though these are not in the Classic grade and will not live large in the imagination of the wider public. But they have the beauty and grace and intelligence that Thoroughbreds carry; they have the history running in their veins; they can trace their ancestry back to the moment when Captain Byerley brought his brave horse home from the wars.

That's another part of the beauty, for me: the history. Someone said, at the races, that nobody knows who Fred Archer is any more. Can this really be true? I have just stared at the revolver with which he killed himself, which is baldly displayed in the museum. It is a shining silver object, with no hint of the misery it rubbed out, and I have spent dreamy hours at the yard he built. There are moments, as I stand on Warren Hill and look at the horses silhouetted against the sky, when I can imagine Stubbs himself painting that scene, or conjure a vision of Charles II camped in the town with his entire entourage. (Pepys wrote on April 26, 1669, 'The King and Court went out of town to Newmarket this morning betimes, for a week.' This happened quite a lot, to the disgust of those courtiers who had no interest in ephemeral sporting pursuits.)

There's a trainer I know who can talk of horses from 100 years ago as if they had run yesterday, and the more recent history is not entirely lost to me either. I drive out of town, past the sweeping Suffolk hedges and the immaculately-railed studs, where every spring a new crop of dreams are born, to see a dear friend who has worked in racing since he was hardly more than a boy. He tells me of going round evening stables with Sir Henry Cecil, and how Henry would say, as if on a whim, “Let's go and see this one,” and then he'd get to the box and run his hands over a smooth back and stand back and simply stare.

“I didn't say anything,” my friend told me. “He needed to look and look and look at his horse. So we'd stand in silence until he'd had enough, and then he'd say there was another one he'd want to look at, and we'd be off again.”

I love the picture of Sir Henry gazing and gazing at his horses. I think, fancifully, that perhaps he looked with the same intensity that I do: seeing the beauty, seeing the history, seeing the promise.

At the races, there is the fascinating blend of ancient and modern. There are the young people in their sharp suits and summer dresses, shouting on the rails, and the old school, the men still wearing Trilbies despite it being May, the women in sensible shoes so they can get about to see the runners. I hear one retired  horseman say, “I don't put myself about much these days.” He watches over proceedings like an elder statesman, as if to see that all is well.

There is a murmur about the place, as the Flat rouses itself back to life after the long winter. (And there was a metaphorical winter too, during lockdown, when meetings went on behind closed doors and horses raced past empty, ghostly stands.) What surprises me, after so long away from a racecourse, is how fine and delicate these horses are in life. The camera blunts them and flattens them and somehow enlarges them, all at the same time. You can't feel the energy that flows off them when you are watching on a screen. In real life, the intense individuality of each one is striking. There are the young ones who are poised and sanguine, already professionals; the ones for whom it is all a bit too much, who need reassurance; the ones who look slightly startled but willing to take it on trust that they will be all right.

The other thing that surprises me is how whole-heartedly the crowd cheers them home. Even on Friday and Sunday, when the stands are not rammed, the noise rises in a crescendo of excitement, of released tension, joy, perhaps even hope. Some will be shouting because they've won a hundred quid; some because they love a good finish or a certain jockey; some because they are infected by the sound of the drumming hooves and the rising voice of the commentator and their fellow racegoers. I mostly don't have a dog in the hunt, so I shout for the grace and the guts and the refusal to give up. (I like those qualities in humans; I love them in horses.)

As always, some of the beauties surprise and some disappoint. The one that perhaps gives me most pleasure is Cachet, the filly who goes to the front in the 1000 Guineas and stays there and stays there and just holds on, from fast-finishing rivals.

She's a delicate thing, very charming, clearly with a core of steel. My brilliant friend, who is a breeding expert and knows the bloodlines upside down and inside out, sees her through the lens of great sires and brilliant broodmares. The people who understand the ratings and the betting regard her with slight surprise, because she was 16-1 and had a bit to find on the book. (She found it.) I see her as my favourite kind of character–an unassuming person who creates no drama and no fuss and goes out and does a difficult thing whilst making it look straightforward. 

Afterwards, the winner's enclosure was rammed. Cachet belongs to a syndicate, and she appears to have many, many owners. Some of them were literally jumping for joy. All of them wanted to pat her and have her photograph taken with her. She's still young and she'd just run the hardest race of her life and she was in the throes of an adrenaline spike and she could have told these legions of strangers to sod off. (She has no idea that they pay for her feed and her hay and the people who look after her every day.) But she didn't. She politely allowed the hullabaloo to go on around her until all her owners had their moment of a lifetime. 

Even the most beady commentators looked a little misty at the outpouring of joy. It wasn't the billionaires and the plutocrats–and I'm not being disdainful of them because they put a lot into racing and they deserve their delight like everybody else; it's more that it's nice to see non-famous people getting their moment in the sun. It was a bunch of exceptionally happy men and women, everyday types to whom the ordinary viewer could relate. “Good for racing,” said the beady commentators, judiciously. Good for humanity, I thought, moved.

The next morning, Racecourse Side was almost deserted. The caravan had packed up for another year. There is a ravishing woodland walk there, a path under the green trees packed with woodchippings so the horses can comfortably do their slower work, walking and trotting to keep their muscles loose and easy. Across on Warren Hill, streaming lines of Thoroughbreds were flying up the gallops and trainers were out on their trusty hacks, but here there was a quiet woodland wonderland giving onto broad acres of smooth turf, under a wide, wide sky.

Suddenly, out of the quiet, a string of horses appeared. I realised this was Cachet's crew. 'Good morning, good morning!' we merrily called at each other. The friend who had taken me on this lovely route knows everyone, so her good mornings were familiar. Mine were the exclamations of a happy stranger–almost a thank you to the riders for coming out on those ravishing horses so I could get a last hit of beauty before I drive north. They were still smiling with victory and we congratulated them and the smiles grew wider. That's it, I thought, right there: the horse factor and the human factor, the love and the joy and the beauty.

Later, after going to the museum, I stopped in a small restaurant for something to eat. (I was famished after all that fascination.) It was a regular place, nothing fancy, so I was startled to see Cachet's trainer a few tables along. There were about ten people in the whole place and he was one of them. 

There was a lot of laughter. And then a sentence floated across the empty room. 

'She's an absolute legend.'

I smiled all the way home.

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