AINTREE will be missing one of its totemic horses in April after the sudden retirement of Bindaree. The 11-year-old ran in the past four Grand Nationals but his victory in 2002 gave rise to a human drama. Unknown to all but his closest friends, Nigel Twiston-Davies was on the point of quitting training but he underwent a soul-searching rethink after his second National winner.

Revealing the retirement news to Diary yesterday, Twiston-Davies admitted: “Bindaree kept me going — I wouldn’t be training now without him. He’s totally responsible for this mess.” In truth, after a quiet period, the Cotswold yard of this sociable ex-farmer is enjoying a buoyant spell, with quantity and quality enhanced.

Fittingly, Bindaree’s last run was over the National fences, when he finished eighth in the Becher Chase last month. Twiston-Davies had hoped to aim him at the Welsh National, which he won in 2003, but he explained: “He’d damaged a hind leg and we didn’t think it right to go on with him.”

Bindaree, owned by Twiston-Davies’s friend and loyal patron Raymond Mould, won almost £500,000 in prize-money and the great irony is his Grand National win, under Jim Culloty, was the only time in his 40-race career that he was not ridden by Carl Llewellyn.

While Llewellyn, now 40, is continuing to combine riding with his duties as assistant trainer to Mark Pitman, speculation is mounting over who will succeed him as stable jockey. Tom Scudamore, son of Twiston-Davies’s former business partner Peter, is an intriguing contender but the hot favourite is Tony Evans.

THE range of markets that punters are eager to bet on never ceases to amaze and Betfair is always willing to oblige. The betting exchange has been keeping its clients happy with a market on the chances of festive meetings beating the weather. Newbury’s card today fell before lunch yesterday but, by then, one sad punter had wagered £500 at the minimum price of 1-100 that the meeting would be abandoned, His winnings? A cool fiver. Thankfully, the Challow Hurdle, an appetising feature of the Newbury meeting, will not be lost — Cheltenham has agreed to run it at the start of an eight-race card on Sunday.

Three racecourses in the Racecourse Holdings Trust (RHT) group spent a total of £15,000 to lay an unprecedented area of covers to safeguard their Christmas meetings from frost. Market Rasen, where the material was hired from local farmers who had previously used it as crop protection, was rewarded with a bumper Boxing Day crowd of 12,000 and Huntingdon enjoyed a 7,000 attendance before losing its second day to snow.

Now RHT is considering a more permanent investment. John Maxse, director of communications and special projects, said yesterday: “Sandown is keeping its covers for the rest of the winter. We will monitor progress and the group will then consider an outright purchase of covers that could be moved around the courses.”

MANY may feel that a raft of embarrassing headlines was punishment enough for Roger Loughran after his startling blunder with the Leopardstown winning post on Tuesday. Others think he got off lightly with a 14-day ban. Stewards at Chepstow, watching on television, indicated that a 28-day suspension would have been applied in Britain, while Jockey Club sources suggested, as it was a grade one race, they may have asked for the case to be referred to Shaftesbury Avenue for a possibly stiffer penalty.