INTEGRITY

Adam Brickell’s report into the BHA’s integrity and disciplinary departments is a wonderful development. For years and years there has appeared to be a vacuum at the top of the BHA which allowed those running the integrity field to do very much as they liked for long periods, which is not a good idea. The Romans had a word (or four) for it : “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”  – which basically means that disciplinarians should be closely watched at all times.

Now the vacuum is about to be filled.  I like to think that changes will be made, and steps taken to ensure that in future racing’s integrity and disciplinary machinery becomes accustomed to the idea that it is answerable to higher authority.  

The apologies offered to Mrs Walton and Mr Boyle are very good news, as is Nick Rust’s reference to “case studies which we must learn from.” With respect, I would like to draw attention to a case from before the present higher authority took office. It shows in some detail the kind of thing that has been going on in recent years, and could re-emerge in the future, given half a chance.

In October 2011 Richard Hughes made his disgust at the new whip rules (introduced by the BHA’s disciplinarians) very clear and very public.

In the winter 2011/2012 he was riding in India, and was banned for 50 days over a riding incident which boiled down to a difference of opinion between disappointed connections and a jockey forced to make a decision in the heat of battle. There was no additional evidence which could justify a conclusion one way or the other, as is so often the case in such situations.

In March 2012 the Indian racing authority asked the BHA disciplinary authorities to endorse the ban and apply it in England. The Indian authority was not a signatory to the International Agreement which entitles signatories to Reciprocity. It was therefore not entitled to any help from Britain. Yet help is what it got, because the rules were manipulated in order to make that possible.

A BHA panel was asked to pass judgement. In spite of the lack of evidence (which the BHA report admits) the panellists unanimously judged that Hughes was guilty as charged. None of the panellists had seen the race, or a film of the race. All they had to go on was written statements describing the difference of opinion between the parties concerned. 

It would have been appropriate for the panel to wash its hands of the matter because of lack of sufficient evidence.

It would have been appropriate for the panel to question its own legitimacy, since it was officiating as a result of the questionable use of reciprocity granted to an authority which was not entitled to it.

It would have been appropriate for the panel to decide not to endorse a heavy penalty when the case against Hughes was so weak. 

End of story.

Actually, not the end of story. If Hughes had sat out a 50-day ban in India, he would have missed about 12 race-days. A 50-day ban in England would deprive him of 50 race-days. The BHA report solemnly describes the arguments and counter-arguments which led the panel to decide (after much agonising, no doubt) that the full English breakfast (a 50-day ban) should be his just desserts.

Can you believe what you have just read? Take my word for it – it happened, and it is an example of the cavalier style which was fashionable in BHA disciplinary circles just four years ago.

However, there was a happy ending. Hughes missed the first 50 days of the 2012 English flat season and still won the first of his three flat jockeys’ titles. A second happy ending would be for this case to act as a warning that racing’s integrity and disciplinary arrangements are far from perfect.

PENDLETON (a true sporting heroine)

Look her up in Wikipedia and you will see what a class act she is. Look at her from any which way and you find all the best human qualities fully functioning in a life of high aspiration and great achievement. Plus great modesty and enormous charm.

What she has done in the past is enough to suggest that what she has achieved in horse racing was never an impossibility. It was just something extraordinarily difficult and ambitious. Because of the difficulty the team that helped her must get a lot of credit. That team was and is superb, just like that wonderful horse she rode at Wincanton and Cheltenham. Great horse, great people, wonderful idea – the Cheltenham race was simply a joy to watch. Miss Pendleton’s participation has been an honour and a delight for British racing, and it will continue to be an honour and a delight (and an inspiration for many) if she continues to hone her new-found skills.

One caveat: her age means that she cannot afford the intervals caused by injury which may be acceptable for those who start at sixteen. Therefore she should limit herself to horses that are of the same standard as Pacha du Polder. 

If such conveyances are available, while it would be presumptuous to suggest an even more ambitious target for 2017, it would not be any surprise to discover that Miss Pendleton herself was already thinking along those lines.

