1924, nick luck's good thing, a more beneficial memorial & the big punting survey.

​Before 1924 there were only 3 races during the National Hunt season worth more than £1,000 to the winner. Bizarrely, and I do think the race should be reinstated, though not at Cheltenham, the most prestigious race of the whole season outside of the Grand National, even though that race stood head and shoulders as the zenith of the sport, was the National Hunt Chase, the race that gave its name to the National Hunt Festival at Cheltenham. It was a genuine 4-miler. It was an amateurs’ only race. It was for maidens. The other two thousand-pounders were the Lancashire Chase at Haydock and the Champion Chase at Aintree. After the inauguration of the Cheltenham Gold Cup, there remained only 3-races plus the Grand National worth more than £1,000 to the winner, as the first running of the Cheltenham Gold Cup was worth only £685 to the winner. Though back in 1924 you could buy a chip shop, a tenement freehold and a family car for £685 and still have money left over for a pair of boots and a week’s holiday at Clacton.
What the Cheltenham Gold Cup in its infancy was not, contrary to modern perception, was a trial or prep race for the Grand National. It may not have held the anticipation and prestige of the Gold Cup we have come to cherish but due to its proximity to the Aintree fixture most of the top horses were already primed and ready for their tilt at the Grand National. What is true is that jockeys, trainers and owners, would have given away both their children and their granny to win over the big-boy spruce fences at Aintree, whereas it took the best part of thirty-years for the Gold Cup to be seen as the Grand National’s equal and another ten before it became the holy grail of the jumps game.

Nick Luck’s good thing for Cheltenham is in the new and improved National Hunt Chase, Haiti Couleurs, trained by Rebecca Curtis. I like Nick Luck; he is a man unscared to nail his colours to the cross, although he does lack the imagination to suppose that any one of Constitution Hill, Jonbon and Galopin Des Champs can be beaten. One of them will be and the going will decide which one.

This will come across as churlish, which perhaps it is, and may be driven by my growing disappointment with Jockey Club Estates, owners, of course, of Cheltenham and Aintree racecourses. Instead of adding Michael O’Sullivan’s name to the Supreme Hurdle as a one-day memorial to the young man, a little more imagination and effort might have led them to a charitable fund in his name, open only for the 4-days of the Festival, with all donations going to an equestrian charity. Owners might have been asked to donate 1% of their prize-money to the fund, winning bets also. Michael loved his horses and a short-stay fund-raiser for Treo Eile, for example, would have been a more fitting tribute to Michael O’Sullivan.
In fact, on a more mercenary level, if Cheltenham raised funds on an annual basis for equine charities throughout the Festival, it would generate good publicity for the sport and raise the profile of the charities involved.

The Racing Post’s ‘Big Punting Survey’ has sort of proved what we have suspected all along – National Hunt is more popular than the Flat, with punters who took part in the survey showing a definite bias for the jumps. What the survey did categorically prove was that the concept of Premier Racing was having no favourable effect when it comes to punters and the sooner the B.H.A. accept that Premier Racing is a dead parrot, the better it will be for the sport.