are we only weeks away ....?

​Am I being overly optimistic in hoping that in two weeks horse racing will return to this country? Am I foolish to expect to see the Racing Post back in newsagents? The frightening phrase ‘the new normal’ that politicians all around the world parrot as if it is code for something sinister, some abnormal society that we will have to put up with or else, suggests to me that if we indeed have our sport returned to us it will not be in a form as we know and love it.
It is to be hoped that the B.H.A. have a calendar of race-meetings already slated or at least a plan A, plan B or plan C. Although it is unfair on those trainers and jockeys who depend on the summer season to give them a solid income for the year, it was wise to defer the jumps season to July. Again, as they have objective date for National Hunt to resume, I would hope they have a calendar of meetings already in place and if that is the case jumps trainers will have an advantage over their flat counterparts who remain on the edge of their seats in wait of start date.
One aspect of the flat season this year will be the lack of foreign-trained horses and that will include the Ballymore battalion. If the restrictions at racecourses are going to be as ‘restrictive’ as commentators are suggesting, I cannot foresee the various racing authorities agreeing to overseas runners any time soon, if at all this season. And, although I recognise its importance to the sport, I do not understand the rationale of moving heaven and earth to stage Royal Ascot this season if 1) there will be no Irish or French runners and 2) no spectators, even if the dressing-up part of the occasions leaves me cold, I respect it is what makes Royal Ascot unique. I would stage the Ascot Gold Cup and the other Group 1’s and perhaps the Hunt Cup and Wokingham as a one-day spectacular but in no way will Royal Ascot be unique without spectators, the Royal Procession down the track and foreign competition.
Without Aidan O’Brien the Derby in previous years would have had but a few runners and it will be interesting this year if without his dominating presence the field size returns to days of old when over twenty horses would delight the Downs and be a proper betting race. Remember at the start of the Covid-19 interlude (or plandemic, as I now refer to it) the staging of the Cheltenham Festival drew a fair amount of criticism even though the Government was in favour of it taking place. I have anecdotal evidence to support the claim that because of the Festival crowds Gloucestershire saw an increased number of flu-related cases against the national average. That may prove to be false but the claim will be used as evidence to prevent the Irish and French travelling to Royal Ascot or Epsom.
My greatest fear, though, is not that Royal Ascot will not take place but the ignorant and uncaring attitude of our government. As I suspect those in know are aware, barring spectators from sporting events will cause many racecourses, football, rugby and cricket clubs to fold. In every case, needlessly. Politicians seem to believe racing and football, to name but two sports, can survive without income generated from spectators. I can only make sense of this stance by thinking that part of ‘the big plan’ is to streamline racing and football so that only the financially fittest survive. They might as well announce: Sod the Cartmels, Redcars and Fakenhams, sod the Rochdales, Bristol Rovers and Newport Counties.
I write these vanity pieces not so much for others to read but as therapy. This sport of ours is pivotal to my life. It has been my abiding passion for over sixty-years. Cut me open and written across my heart it will say National Hunt, with the names of all the great and memorable racehorses indelible inscribed on my arteries and ventricles. I am not a journalist and would not wish anyone to think it is my ambition to become one. I write about horse racing in the same way poets must compose poetry and composers must compose music. The sport is the soul of me. The hole in my life during these racing-less months is deep. I have had my sport taken from me, as I have had my civil rights, not because of a pandemic (which, by the way, is not worse than an epidemic) but by a man-managed ‘health crisis’ instigated, I believe by Bill Gates, who through the foundation he created in his and his wife’s name, has bought into the W.H.O., Imperial College, the Centre for Disease Control and a hundred and one other medical bodies around the world, with the express aim of making it compulsory world-wide for everyone to be vaccinated, of which he will be the licence holder of the vaccine, against a flu that will go the way of all other flu viruses, Sars, Bird and Swine flu, H1 N1 etc and if the data now appearing round the world suggests will have killed less people than any of the beforementioned.
And on a website dedicated to a great and noble sport, I hate having to mention Covid-19 and the truth that mainstream media ignores.