bits about what is in the news today.

​It seems rather on the cruel side for the Racing Post and racecourse executives to engage us with headlines and optimism that spectators will be allowed back onto racecourses in the near future. We are in the grip of institutionalized psychological torture – you can have x-number of spectators, followed by a ban on spectators, followed by another x-number of spectators, followed by, well you get my drift – and to speculate on the possibility of a return to a limited number of people allowed on a racecourse again comes under the heading ‘wishful thinking’. Remember, the vaccine does not vaccinate against the virus and the vaccinated can still transmit infection. I know it sounds like the punchline to a bad joke and I am not making it up. It is fact. So, what will have changed in the population for spectators to be allowed back on racecourses? It will still be masks, anti-social distancing and sanitising.
I tentatively predict spectators will not return in any meaningful numbers until mid-summer at the earliest, a time of the year when viruses habitually hibernate and far enough down the line for the first dose of vaccine to be in the arms of the hopeful. And it might be 2022 before we return to the good old days that existed prior to the 2020 Cheltenham Festival. This present virus has mutated over 20,000 times in its journey through the continents, it is what viruses do, apparently, and the odds on it mutating again are pretty short. This game has not yet played out by a country mile, sadly.

In differing ways, the disciplinary hearings of Charles Byrnes and Aidan O’Brien are quite similar. Both were found guilty of negligence in one form or another, yet, though I believe both were treated unfairly, Byrnes staggering so, O’Brien not so much, the punishments were poles apart.
The Charles Byrnes saga I dealt with yesterday, and I repeat to lose his livelihood for 6-months after being found guilty of negligence, while the disciplinary panel completely overlooked the more heinous crime of cruelty in dosing a horse with a sedative 100-times above the screening limit, endangering the lives of both horse and jockey, said more about those prosecuting Byrnes than it did about the defendant. 
Given Aidan O’Brien was the man who brought the cock-up at Newmarket to the attention of the stewards and that he wholly took responsibility, apologised sincerely and has taken measures to ensure such an error can never happen again, it was an act of curmudgeonly ingratitude to double the fine above the entry point for such an offence to £4,000. O’Brien can afford to cough-up 4-grand, obviously and I dare say the original cock-up dented his pride more than any fine could ever do but I think a £2,000 fine would have been adequate and a special mention for his honesty and sincerity and for pointing out a hole in B.H.A. race-day security. Racing’s hierarchy never share any of the responsibility for cock-ups, do they?

For as long as I can remember the expansion of Royal Ascot and the Cheltenham Festival has been kicked about amongst the public and journalists, with neither side winning the argument. That was until the 2020 flat season when the extra races at Royal Ascot were regarded by one and all as a great innovation, leading to the addition of a seventh race on all five-days from now on. Although I am an advocate of a fifth-day at Cheltenham, I would prefer to replicate what happened on the Saturday after a 4-day Royal Ascot, prior to the Jubilee celebration, at was referred to as a ‘Heath Day’, when the main race was the Churchill Stakes. I have always proposed the Saturday after the Festival be considered on similar lines, with the Cross-Country Chase beefed-up to attract more foreign runners and made the central race, with all those proposed new races trialled to see which races are successful enough to be upgraded to the Festival proper, with axed races reduced to the ’Heath Day’.
Although Royal Ascot is undoubtedly the most prestigious flat meeting in the country, with the Cheltenham Festival having a similar status in the National Hunt calendar, there is a gulf of difference between the two. Cheltenham crowns champions, whereas Royal Ascot does not crown a single champion, not even the winner of the Ascot Gold Cup is regarded as a champion. Also, though this difference may not be as substantial, the Cheltenham Festival is a massive boost to the local economy and it can be argued that a fifth-day would be greatly welcomed by local business, especially after the slaying of the national economy that has occurred. For that reason alone, I think a fifth-day should be added to the Festival, with my suggestion far more economical to bring to fruition than a bona-fide fifth Festival-Day.

One other matter: Cheltenham has agreed, and this is another example of wokeness that does neither the image of Cheltenham nor St.James’s Place Wealth Management any favours, that the Foxhunters will now be known as the Cheltenham Open Hunters’ Chase, deleting the word ‘Fox’, when they could so easily have  renamed the race The St.James’s Place Wealth Management CHAMPION HUNTERS’ CHASE.