Happier times for Lord Windermere camp© Photo Healy Racing
It appears it's not just grandstand jockeys who can be quick on the trigger. Davy Russell is a polarising figure sometimes but there appears near unanimity that he has been shabbily treated over his Gold Cup ride on Lord Windermere. That he got bulleted by Jim Culloty, hardly an ex- jockey of the grandstand variety, only makes the fireworks more startling. It seems Gold Cup and Grand National winners can see what they want to see too.
Maybe there's more to this than is apparent, but at face-value, apparently Culloty was so unhappy with Russell's Gold Cup ride on Lord Windermere that the jockey's feet had barely touched the ground afterwards before he was told he'd never ride for the trainer again.
Whatever about the decorum of that, any objective analysis of Russell's effort on the defending 'blue-riband' champion surely makes Culloty's reaction way over-the-top.
Russell did nothing on the horse that he hadn't done a year previously, a performance that yielded one of the most unlikely Gold Cup wins in history and still generally regarded as a master-class of patient subtlety which could be as admired as the decision to ultimately let Lord Windermere keep the race in the steward's room could be derided. Russell really was that good.
What was so different this time? Well, for one thing, in purely form terms it looked a much better Gold Cup. For another the ground was much softer. It also looked like Russell was actually more active on Lord Windermere in the early stages this time, chivvying along over the first handful of fences before apparently trusting the horse to pick up in his own time much as he did in 2014.
A year previously, not pushing for appearances sake yielded pay-dirt: this time the horse didn't appear to want to know and was pulled up before two-out. He also reportedly lost a shoe. Once again Russell didn't indulge in push and shove dramatics for the sake of it except this time the response wasn't there. I didn't hear of one outraged punter roaring for retribution. And yet Culloty clearly wasn't happy.
On the same day Russell revealed through a column he won't be riding for Culloty again, he also wound up breaking his arm, a coincidence which possibly contributed further to widespread incredulity at the Culloty news.
What's been really interesting though has been Dermot Weld's quick confirmation that if Russell is fit for Punchestown, and the Cheltenham winner Windsor Park runs there, then the jockey will maintain the partnership on the Dr Ronan Lambe trained star.
Navigating his way through diplomatic minefields involving owners and jockeys is second-nature for one of the seminal and successful figures in modern Irish racing history. It can be safely assumed that if Weld is prepared to baldy make such a statement, then that the link between Russell and Lambe is intact. So where does that leave Culloty who in the past has credited the owner's support as critical for him being able to operate in the training ranks?
Time will no doubt reveal all but in the meantime this is an episode which highlights just how disparate opinions on a jockey's performance can be.
Russell himself has hardly been shy in confronting grandstand jockeys in the past, memorably taking that self-publicist par excellence, John McCririck, to task over criticising Brian O'Connell's 2010 Cheltenham ride on Dunguib, basically rubbishing the controversial pundit on the basis of not knowing one end of a horse from the other.
If that's the criteria, then getting bounced by a triple-Gold Cup and Grand National winner is a pretty damning review. Presumably that most of us in the cheap seats believe it to be way off-beam will be of no consolation to him then.
We're at the change-of-the-seasons time of year again so hands-up all those waiting with bated breath for this weekend's Dubai World Cup card, a meeting loaded with money, glamour and international stars which nevertheless still feels pretty much superfluous to racing's general scheme of things.
No doubt that will be dismissed as hopelessly parochial by some, some even maybe with a stake in plugging it. But there's little doubt that two decades after Cigar the whole extravaganza is still viewed in some quarters in resolutely curio terms, something hardly helped by fiddling with surfaces which this time has resulted in America's Horse of the Year California Chrome appearing in the big race.
If that's the criteria of success, then job done: and there's no doubt some of the names on the rest of the card are impressive, none more so than The Grey Gatsby. Sole Power flies the Irish flag in the Al Quoz Sprint and that's it. Maybe it is parochial to focus on that but when it comes to focus, any kind can be better than none.
In the midst of everything else the Turf Club has to be getting on with, this week sees the minor matter of a threat to its very existence taking place in the Supreme Court as trainer James Lambe and disqualified jockey Eddie O'Connell appeal last year's High Court decision to dismiss their challenge against the Turf Club's ability to apply or enforce the rules of horseracing.
There appears to be a presumption that they will lose but once something gets into any court there can never be complete confidence in any prediction. And if the Turf Club were to lose in the highest court in the land, then, theoretically at least, the potential ramifications are colossal, and for racing as a whole too.
Finally, the capacity for those in charge of British racing to shoot themselves in the foot remains conspicuously intact judged on that decision to make whole months disappear in terms of flat racing's jockeys championships.
And for what has so much of the calendar been reduced to second-rate status? Why to pander to a public supposedly desperate to be converted to racing's charms yet slow-witted enough to need racing's narrative cut up into easy to swallow nuggets.
Fiddling with the two year old programme got reversed after a few years: how long before the same happens with this?
