A CRIME AGAINST THE HISTORICAL RECORD.

​Because of the method of funding for British & Irish racing, because we place so much adherence on the atmosphere created by bookmakers on racecourses and reject out-of-hand the model for funding adopted by France, Hong-Kong and other go-ahead racing hotbeds, sponsors are our life-blood.
There is no doubt that the instigation of the Whitbread and Hennessey Gold Cups fundamentally changed National Hunt to its benefit. Yet racing’s administrators love-at-first-sight charge toward the golden uplands of ever more sponsored races has driven a coach and horses through the historical record of the sport.
Let me ask a question: during the period when the contract between Hennessey and Newbury ended and Ladbrokes put pen to paper, what was the name of the race previously known as the Hennessey and which is now known as the Ladbroke Trophy? Does this important steeplechase, the most prestigious handicap outside of the Grand National, actually exist at all outside of a sponsor’s name?
It grinds on my nerves when commentators scroll through past winners of big races, as will be done this coming Saturday, naming horses whose owners did not pick up the Ladbroke or the Bet 363 (994 or whatever) Trophy but who went home with a magnum of brandy or twenty-four bottles of Whitbread Pale Ale. Mill House and Denman did not win, for example, the Ladbroke Trophy but another race titled the Hennessey Gold Cup. So far there has been only one winner of the Ladbrokes Trophy. The race, as prestigious as it remains, has no history and it is simply confusing to suggest it has.
There is a call in some quarters of the media to dumb-down our sport for the benefit of newcomers. Yet when one of these newbies is confused by Matt Chapman talking about the Ladbrokes Trophy when all the signage shown on past recordings of the race blare out the name Hennessey and it is explained the race has new sponsors, how can it be explained what exactly is being sponsored. In reality, even if the race is registered as the Newbury Steeplechase, a pointless exercise if the race is never spoken of as the Newbury Steeplechase, all that is being sponsored is a 3-mile 2-furlong steeplechase run in November or December at Newbury. Unlike the Cheltenham Gold Cup that remains the Cheltenham Gold Cup no matter who the current sponsor might be.
The Betfair Chase is fine until Betfair tire of it and it becomes another race entirely. Why the King George can remain the King George no matter who the sponsor is and other races must have name-changes ever two or three years is something that baffles me. Horse Racing has a long and noble history. It deserves to be protected, its day-by-day narrative preserved in the same way editors seek to keep the plots of novels coherent, without misleading sub-plots.
For sponsors who finance important races for long periods of time horse racing offers a brilliant advertising avenue. Long after they departed the scene, brands such as Schweppes, Whitbread, Hennessey, Mackeson and even Massey-Ferguson live on in the memory.
If only Bill Whitbread had been persuaded to name his race the Whitbread Sandown Gold Cup all this confusion to the historical record would be avoided. It is one thing to be eternally grateful to Betfair for their generous sponsorship but short-sighted to not insist the registered name of the race be included in the title. The race in its present form has never been known as the Lancashire Chase, yet that is its registered name. Why it cannot be known as the Betfair Lancashire Chase is beyond all reason.
Most of the prestigious National Hunt races, and it is also becoming the same for Flat Racing, are nameless, a product owned, if only temporarily, by the sponsors, the historical record of the sport kicked out of shape for the purposes of commercial gain. The powers-that-be should demonstrate backbone and insist that sponsorship of horse races is a union of interests and not a matter for arm-twisting or downright hostage-taking. Our sport has a history that runs parallel with the very fabric of society and social change in this country. In allowing misleading plots into its proud narrative the powers-that-be are doing the sport a disservice. Names, as I have advocated a million times before, are important. Without definitive names the sport is nothing more than fluffy clouds floating away into the distance.
Please I.T.V. do not name Denman as a twice previous winner of Saturday’s big race. I will, though, be hoping to hear Richard Hoiles calling Black Corton the winner of the Ladbroke Trophy.