SPORT 64

AMERICA

American politics could make one shudder – but it’s not compulsory.  Donec relies on the fact that President-Elect Trump builds golf courses and (one imagines) plays the game himself. Wrapped in that fragile comfort blanket, we are prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt for the moment. He could surprise one in a pleasant way one day – couldn’t he?

Meanwhile American racing continues to enchant. Cast your mind back to the Breeders Cup Classic, 6^th of November 2016.  Perhaps the two best horses in the world faced up to each other, and 3-y-o Arrogate ran down 5-y-o California Chrome in the last five strides.

Well, they are at it again. 28^th Jan, 2017, Gulf Stream Park, Pegasus World Cup ($12 million), 1 mile 1 furlong, on dirt. The horses are now four and six respectively (Birthday Jan 1)

Arrogate represents the Khaled Abdullah team – the wonderful organisation that has produced a host of horses of high repute, headed of course by Frankel. Arrogate is trained by Bob Baffert (30+ major races worldwide to his name, including the Triple Crown won by American Pharoah in 2015).

CC,  the “people’s horse”, was bred by two American sportsmen, Perry Martin and Steve Coburn.  Neither was hugely rich and the bloodlines they invested in were quite close to the bottom of the bargain basement. They sent him to a trainer, Art Sherman, who had spent 65 years learning his trade while dealing largely with second and third class animals.

When a champion came his way, he showed how well he had learnt his trade. The horse is now the winningmost horse in American racing history ($14,502, 650), thanks largely to the superb management which Mr Sherman has applied to CC’s  career, and also to the very bold and sporting attitude which has been added to the mix by the Taylor Made racing and breeding organisation, which is now the major shareholder in CC.

It has always been our view that a trainer learns more from his bad horses than from his good ones. Mr Sherman fits the bill. If you look at the way CC has been campaigned, you will see a pattern: sequences of races, punctuated by weeks (months even) of holiday time – and the horse has done nothing but improve.

CC has a devoted army of supporters (“Chromies”) from every part of the globe, including all at Donec. Much of our adulation is directed at the horse, but a fair chunk is our response to Art Sherman’s modesty, charm and sportsmanship, as well as to his brilliant training of “our” horse. Approaching his 80^th birthday, how does he feel about the CC’s impact on his life? “I can’t wait to get up in the morning!” he said.

California Chrome had his prep race for the Pegasus race at Los Alamitos on December 17^th.  Los Alamitos is where Sherman trains, but his champion had never run there previously, so it was a kind of celebration, which is typical of the way the horse’s connections have behaved throughout. The horse didn’t let them down: he cruised carefully on the outside of the field, took the lead in the final straight, won by 12 lengths and broke the track record.

Arrogate was due to have his prep-race on January 1^st at Santa Anita, which is where Mr Baffert trains. However, too much rain made the Santa Anita “dirt” too “deep” and Arrogate will turn out on Jan 18 without a prep-race. What difference will that make? Time will tell.

Has Britain got anything to rival these excitements across the Pond? It certainly has.  Thistlecrack is the name of the horse, and never in the history of racing has a new kid on the block earned more superlatives. If you have the know-how to google “Jockey Club Replays”, do so. Then click 26^th December 2016, scroll down the list of meetings till you get to Kempton, click 3.15, which was post time for Boxing Day’s top race, the King George VIth Chase,  3miles, 18 fences, £119,000 to the winner.  Prepare to be impressed.

The Donec board sat down the other evening and watched that replay, and then watched Arkle beat Mill House in the 1964 Cheltenham Gold Cup, which is also google-able on You Tube. The first thing that hits one about the latter race is how brilliant Mill House was throughout the Gold Cup, until Arkle made him look almost ordinary going up the final hill. Mill House was so unlucky to be racing in that particular era.

And Thistlecrack? In the King George he didn’t look out of place alongside Arkle  – and that was only his fourth race over fences. His jumping is a miracle of powered flight – perhaps too bold, but he seems to be able to put himself right and take care when the need arises. Potentially he is as good as anything seen in living memory anywhere, as far as recorded history can help the student.

STARTING

It has to be said: various people who have ignored the starting problem afflicting British jump racing in recent years have actually begun to sit up and take notice.

Which is good, because we are only weeks away from the Cheltenham Festival and the Grand National meeting at Aintree, when any defects in the starting arrangements for big fields will make themselves felt.

It was good news in the case of the Welsh Grand National on Boxing Day. One saw 20 horses (quite a large field) quietly walking down the course with their backs to the starting gate. They were in a bunch, but with plenty of room between them, and under no sort of pressure.

No sign of the dreaded Rolling Maul (a BHA invention which requires large fields to close up into dangerous proximity with each other and to whizz round in circles like dervishes.) As thoroughbreds and their jockeys are not dervishes, this ordeal upsets both in equal measure. The Maul also guarantees that half the field will probably have no chance of seeing the first obstacle until it knocks them over.

For reasons to do with the fact that the runners are circulating in a processional formation, the dreaded Maul also guarantees that the rear half of the procession will have to run quite a lot further than those at the front. Hello and goodbye to the principle that starting arrangements in sport should at least attempt to give all participants a level break.

