IT is always difficult to evaluate a situation without having full information, but, given the information that we have, it was difficult not to feel for Luca Cumani when the news came through on Wednesday evening that Sheikh Mohammed Obaid Al Maktoum would move all his horses from him and transfer them to Roger Varian.

All 23 of them? Thirty-five, said Cumani, in a refreshingly candid and magnanimous interview on Racing UK on Thursday.