The veteran bloodstock journalist Peter Willett has bemoaned the fact that too many mundane Group One races are ruining the International Pattern system which, since 1965, has sought to ensure that a series of races, over the right distances at the right time of year, are available to test the best horses of all ages.

Willett’s main problem is the proliferation of so-called Group One races which have been cropping up around the world in the past 20 years. In 2005, the disparate levels of form recorded between the best (the Arc) and the worst (Italian Oaks) amounted to an astonishing 18lbs, thereby rendering meaningless the grouping of both races as Group Ones.

One Pattern anomaly not addressed in the article in the Thoroughbred Owner and Breeder, is that of the timing of certain races, the most obvious example of bad scheduling coming up on Saturday when the final Classic race of the British season, the St Leger, is run over almost a mile-and-three-quarters on the same day as the all-aged Irish Champion Stakes is run over three furlongs shorter.

Clearly, mile-and-a-half Classic colts and fillies are caught between two stools and although the only case in point this year is the Irish Derby winner Dylan Thomas (which runs at Leopardstown), the fact these two great races are being run on the same day must surely be addressed soon if the three-year-old generation is to be properly tested throughout the season as per the original Pattern objectives of 40 years ago.

Classic hope

HAVING lost a bit of faith in my long range St Leger fancy, Championship Point, after a less than spectacular showing in the Great Voltigeur, I managed to nick a bit of 25/1 about emerging Ballydoyle talent Tusculum before the successful Pricewise feature in the Racing Post ensured the remaining 16/1 wouldn’t be available for too long.

Now trading at a general 12/1, any apparent ante-post value to be gained in backing the promising Tusculum against the battle-hardened favourite, Sixties Icon, might well have disappeared but the point to consider when making that judgment is whether this year’s race being run at York is really up to Group One standard. I still feel Championship Point is capable of going close on Saturday, but for all that Sixties Icon might have looked the part in his Voltigeur dress-rehearsal, Tusculum’s recent audition over a mile-and-three- quarters at The Curragh saw him leave a classy- looking field of Listed-class stayers strung out like bad-selling hurdlers.

Tusculum has only run four times and was backed from 20/1 to 4/1 on his debut last October, throwing the race away close to home when veering badly off a true line. There have been no such kinks in his runs since and Kieren Fallon’s enforced absence from York is much less of a hardship as he’s never ridden the horse, the mount having been taken by Seamus Heffernan on each of his last three outings.

I’m not suggesting that Aidan O’Brien will ever include Tusculum in a list of the best horses he’s ever trained but he might have found himself with a horse peaking at just the right time to land what looks to be a weak renewal of a Group One race which might soon need the help of a shift in the scheduling of Saturday’s rival Group One in Ireland.

the one and only

IT is safe to say that David “The Duke” Nicholson lived life to the full before his time ended last Sunday on the way home from a routine visit to hospital. This top jockey (583 wins) turned top trainer (1,499 wins), known fondly at his Scottish Grand National digs at Cree Lodge in Ayr as “Dukey”, would be gutted if the rest of us didn’t raise a glass or three to his memory as friends and family say goodbye at Cheltenham Crematorium on Wednesday.

Having got to know the great man a little from riding out at Cree Lodge on quite a few Scottish National mornings, it was with some delight and much back-slapping that we celebrated with him after he won the race in 1996 with Moorcroft Boy, a patched-up equine miracle which won from 16lbs out of the handicap and had jockey Mark Dwyer putting up 2lbs overweight.

That morning, for the first and only time, I had a horse break down so badly underneath me that it needed to be put down. The man who held my stricken mount as I ran to phone the vet was Dukey, champagne and bacon rolls having tempted him out of bed early to come and watch Linda Perratt’s string go through their paces before the crowds rolled up to see Moorcroft Boy’s finest hour.

Champagne was also involved when we did a recorded television interview at Haydock in 1994, but there was so much of the bubbly stuff flowing before we made a live appearance together on the night before his second Scottish National success with Baronet four years later that it almost didn’t happen, Dukey eventually giggling his way through my questions, which became less and less probing as I realised the whole exercise was becoming hilariously pointless.

I can only trust that over the course of the past week he has come across Marion Michael Morrison and told him in no uncertain terms that there is only one person to be known as the Duke.