What of the whispered suggestion that the Rolling Maul makes it easier to ensure that races start on time, which maximises the betting market, which increases the revenue from betting for British racing? It is complete rubbish, created by someone of little brain and no horse-sense and swallowed by his even more intellectually challenged  colleagues.

Horses quietly circling behind the start without a care in the world will always be more amenable to the time-keeper than the Charge of the (seriously agitated) Light Brigade, and will not have to endure any of the discomforts and dangers listed above.

So what happened at Chepstow? We left the horses walking down the course with their backs to the starting gate.

Ah, yes. At a certain point something must have happened. Perhaps a signal was given. In one graceful movement the twenty turned to the right through a hundred and eighty degrees and began to walk calmly back towards the starter – as happy as Larry and as relaxed as you please! Then (knock me over with a feather!) they spread out laterally as they walked along until they formed a pretty straight line across the track, with plenty of room between them and a perfect view of the way ahead.

Amazing! This is exactly the choreography which preceded the 2013 Grand National (which featured a perfect start and no fallers until the 7^th fence, for the first time ever). It preceded that historic race, and has hardly ever been seen since. Why not? You know the BHA. “A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma,” as Churchill once described the mindset of Russia’s leader Joe Stalin.

So what about the start?

Which start?

Chepstow on Boxing Day… The suspense is intolerable! Was the start all right?

It was perfect!

Could the penny drop? Could common sense catch on? Is this softly-softly approach reliable?

Properly applied, it will always work.  But situations will arise that will require the operatives to use their brains.

For example?

We seem to remember that the start of the Becher Chase at Aintree is no more than 13 equine strides from the first fence, and that the field has to negotiate a chicane through a gap between fences/hurdles and/or plastic rails in order to arrive at the area where the starter will be hoping to regulate the final approach to the tapes.

Imagine 20+ horses, wriggling through a gap, rather  uncomfortable after a sequence of rotations,  ridden by jockeys under pressure to ensure that they get on to the racing surface before the advance towards the tapes begins, and well aware of the dangerously short distance to fence number one. Anyone with common sense can see that difficulties will arise – as will dangers.

Does that means that the dream of Boxing Day 2016 was a Welsh trick, a mere Celtic delusion?

Not at all. It just means that clerks of the course and the PJA and the BHA (if they can find someone with racing knowledge on their payroll) would do well to check the circumstances surrounding their various starting areas, of which there are very few. Not a big ask.

If there is room to move horses around as they did at Chepstow, basic prudence is all that is needed to ensure that the system works.

If there isn’t enough room at some starts, an alternative arrangement can be implemented. An area near the start could be designated, where the whole field can walk round anticlockwise, nose-to-tail, calm and relaxed. When start time beckons, out they will walk and across the track they will go, walking, and they will keep walking across the track until the whole field is on the racing surface. Only then will the starter ask them to advance towards the tapes.

Cheltenham is three months away, Aintree four. Plenty of time. There is a way, if there is a will.

Will it happen?

We live in hope. There are signs of life between the ears of those in high places. What more d’you want?

RESOLUTION (for 2017)

If you are in the habit of touching your toes six times early in the morning on a regular basis….Let me put it another way…..If you sometimes do a few stretching exercises at dawn, and try (quite gently) to touch your toes six times after each of the callisthenics….. Are you with me?

If all that, you will find that the fingers come to a halt six inches above the toes on the first “dive”, and three inches above on the second. Thereafter, moving like a well-oiled machine, your digits will pound those toes with the greatest of ease.

The next day, the sequence of events will be identical, and the next, ad infinitum. You initiate the movement, and you cannot easily complete it….once…..twice… and then the machinery achieves the full extent and momentum which you are after.

Twenty-four hours later that initial sluggishness has returned and the flexibility of the previous day has gone. Where has it gone? Why has it gone?

Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does Obesity, the seeds of which are part and parcel of our make-up. When Mr Obesity notices the effects of one’s early morning work-out, he says to Mrs O, “Look at those sinews, ligaments muscles, and more particularly the spaces between them. We could be really, really happy in those particular nooks and crannies. Follow me, my darling. Not a moment to lose!” They move in and they fill every bit of space that they can find, just like that.

This is why you and I find resistance to our toe-touching every morning and have to clear it out every morning in order to restore movement, full and free, to the affected areas.

Here’s the scary bit. If we didn’t do that clear-out on a daily basis, the Obese family would take up more and more of our space, would make movement more and more difficult, and, in the not too distant future, would add a new dimension to our lives, a dimension of such bulk that not only would we never touch our toes again, we would also find that we could only see our knees when we were lying in the bath, and not always then. Scary, or what?

If  you seek out the “search” facility at the top of each of Donec’s pages, including the first, and you type in “Sport 33: End of May 2014”, you will find (headed Obesity) everything you need to know in order to protect yourself from  Mr and Mrs You-know-who.

Happy New Year.

I must add that the thrill of Thistlecrack was equalled by the sight of Frankie Dettori riding like a man who has taken the trouble to learn how to ride in a way that must have been quite strange for him, and has practised on his childrens’ ponies, and has inspired a team (of losers?) to…..  to go out there and kick ass! Under his leadership, Frankie’s flat jockeys thrashed the jump jockeys at show jumping at the Horse of the Year show at Olympia. What a man! What an asset to British racing and to the whole nation!

Thank you, Frankie.