B.H.A., SPREAD 'EM OUT, ALL-WEATHER, B.H.A. (AGAIN) & TWO IRISH FEMALES ONE AND TWO.

​Watching Ralph Beckett on the Nick Luck Racing t.v. programme on YouTube yesterday, I was surprised to hear that former N.F.U. President and former stable girl and point-to-point rider Minette Batters had applied for the post of B.H.A. Chair but had not even been granted an interview. Here was someone with the cold-light-of-day experience of horse racing, is currently on the board at Salisbury and has led a large representative organisation, yet was swiftly passed-over at a time when the B.H.A. was struggling to find anyone interested enough in the position to want to apply. Unbelievable! No wonder Ralph Beckett appeared disgruntled. We were told when Lord Charles Allen was appointed as the in-coming B.H.A. Chair that he had a good experience of horse racing, yet Ralph Beckett was of the opposite view.

For many years now I have been of the opinion that there are too many long-distance chases at the back-end of the season. The Midland, Aintree, Scottish, Irish and the old Whitbread dominate this part of the season. Does no one not recognise the overload here. It is one of the reasons why Dan Skelton’s proposal to move Aintree to the last meeting makes so much sense. Easter, of course, always confuses the issue when it comes to neat and tidy race programming, though Easter Monday is the traditional home of the Irish National.
If I had my way (extremely unlikely) I would move the Cheltenham Festival forward by a week and have Sandown’s Imperial Cup in tandem with Uttoxeter’s Midland National on the second Saturday after Cheltenham. Ayr’s Scottish National could be staged in the place presently occupied by the Aintree National, with the Irish National tied to Easter. And I would change the distance of the old Whitbread -be fair, the race is nowhere near the race used to be when it was ‘the Whitbread’ – to 2-miles 4-furlongs, the distance of the first two big handicap chases of the season. With the Aintree National, as Dan suggests, on the last Saturday of the season.
Though it is no one’s fault, the Scottish National this year was a cringing watch even for someone as ingrained in the sport as I am and following a week after the Aintree National, with the sadness that mired the aftermath, it did not present a good look for the sport. If my suggestion of spreading out the Nationals traditionally run at this time of the year were implemented, perhaps fatalities at two of our most popular venues might have less impact when it comes to social media and the ignorant few who gain their knowledge and view of our sport from what comes to them from social media platforms.

Apparently, the all-weather championship comes to a conclusion this Friday. Though why it is said to be the conclusion when the following day there is an all-weather meeting at Wolverhampton and another at Southwell the following day is beyond my understanding.
Why not a break of two-weeks to allow a proper ending to one season within a season and the start of a new season within a season. Common-sense would decree that the optimal and more sensible time to bring the all-weather to a conclusion would be on the eve of the new flat season. But that is not B.H.A. policy, is it? Complication, guess-work and hands tied behind their backs guides B.H.A. governance of the sport.

To continue my B.H.A. bashing. As a governing force the B.H.A. borders on the useless, don’t they? Although racecourses are taking the greatest amount of flak for the poor quality facilities they provide for our jockeys, the B.H.A. are, in my opinion, equally to blame. They are the regulator of the sport and had it within their means to threaten any racecourse that did not comply with the ambition to have separate changing facilities in place for the end of this year for male and female jockeys with the retraction of their licence to hold race-meetings. Short-term this might have hurt the sport but long-term it would have won them the respect they do not presently receive.
Take Chelmsford for example. It is our newest racecourse, yet it is not one of the fifteen racecourses that have complied with the notice to have separate changing facilities, and the B.H.A., seemingly, when Chelmsford were applying for a licence, were not minded to make separate changing facilities are a prerequisite for approval of their licence.
Also, and I only discovered this fact through Lee Mottershead’s excellent research into this appalling state of affairs, is that through the Levy Board a racecourse could apply for a loan for this very purpose. It is only a £20-million pot and might not stretch so far as to pay for all the work needed on all the feet-dragging racecourses but it would provide the giant strides regarded to bring respectability to the sport when it comes to looking after our jockey-athletes.

Finally, this may or not be a first for Irish racing, in the first race at Down Royal yesterday Rachael Blackmore won and Caragh Monaghan was second, both of them are professional female riders. I dare say back in the day when Nina Carberry and Katie Walsh were riding, they must have finished first and second, even in a race when taking on professionals, but they were amateurs, if in name only, So, was the first race at Down Royal another baby step in the development of female professional jockeys in Irish racing?