Bob Baffert and the moral conundrum that I find really hard to resolve

There it was, right in the middle of a series of innocuous half-volleys about who might win the Juvenile Fillies and the four best European chances across the weekend: “And if Medina Spirit wins the Breeders’ Cup Classic, should he be Horse of the Year?”

This was a delivery right out of the back of the hand and pitched so perfectly in the corridor of uncertainty that I was left dancing haplessly around the crease, eventually jabbing tentatively at the ball a long way from my body.

“Erm… well… er,” I began, strongly, “I mean I suppose it, er, depends on how far he wins and whether he beats the right horses,” before tailing off into a mumbled and mealy-mouthed homily about it then being a matter for the personal ethics of the voters.