​Speaking at Kelso on Saturday, and what a splendid day of racing it was, Nick Alexander was more vociferous than his interviewer expected in his view on the qualifying requirements to take part in the Aintree Grand National. He has two horses entered that would have an equal chance of running into a place, perhaps even winning. Dingo Dollar is sure to get a run, in fact I quite fancy him at this stage of proceedings. His other horse, though, Hill Sixteen will need around twenty-five horses to come out for him to squeeze in at the bottom of the weights.
Remember, Hill Sixteen finished strongly back in December to finish a nose second to Snow Leopardess in Aintree’s Becher Chase, receiving only 4Ibs, with Domaine De L’Isle sixteen lengths back in fourth. To my mind, and undoubtedly Nick Alexander’s thinking, that should make Hill Sixteen as good a horse around those big fences as both the winner of the Becher and the horse that finished a good distance behind him. The handicapper disagrees.
It can be argued that in winning the most relevant Grand National trial, the connections of Snow Leopardess should be spared sleepless nights wondering if their brave grey will be given the opportunity of becoming the first mare to win the Grand National since Nickel Coin in 1951. In fact, the case of Snow Leopardess is a better example of the race conditions to be perhaps detrimental to the profile of the race.
When the powers-that-be set out to improve the image of the race by softening the fences and reducing the distance, their ethos was to attract better-class horses to the race and to weed-out the type of horse liable to either not stay or to fall. I have long believed they have fallen short in achieving their aim and should pay close attention to Nick Alexander’s well-founded criticism.
The top two in the handicap, Conflated and Galvin, almost certainly will not run, which will leave Melon – the class of horse the race should always attract – with 11st 10Ib and will Willie Mullins be keen to run him off top weight? That would leave Chris’s Dream as top weight, a horse that has, somewhat unluckily, fallen the twice he has run at Aintree. Franco de Port would be left to carry 11st 9Ib which is a hefty burden for a seven-year-old. The present conditions, coupled with the £1-million prize money, is not proving beneficial to the profile of the race and debate should be the order of the day and I hope Nick Alexander’s forthright criticism is the starting pistol for the much-needed debate.
His suggestion of ‘win and you are in’ races, as they have for the Kentucky Derby, though he actually suggested the first two, will not be bettered for ensuring real National horses face the starter each season. The Becher Chase is an obvious starting place, with perhaps the second and third given preference when allotting reserves for the race. The Eider is another Grand National trial race that needs to be amongst the ‘win and you are in’ series. The Welsh Grand National is another obvious candidate and I would suggest the previous season’s Scottish and Irish Nationals. Five races, five horses with proven ability to both stay extreme distances and to continue jumping when puff is increasing in short supply.
Although disappointing last time he ran, Secret Reprieve, a Welsh National winner last season, has absolutely no hope of getting a chance to run at Aintree come April 9th and is on the same mark or below as horses of the calibre Plan of Attack, Scoir Mear, Poker Party and Agusta Gold. In fact, I would suggest that not one horse above Secret Reprieve up to Mighty Thunder and Jett on 10st 4Ibs could be considered a better Aintree prospect than Secret Reprieve. At this moment in time can anyone honestly claim that Samcro is a better prospect at Aintree than at least half a dozen of the horses that need a minor miracle to get into the top forty?
The Grand National needs the right horses in in its line-up, not necessarily horses with the highest handicap marks. Just to take Hill Sixteen as an example; he is a stayer, he’s proven around the Aintree fences and though there are no promises or certainties when it come to the Grand National, he has more of the right ticks in the right boxes than, as one example, the highly disappointing Samcro. Nick Alexander is spot-on; he should be listened to.

​The latest hoo-ha to hit the Racing Post headlines is the vexed topic of the difference in handicap marks given to horses by the English and Irish handicappers. Now, as I have stated many times, my belief is that the rating given to any individual horse is only the opinion of one man and may differ to another’s viewpoint. Actually, I usually use the phrase ‘ratings are bollocks’ as I believe computerised handicapping is where it all started to go wrong!
The rating or handicap mark given to a horse is supposed to represent its ability based on previous performances. Unfortunately, some might say sadly, on many occasions the handicap mark is based on one race (the horse is being murdered by the handicapper, many a trainer will claim) and the horse in question may languish on that hyper-inflated mark for several seasons before the handicapper applies leniency of common-sense. Cyrname was once one the highest rated horses in Britain and Ireland, a rating acquired in winning what to all effect was a two-horse race in heavy ground against a horse with no previous form over either the distance or the ground conditions.
One of the saddest and unfair sights in the sport is to see an honest and durable handicapper running off the same high mark for season after season constantly gallantly failing to give large amounts of weight away to younger (thrown-in at the weights, as they say) rivals. As I have suggested in the past, if handicaps can be framed for horses rated between 90-100 or 85-95 or whatever, surely it should be possible to have conditions races confined to horses rated between 110-130 or whatever? But I digress.
The argument why universal ratings cannot be introduced, something Gordon Elliott has called for, is led by Ireland’s senior jumps handicapper, Andrew Shaw. “It’s unlikely there will ever be parity between Irish and British ratings because of the system,” he told the Racing Post. “The system in each country is different.”
His defence of the disparity is based on the incontrovertible fact that jumps racing in Ireland tends to be far more competitive than in Britain with twenty-runner handicaps commonplace, whereas over here six, seven and eight-runner handicaps are more the norm. Because of the big fields in Ireland, the Irish handicapper will, as a matter of course, raise the rating of many horses from one race and lower an equal number, something that the British handicapper would rarely have need to do.
