'He lost his maiden tag after being gelded' - racing's most nonsensical phrases

The need for racing to 'reach out' to the wider world is a topic that increasingly seems to consume those charged with making sure our sport doesn't find itself overrun and brushed aside in the next 20 years. We're a bit off the beaten track, I was told the other day by a friend who's not remotely an 'anti', and we don't help ourselves by remaining resolutely opaque and generally a bit out of kilter with the modern world.

Frankly, such is the state of the modern world, I quite enjoy being out of kilter with it, but that's not a view that will pay anybody's wages (least of all mine), so I thought I'd delve a little deeper into the accusation that racing, to the casual viewer at least, comes obscured by a layer of arcane practice and baffling jargon.

Football, I was told, is such a simple game, which is why it enjoys such mass appeal. Well, you can't get much simpler than standing a bunch of horses in a line and then getting them to run as fast as they can, I countered. It's a concept that has stood the test of thousands of years, and anyway, have you ever met anybody who could explain the offside rule to a visitor from outer space, or get to grips with the Fifa accounting system?