anna lisa, qualifying for festival, connell/o'sullivan, shorter & wiltshire.

​Andrew Balding is a lucky man. Not only is he born into a family of great repute but he is also blessed to be married to Anna Lisa. Whenever she represents her husband at the races – usually she gets the gig furthest from home I have noticed – it has reinforced my belief that Andrew is one lucky fellow. Today in the Racing Post she was the guest columnist and my regard for her increased a notch or two.
She wrote about the work of Racing Welfare, the industry charity that is there to pick-up, listen to and help those with either mental health issues or who are just lost in a sea of humanity. As someone whose character can only be described as ‘shaky’ or perhaps ‘flaky’, I sympathise with people who without knowing why or how have crept towards the abyss of failing to cope with the outside world and themselves.
As someone who cannot, even at my advanced age, talk even to myself about the holes I mentally stumble into, let alone anyone else or those few people who I regard as being close to, I am not in a position to give advice on coping with the pitfalls of life. It is too late for me now, of course. I am who I am, but the younger you are the more important it is to untangle the mixed-up thoughts that only serve to make life ever more difficult, with wrong personal choices the threads that slowly strangle common-sense and the well-intentioned advice of others.
Talk, at heart you know it makes sense.

J.P. McManus in his guest column last week in the Racing Post has certainly started a conversation, if only with Racing Post journalists. I think it was Lewis Porteous, not Lee Mottershead as I wrote the other day – I am old, I get the names of people mixed-up all the time, at least when I can remember or half-remember names – who took the subject a little further down the line and in today’s paper Matt Butler made the excellent suggestion that the handicaps at the Festival, bar one or two, should have qualifiers throughout the season. The only downside to his proposal would be finance and whether the sponsors of the handicaps at the Festival would be prepared to throw money at a dozen or so races during the lead-up to March. Perhaps the proposal does not need a sponsor like Pertemps to have qualifiers for their own race, perhaps any 2-mile 4 race handicap hurdle would serve as a qualifier for the Coral Cup or 3-mile handicap chase for the Kim Muir or National Hunt Handicap. Again, a good proposal that should be considered, even if Cheltenham’s response to good ideas is along the lines of ‘it is our ball and we will play with it any way we choose.’

It was only a matter of time before Connell split with O’Sullivan and that time has come to pass. It seems the lure of Marine Nationale was not enough for the jockey to give-up his rides at Cork last Sunday, a meeting that was eventually abandoned, to school for the trainer after racing at Punchestown. Sean Flanaghan is now in the hot seat for the rest of the season.

A James Emm, in the letters’ column today, made a point that is worth consideration. He thinks, given the Irish dominance and that racing our top chasers over 3-miles so early in the season, that British-trained horses might fare better in the latter half of the season, and at the Cheltenham Festival, of course, if some of the top chases before Christmas were reduced in distance. There really is only one race to be discussed here and that is the Betfair Chase, a race I believe we could do without. But if it is to survive, perhaps shortening the distance to 2-miles 4 is a good suggestion. After all, the John Durkan over the same distance is thriving, while the Betfair is below par by comparison. 

Karen Wiltshire is a significant figure in the history of flat racing. She was the first female jockey to win a race against professionals. She has a book out, the title of which I have forgotten, though I intend to buy a copy between now and Christmas. I suspect there will be a lot of justifiable whinging, as well as justifiable disappointment that there remains in this country only three female professional riders who can be expected to ride in more than one race at Royal Ascot. Given Karen’s breakthrough came in 1978, that is slow progress.