THE MAGNIFICENT POEM

The “flyer” for Sport 53 included the first verse of a magnificent poem and the promise that the whole literary masterpiece would be included in Sport 54 (early March being just the time for such an item.) Sadly when the time came for 54 to appear, absentmindedness had zapped our literary editor.

Two weeks later memory came out of its coma and felt thoroughly ashamed of itself. It would have been knock-out the week before Cheltenham. But even now…. see what you think… Originally (1928) it described late autumn, when flat racing finished for the year.

STEEPLECHASERS 

Tucked away in winter quarters, /Gainsborough’s sons and Buchan’s daughters,

Blue of blood, clean-lined and handsome,/ Priced beyond a prince’s ransom,

Where no danger can befall them/ Rest till next year’s classics call them.

 

And the limber, lean-of-head ones,/Hardy, hefty, humble-bred ones,

Booted, bandaged to the knee,/Ready for whate’er may be,

Gallant slaves and cheery martyrs,/Stand once more before the starters.

Piggotts, Masons, Leaders, Dullers/ Witch the world in mud-splashed colours

Brushing through the birchwood switches,/Cramming at the open ditches,

Grinning when the guardrails rattle/ In the forefront of the battle.

Gordons, Anthonys and Reeses/ Bow their heads against the breezes,

Hail upon their faces whipping,/Wet reins through their fingers slipping,

As they drive their ‘chasers crashing/ Through the fence-tops, irons clashing.

 

So they forge through wind and weather/ To the creak of straining leather,/Lashing at the leaps together,

With the fluttering flags to guide them,/Taking what the Fates provide them,/Danger calling, Death beside them.

‘Tis a game beyond gainsaying/ Made by gods for brave men’s playing.

 

Author Will Ogilvie was by no means one-track-minded. Read his “The Keswick Driver” and be prepared to ratchet up the admiration. That and Steeplechasers appear in a book called A HANDFUL OF LEATHER,  illustrated by Lionel Edwards.

 

WORLD HURDLE (A humorous diversion, but not entirely frivolous).

It seems to Donec’s Mr Hard-to-Please that Cheltenham’s World Hurdle is for failures. For horses with lots of stamina, but not fast enough to win the Champion Hurdle, and lacking the jumping skill to win the Gold Cup. So Cheltenham offers them a very long race featuring very small obstacles. Then they attach a huge cup and a vast cheque, and Bob’s your uncle. The very best slow non-jumpers queue up to have a go, and the same horses come back year after year, because this combination of inadequacies is itself quite rare, and the big softies last for ever, because there are only half a handful of races which provide distance, hurdles and riches. If you win the Cheltenham race you are so rich you might just as well spend ten months of the year sun-bathing and looking after your joints.

It’s a bit like the triple jump. Did anyone ever start off wanting to be a triple jumper? Surely not. They wanted to be a sprinter, or a hurdler, or a long jumper, but they weren’t good enough. Then some bright spark thought about it and the bulb flashed twice above his (or her) head. Eureka, perched on his (her) shoulder, whispered in the adjacent ear. “The athletic world is littered with failures in the events listed above, but there is more to this than meets the eye. Insert three take-offs and landings and you have created something monstrously difficult to do properly.” So, in that respect, the triple jump has Skill, Difficulty and Merit where the World Hurdle only has money.

Disgraceful, but all is not lost. Racing can rescue its self-respect.

You find your horse in France. He should be bred to stay for ever. He must also be handsome and large and sound – large and sound enough to take a long time to develop the strength that he will need to become an athlete. He should be taught to jump at an early age, à la manière française, so that he becomes as nimble as a dancer and entirely familiar with every sort of obstacle. That’s it.

Meaning?

S’obvious. You maintain his jumping skill at a high level and across a considerable variety of obstacles because a horse that spends its formative years jumping nothing but hurdles is unlikely to adapt to anything more complicated later on. Common knowledge!

