Fan's strange request prompts Andy Stewart to run Big Buck's in Cleeve Hurdle

Stewart, one of jump racing’s highest-profile owners, has acknowledged that he and his family are currently enjoying that rarest of experiences, racing a horse that is adored by the public.

“We could have taken him for a racecourse gallop somewhere, with 40 or 50 people watching him, but why not bring him out in public, where everybody can see and appreciate him. That’s why we’ve decided to run in the Cleeve Hurdle at Cheltenham on Saturday even though he’ll be 10lb below [in sharpness] what he will be when he goes for his fourth World Hurdle.”

Big Buck’s passed Bula’s landmark of 13 consecutive hurdle wins when landing the Long Walk Hurdle at Ascot in December and is now only two short of Sir Ken’s record of 16 straight victories. “Big Buck’s is lazy at home and Paul [Nicholls] wants to keep him fit and sharp. That’s why he was thinking of the racecourse gallop, but this will be a chance for us all to enjoy him,” said Stewart.

Stewart was at Ascot on Saturday to welcome his Tatenen back to the winner’s enclosure after the BetVictor.com Handicap Chase. The eight-year-old had won the race twelve months earlier off a mark of 137 and on Saturday raced off 143. His next major objective will be the John Smith’s Grand National in April.

Tatenen, trained these days by Richard Rowe, has that touch of class about him. After all, he was sent off 4-1 favourite for the 2009 Arkle Trophy at Cheltenham, in which he fell. Stewart’s theory is that you need a horse with a blend of speed and class to win a Grand National.

“The National is actually two races in one – the first over two miles, and the second over two and a half miles. I think he’ll be suited.”

The courageous win of Somersby in the Victor Chandler Chase was fine reward for a chaser who has been amazingly consistently over a variety of distances. Trainer Henrietta Knight, and her husband Terry Biddlecombe, a former champion jockey, received a very warm reception when the gelding returned to the winner’s enclosure. The Ryanair Chase seems the perfect target for him at this year’s Festival.

BHA's new chief executive Paul Bittar has been quick to get into his stride

Bittar, 42, has performed well, moving swiftly to meet as many faces in as many different corners of the sport as possible. His easy-going style was impressive and he looked comfortable at Ascot on Saturday. Crucially, he also displayed a grasp of the key issues in the sport, despite being only a few days at the helm.

He says that his top priorities are to find a solution to the whip issue, ideally before the Cheltenham Festival, and to resolve racing’s funding problems.

Nic Coward, his predecessor, was hardly ever seen on a racecourse – hence his nickname 'The Ghost’ – but Bittar will adopt a very different approach. “In Australia, I went racing between four and six times a month. It was no hardship. I love it, and I hope to go racing a lot here. My wife and son are not due here for a couple of months, so that will give me a chance to get around and meet everybody,” he said.

This is Bittar’s third stint working in the UK. “After my first day[at the BHA], I phoned my wife and said: 'I remember now why I love London so much. It has such energy’. It’s a great place to live and work.”

Ascot pay refunds after being left red-faced by orange sticker blunder

As Ascot prepared on Sunday to issue refunds to their Premier Enclosure customers from Saturday’s Victor Chandler Chase day, I was interested to find out how this public-relations blunder had occurred. Issuing orange spot stickers to those racegoers who failed the new dress code had seemed rather odd.

Smith, plainly dejected, explained that the exercise had been well-intentioned. Clearly, though, it had backfired in spectacular style, with many customers believing they had been issued with 'naughty boy’ badges for not coming up to scratch. Not surprisingly many of those who complained described the experience as “humiliating”.

“The stickers were given out to those racegoers, who had been spoken to [by gatemen] about the new dress code for Ascot meetings. We didn’t want them [the customers] bothered again, so it was a way of identifying them. Strangely enough, it was meant as a customer service. But it has sent out the wrong message, and we apologise,” he said.

It seems a jacket and tie for men and smart dress for ladies are now required to gain entrance to the Premier Enclosure at run-of-the-mill Ascot meetings. This will annoy some racegoers, particularly for jumping during the cold winter months. I am in favour of having a dress code, so long as we all know in advance what it is.

Incidentally, I have noticed that many observers get excessively uptight when it comes to Ascot and its traditions. It truly does not deserve that, even if mistakes have been made.

Hugo Bevan's romantic journey from Towcester clerk of the course to Canadian oil baron

Back in 1890, Hugo’s great uncle Ralph, as good a horseman as he was poker player, emigrated to Canada. His party trick was to double the difficulty of bucking broncos by riding them in an English hunting saddle and, at a cowboy gathering in Calgary, he won a game of poker.

The frontiersman he beat could not pay and settled his debt by offering the Englishman a percentage of the mineral rights on two square miles of Alberta wilderness.

Though Ralph married he had no children and the rights ended up in the lap of two of his great nephews, Hugo and brother Julian, an eminent QC.

It has been a long time coming and makes Pip’s travails in Great Expectations pale into insignificance, but in the autumn an oil company started drilling on the plot.

Now, having invested in a petroleum company looking for oil in the North Falklands Basin, I have a basic knowledge of the drilling process. When these companies bring some brown sludge to the surface, they send it off to test for oil content.

