as the sun sets ...

​The flat season moves into a higher gear today with 2 minor Group races and a recognised Derby trial at Sandown – a Derby trial before the 2,000 Guineas is run! So now is a good time to begin to reflect on the 2024/25 National Hunt season.
Overall, my impression, aside from how quickly it has all flown by, is that it has been highly satisfactory even without the emergence of a new and genuine equine star. It is not a problem exactly but the National Hunt season does tend to be judged exclusively on what happens at the Cheltenham Festival and I did not see a single winner to set my heart on fire. My thoughts are that it was a satisfactory festival, though without any standout moments, except perhaps the mayhem and delight that was the Champion Hurdle.
Given my love of the underdog, Jeremy Scott training the winner of the Champion Hurdle was by far my favourite moment of the entire season. Golden Ace may not be in the top league of Champion Hurdle winners but it was a victory for a team that gave it a go and that would have been enough in itself to make the 2025 Champion Hurdle live long in the memory. Yet it also served up the first fall of a previously unblemished record of Constitution Hill and the remarkable and quite shocking tumble of State Man at the final hurdle. Hopefully come next season connections will follow Mr. Gosden’s example and just ‘give it a go’. It would make for more enthralling racing.
Despite all the whining by experts, with many different opinions on how to improve the racing side of the Cheltenham experience, I believe, with the possible exception of returning the festival to 3-days, that Cheltenham have the meeting about right, though with one glaring exception. The Mares Hurdle. Personally, I would remove the race entirely from the meeting and transfer it to the ‘Trials Day’ meeting in late January and rename the race the Champion Mares Hurdle. The race must not be lost, though, as it is too important for the encouragement to breeders and to owners to buy and race mares. But as it is at present, the Mares Hurdle is doing great harm to the integrity of one of the sport’s blue riband races and Cheltenham must acknowledge the fact. What sort of race could replace it I am not sure. A mares’ handicap, perhaps. Though I feel there are already enough races for mares at the festival.
I have come to accept that there will never again be a Grand National and that the race that has replaced it is here to stay. When it was first proposed to alter the fences, Ruby Walsh warned that by lowering the height of the fences to make the race less of a jumping test, the race would get faster and it is speed that kills. It is one thing for the authorities to pay no heed to his warning, it is another thing entirely to have Ruby now endorsing the emasculation of the fences and the race.
What we have, with the Aintree fences now resembling the old Mildmay course, for anyone who can remember what the fences used to look-like on the park course at Aintree before they too were altered, is a parody of the National when it was truly Grand. If proof was required for my argument, it came this year with Closutton’s near total domination of the race. It was notable when Henry de Bromhead had the first two back when Rachael Blackmore won the race. Before his achievement, can anyone remember a trainer even having two out of the first four, let alone five out of the first seven home. A remarkable feat, yes, yet proof positive that the National today bares little resemblance to the race Red Rum made his own. And it is not as if Aintree has made the race safe and effective. Although the death of Celebre de Allen this year was not attributed to taking part in the race, we are very fortunate that Broadway Boy survived his heart-stopping fall at Valentines.
Informed changes I can accept. I moaned little when the alterations began in earnest in 2013 and the alterations to the fences in 1960 was well overdue. But the changes now are for changes sake only, a woke attitude that merely emboldens our opponents to further their attacks on our sport. As a result of the changes, we are divided and that weakens our standpoint. The maximum field reduction from 40 to 34 was pointless when there is room for 60 horses on the run from the first fence down to Bechers. You could limit the number to 10 and still be faced with a fatality. All that was needed was for the jockeys to be instructed to race in a straight line from the start to the fourth-fence. Not that such a strategy would guarantee an injury-free race. But nothing will; it is the nature of sport and life, that fate holds all the aces when it comes to living and dying and by reducing the fear factor we are making the work of fate so much easier.
The sun will set another day and hopefully my ‘woe is me’ attitude will brighten when my other thoughts on the past season come to the forefront of my mind.