Then you try to win the World Hurdle with him. And when he succeeds (or not, as the case may be) and someone asks you if you intend to wrap him up in cotton wool until next year, you say, “Oh, dear me, no! Today was just a prep race.”

“A prep race? The World Hurdle? Three Hundred Thousand Smackers? A prep race for what?”

“The Grand National, mon ami!

Not a bad way to prepare a National horse for his big day, and also the perfect way to give Cheltenham’s World Hurdle a genuine reason to exist!

A “Large Sum of Money Bonus” for a horse that can do the World Hurdle/Grand National double makes very good sense. This cannot be said of the “Million Pound Bonus” linking the Imperial Cup (Sandown)/ with any race at Cheltenham the following week, which has been on offer in recent years. Two races featuring the two severest hill climbs in British racing within five or six days is (and we pick our words carefully) more than a bit steep. Much more. Knock it on the head.

Correct us if we are wrong.

 

STARTING

Four (or was it five?) false starts at Cheltenham, and plenty of evidence that the Rolling Maul is a serious hazard. 

Here are a few facts of life:

1. The Rolling Maul, in which large numbers of horses are crammed together and spun round in circles is never seen on Newmarket Heath or any other area devoted to the preparation of thoroughbreds. Between activities, when they move from A to B they walk.

The Rolling Maul is only seen when a big field prepares to take part in a steeplechase on a British racecourse.

Why the difference? Because horse-management throughout the training centres has been developed by generations of horsemen, whereas the Rolling Maul is the brainchild of someone who is insufficiently qualified. The result is discomfort and distraction for horses and jockeys, unfairness in the starting procedure, and consequently distortion of the results of races. Bear in mind that distraction of horses and jockeys is particularly dangerous in the preparation for jump races.

2. Watch the start of jump races featuring smaller fields (up to about a dozen). You will see the horses WALKING in a state of complete relaxation, ridden by jockeys who are equally relaxed, and when the starts occur, all the runners get a fair crack of the whip.

Why should big fields (including many of the most prestigious races) be deprived of the proper benign conditions available before the vast majority of jump races,  simply because of an unsuitable process imposed by a bureaucrat?

3. The jig-jog has no place on the racecourse. Jig-jog means discomfort, stress, distraction – for both horses and jockeys. These are undesirable influences in a pre-start situation. 

4. It is rumoured that the Rolling Maul is intended to improve the punctuality of races.

NOTE: Other factors are much more important, and anyway a walk-in system would achieve punctuality far better than the Maul.

5. The standing start after a false start is rubbish. Time to re-group is essential.

 

CALIFORNIA CHROME AND FRIENDS

It is a little known fact that all of Donec’s workforce have been dedicated Chromies ever since the Belmont Stakes in July 2014. We love this horse with a passion, and we recommend CC’s story to anyone at all interested in the thoroughbred, because so much good stuff happened between then and now, and because the CC team are up there with the Frankel team, the Golden Horn team and the American Pharoah team, as regards how to do the right thing with a good horse at every stage of its career. And here’s a thing: the CC story was the one that made the most demands on the wit and wisdom of the connections.

CC’s trainer, Art Sherman, is just about 79 and has been training rubbish all his life. Then this glorious animal is entrusted to his care. Is he up to it? Is he ever! This man never misses a beat. At every stage of a top horse’s career that proved more than average complicated he knew exactly what to do and he was right every time. A sentimentalist would bewail the fact that he spent fifty years training rubbish, but that’s not a problem. It is an interesting fact that during the four years of CC’s career his trainer has appeared to grow younger and younger and younger. So he’s having all the fun he could ever have dreamed about. Who cares when that happens to a man, so long as it happens.

You couldn’t meet a nicer man – modest, cheerful, polite, eloquent. Remind you of anybody? Miss Pendleton. Him and her and their horses, and their achievements, all in the same year. Speaking as a dedicated TeleVisualist, I cannot believe my luck!