He also pointed out that in Britain horses can go straight into handicaps off their hurdle rating, whereas in Ireland a horse had to have run at least twice or win once over fences to qualify for a chase mark. The latter being far more sensible, I would think.
Mr. Shaw’s defence is fair comment. I still remain drawn to Gordon Elliott’s point of view, though. Horse racing in Ireland and Britain, especially over jumps, is interlinked, intertwined, their histories throughout the centuries running parallel. I would go as far to suggest that the sport in this country could not exist without the Irish and vice-versa. The two countries are not enemies, though the sheer number of times 23-5 has appeared in the Racing Post over the past part of twelve-months gives the impression to any impartial or ignorant observer that the opposite is true and that at some time past a state of sporting war had been declared by one against the other.
To my mind, the two friendly countries should operate as close to one as possible. The racing calendars of both countries should be harmonised to the mutual benefit of both, as should the system of handicapping. The two departments of handicapping should, at their earliest convenience get together to discuss the best method of harmonising the way horses are assessed in both countries. It is ridiculous that a horse from Ireland can be 5Ibs lower in Britain than in Ireland or 5Ib lower.
The B.H.A.’s head of handicapping, Dominic Gardiner-Hill spoke with the authority of a politician rather than a sportsman when he said. “Although the work the handicappers have done so far has been well received, there is still more to do. The next stage will be to conduct end-of-season analyses which will be even more informative than these interim figures, allowing us to compare entire season statistics.”
Which, again, is fair comment. But will the path the two authorities are travelling ever get as far as addressing the real-life problem or will their interaction only consist of statistics and theoretical aims? Afterall, Andrew Shaw is of the opinion that there will always be disparity between the two handicapping systems, while Dominic Gardiner-Hill seems only concerned with using statistics to get to wherever his goal might lie, with neither, seemingly, at all interested in discussing the matter with a racehorse trainer or anyone who actually works at the coal-face.

​In so many aspects of the horse racing world Dan Skelton is a breath of fresh air. I like him, respect him as a trainer and am pleased when the Skelton brothers and wife/sister-in-law achieve important successes. I do not want this piece to sound ante-Skelton but from going from a stance of hoping they land one of the Blue Riband races at the Cheltenham Festival, I now hold the opposite view.
In today’s Racing Post, Dan is quite strident in his view that to win at the Festival horses need to be ‘super-fresh’. And he has nailed his colours to the mast as his three main contenders for Cheltenham, Shan Blue, Nuba Negra and Protektorat are unraced in 2022. Shan Blue maybe by necessity as he suffered an injury when falling in the Charlie Hall at Wetherby at the start of the season, though from what Dan said it is pretty certain he would have run only once between then and Cheltenham anyway.
You can legitimately say that he knows his horses better than anyone, especially me, and that he has the facilities to get a horse fit to win first-time out, which is more or less what he is attempting to do come the Festival. But what if two out of his top three win, proving the ‘super-fresh’ theory correct, at least on this occasion? It will become stable policy; each year his top horses will run once, perhaps twice, before Boxing Day and then not appear in public until the Cheltenham Festival.
What he is in effect saying is that all the top-grade races after Boxing Day until the Cheltenham Festival might as well be excised from the racing calendar as they serve no purpose. The Relkeel, Clarence House, Cotswold Chase, Cleeve Hurdle, Denman and Game Spirit Chases, the Ascot Chase, Kingwell, Reynoldstown, all a waste of time and money.
And as for staging a British version of the Dublin Racing Festival, well delete the debate as it would serve no purpose. And, of course, Willie Mullins, Gordon Elliott, Henry de Bromhead and others might as well keep at home all those horses they ran at Leopardstown whether they won or lost, because, if Dan is correct, horses need to be ‘super-fresh’ to stand a hope of winning at the super-competitive National Hunt Festival.
Of course, if it goes tits-up for Skelton come March, his trio of ‘super-fresh’ horses will seek compensation at Aintree, Sandown or Punchestown before the season draws to a close, with all talk of ‘super-fresh’ confined to the trash-can or Google search engine.
This sport, especially in Great Britain, is in need of all the help it can get to thrive and survive and the ‘fad’ – a fad that threatens to become mainstream – is the exact opposite of what is required. Blankly ignoring the big condition races between Boxing Day and the Festival is super non-competitive and smacks of a desperate attempt to keep horses sound and on track to keep owners on-side. The sport needs the top horses to run in the major races in January and February to keep the narrative boiling, to super-charge, if you like, the anticipation of the glories to come in March.
The example – to prove my point, if that is possible – I like to give is Clan Des Obeaux. Paul Nicholls, as he said of Frodon without any evidence to back-up the claim, is that Clan likes to be fresh. Yet he doesn’t win first time out. Come April onwards, or even in March given the horse ran in the Denman this season, can anyone see Tornado Flyer beating him over 3-miles? Yet in the King George, when the race fell apart, Clan des Obeaux was firmly put in his place by Danny Mullins and a horse that on ratings had climbed a mountain to win.
If Appreciate It wins the Champion Hurdle after a 12-month absence from the track it will be honoured as one of the great training performance of all-time. And quite rightly so. But it would be comparing oranges with limes if used to down my point on this matter. Not running for 12-months was not a deliberate choice by Willie Mullins; it is a strategy forced upon him. It would be celebrated as a great training achievement because of its rarity, not as proof of ‘super-fresh’ being the latest training method of choice.
‘Super-fresh’ can only do harm to the sport and it should be discouraged, if not actually out-lawed. The sport must come first; the sport must be protected from insiders whose goal is to display to onlookers how damn clever they are.