and the wait goes on and on.

​As someone who has followed horse racing all his life, someone who at present feels he has had his life capsized by this Covid-19 scam, you would think I would be grasping at any straw to get my fix of this great sport of ours. Now, it may be because I do not bet, but I just cannot force any fascination out of myself for racing at Gulfstream, Will Rogers Downs or Vaal. I have studied the race-cards in the Daily Express (yes, I have sunk so low) and have determined that racing in the U.S. is not the same as in Europe. Oh, and why is it that in the country where the contagion has taken its fiercest grip, at least if you believe the official figures (hospitals in the U.S. receive 1,300 dollars for each Covid patient it admits, 39,000 dollars for anyone requiring a ventilator.) which I do not, are they racing in certain states, whereas in Britain with ‘only’ 21,000 deaths out of a population of 68-million, we are not.
Horse racing was not banned by Government and within the dictates of the Lockdown rules we could be racing behind closed doors. Yet we are not. I agree with those who suggest Nick Rust should consider his position. He should go if only for his attitude towards the Grand National, cancelling when he could have postponed as has been done with the flat classics. Of course, he has already tendered his intention to move on, so whatever shambles he makes from this day forth he will not be the one to make good the hole in the sport’s finances once, if it ever does, society returns to being democratic and free.
Although it is to be applauded that come the merry month of May – a month that the Express warns will be a wash-out – racing without the public will return, though it concerns me that only senior jockeys will be allowed to ply their trade, following the Government’s policy of only allowing the big boys to trade and basically saying F.You to the small fry. Great to have Moore, Murphy and Dettori back, but what about all those jockeys who will have been hardest hit by having their right to earn a living taken from them?
But to return to the alien world of U.S. racing. At Will Rogers Downs today there are ten races, not one of which is over further than 1-mile. 6 races are claimers, 2 are advertised as a Starter Allowance and a Fillies and Mare Allowance, whilst another is a Maiden Special Weight where all twelve runners carry the same weight and, going by the prize money, the main race is a stakes race for Fillies and Mares over 6-furlongs.
I dare say the Express do not carry the same amount of information as they would a home race meeting but there seems to be no apprentices riding or least no jockey is slated as claiming an allowance, though thinking about it that might be what the ‘Allowance’ in the title is telling me. Over the ten races no horse carries less than 8-st 6Ibs or more than 8-st 12Ibs. There are no handicaps.
For once, I am not being critical. It’s their game, they can play it any which way they want. In fact, although it comes across as samey, straight-line racing, I see no reason why on occasion similar cards cannot be tried here. Top-weight, doubtless, would need to be raised to suit our balkier jockeys but why not have meetings without handicaps? In fact, the rules imposed on clerks stifle ingenuity and experimentation. If, for example, there were a scattering of condition hurdle and chases in the early months of the jumps season, the smaller courses might attract a top-notcher from the Henderson or Nicholls yard and thereby increasing attendance. On the flat if courses programmed a similar number of conditions races over the classic distances for three-year-olds in the early months of the season, they too might benefit from a visit by a classic pretending colt or filly. This always used to happen, with Gold Cup winners appearing at the likes of Hereford and Stratford.
Nowadays the romance has been driven out of the sport by decrees from on high. Unless trained by Sir Mark Prescott, horses no longer go on long winning streaks and the small trainer only very rarely has a classic horse in his or her yard and the Grand National has lost the romance of the permit-holder having a horse with a chance and the challenger from abroad, Japan, Russia or even France, has gone by the wayside.
To advance, it is sometimes good policy to look back from where you have come from. Not too far back. We don’t want to trial 3-heats over 4-miles, followed by a winner-takes-all run-off. Or the days before a kind of centralisation took root, before every race was sponsored by a bookmaker or betting exchange outfit. When horse racing was truly a sport and not an industry. When people bet on the horses without the inducement of special offers, when just winning was a thrill within itself.
Do you know what; the card at Will Rogers Downs reminds me of a lacklustre all-weather meeting at Southwell, samey, one race seemingly like the one before or the one after. Mind you, I would take that uninspiring card at Southwell right now. If I could read about it in the Racing Post tomorrow it might even raise my spirits enough to forget for an hour or two the rape and pillage of my, or our, civil rights. And if I.T.V. were to televise six races from Will Rogers Downs on Saturday I would tune in with anticipation beating from within my rib-cage.