In my case brown sludge proved to be just that, with a hint of seawater, and instead of tripling the value of my shares they collapsed, but in Bevan’s case the tests have shown that this stuff is so neat you could almost run your car on it.

Bevan has yet to see a dollar but already there have been a few helpful suggestions as to what he should do with his new-found fortune and how he should handle being on the rich list half a stride behind Sheikh Mohammed – even though his own best hope is that it might match his state pension and contribute to the old peoples’ home.

Nicky Henderson, whose yard is so chocker with horses that he can hardly take many more, suggested he buy a grouse moor.

Other trainers will be forwarding the pedigrees of potential champion racehorses. Hugo is not interested: “You can tell them that the only horse I’m going to have is a nodding donkey – they don’t fall, they don’t need feeding and they win every day.”

I’m fully expecting him to arrive by helicopter as Towcester for his part-time raceday meet-and-greet job providing, of course, it does not clash with an OPEC board meeting.

When Kevin Darley picked up a passenger as well as the German Derby

Back in 1999 Kevin Darley got go the surprise of his life after winning the German Derby on Belenus when ex-jockey Mario Hofer jumped on behind him as the horse paraded in front of the grandstand at Hamburg. “My biggest concern was that the big cigar he was smoking at the time would burn a hole in the back of my head", Darley recalled on Monday.

Of course it now raises the prospect of copycat celebrations. Sir Michael Stoute did not have a Group One winner last year and if that has been getting to him, whose to say he will not give it a try if he wins this year’s Derby?

Six million and counting, racing pulls in the crowds

The Racecourse Association, which has kept attendance records going back to 1955, announced on Monday that 6.15million people went racing in 2011. It is only the third time more than six million people have gone racing in a year and beats the two previous occasions (6,048,000 in 2004 and 6,019,000 in 2003).

It is a popular myth that a declining audience is one of racing’s major problems. But while funding remains racing’s greatest issue because of the fall in the Levy and a drop in sponsorship and hospitality, its popularity is not on the wane and bucks something of a trend in a difficult time for the leisure sector.

Average daily attendances rose one per cent in 2011 and the 6.15million total, which was up for the third year in a row, was a year-on-year increase of 6.6 per cent. All racecourses now work hard on their marketing and the drip, drip, drip effect of Racing For Change, their Qipco series and their free-racing initiative, may all be having a positive effect.

The effort of individual courses was nowhere better exemplified than Carlisle, whose promotion of the Edinburgh Woollen Mill Ultimate Ladies Night attracted the second biggest crowd ever, 10,555, to the Cumbrian course.

There are a few anomalies in the figures. The figures for 2010 were slightly skewed by the weather at the start and end of the year, which meant average attendance at jump meetings actually fell marginally in 2011.

It would be wrong for the sport to be complacent about the figures, too. The Olympics will make it a challenging summer, though the Queen’s Jubilee may well be a help.

Cheltenham, which started 2012 off on the right foot with a huge crowd on New Year’s Day, will be hoping for a good turnout at their trials day on Saturday.

Great horses are probably worth half a dozen marketing men and Big Buck’s should pull in a few extra punters as he goes for his 15th straight win in the Cleeve Hurdle.

The Argento Chase, however, should answer more Festival questions, with David Pipe’s novice Grands Crus set to take on Caruthers, Diamond Harry, The Minack and Midnight Chase.

Time For Rupert was all the rage last year but he was taken out with an infection. “He’s been in wonderful form and we’re pleased with him,” said trainer Paul Webber. “It’s an exciting race and looks like a decider for who should finish third and fourth in the Gold Cup although we’d all hope for better of course.”

Paul Struthers to take over from Kevin Darley as head of Professional Jockeys Association

“When Kevin announced in the summer that he was stepping down I was always going to apply for the job whether I was still at the BHA or not,” he said.

“I regard it very much as a career progression. I have a huge respect for jockeys and the demanding job they do. I am looking forward to fighting their corner for them.

"A lot is made of the factional interests within the sport and though my primary responsibility will be representing the members, we will not be entirely myopic, we have to consider the good of the industry as a whole.”

Ironically, Struthers was on the whip review group and put his name to the whip review that led to new rules being introduced in October.

They remain a work in a progress and elevated the jockeys’ chief executive to one of racing’s highest profile jobs overnight. That is something he would have had to square with the jockeys during his interview.

Regarding the ongoing saga, which he considers the jockeys’ most pressing issue, he said: “I haven’t tried to distance myself from the whip review.

"If you go back to what was written at the time most people thought they’d work, but it proved different in practice.

"But if people who worked for the BHA weren’t ever allowed to work for the other side of the table, people would leave it and never work again.”

In a statement the PJA’s joint-presidents, Steve Drowne and A P McCoy, said: “Although disappointed to lose the services of Kevin Darley, the PJA is very pleased to have been able to appoint someone of the high calibre of Paul Struthers, who possesses a broad and excellent experience of racing gained over years of working in the industry.”

Struthers, whose wife Kate is currently on maternity leave from her job as marketing manager at Newbury racecourse, starts the job in mid-February, but will start spending time at the PJA offices in Newbury and speaking and listening to jockeys in a handover period while Darley is still in the job.