It's time the truth was told, all of these gallops correspondents that work for various racing publications have been having us on all these years.

How does Ivor Donkey know this, you are probably asking yourselves.  Well, I recently went to Newmarket Heath one morning to try to glean some inside information for the page you are now reading.  When I arrived there with binoculars, notebook and pen, the first thing I noticed is that you can't tell which horse is which, they don't have name or number cloths on, and the riders don't wear the owners colours.  The only way to identify them is by reading those small brass nameplates on their bridles, and I don't care how powerful your binoculars are, you can't possibly read it.

This proves what we've always suspected, that these gallops reports are a load of b******s.

I mean, just take a look at the photos that appear in this article, can you recognize any of the horses?, no, I can't either.

Let's face it, all horses look pretty much the same, and they're nearly all brown, so what chance have you got?

Anyway, for the record, this is what I witnessed:

Four brown horses did a gallop of about a mile, a brown one won the gallop by a length, followed by a slightly less brown one.  Half a length after that came one that was slightly more brown than the second one, but less brown than the first one, and one that was browner than all three of the others whipped them in.

After they had pulled up, I noticed that none of the riders or lookers-on burst out laughing, so it must have been one of those 'serious' workouts that we're always reading about.

The people that write these gallops reports must be on a commission from the bookies, for proof of this we need only look at Killer Instinct.  How many millions have the bookies made out of his lamentable performances?, and who was it that told you that he must be backed, that he was unbeatable, yes dear reader, those gallops reporters.

Take the advice of Ivor Donkey, if you're going to back a horse, do so on the strength of what it has achieved on the racecourse, not what somebody would have you believe it has done off it !