I’VE taken the opportunity to work with the Jockey Club of Saudi Arabia (JCSA) in Riyadh this winter, and I must say my occasional quibble with the British form book pales into comparison with the clunky and often inaccurate version we have to work with here to provide analysis. On top of that, the cards at King Abdulaziz Racetrack here in the city have 12 races every day, with 20 runners and up to four reserves in most, making the task of writing comments for all of them somewhere in the herculean region, even if all the information was accurate.

In fairness to the Jockey Club here, they have been developing a more modern website in partnership with Weatherbys to provide a greater range of information, including the importation of formlines from other jurisdictions, but it’s early days and the gremlins will hopefully be ironed out (can you iron out gremlins? That movie would probably have been very different if you could).