brilliant news for couch potatoes, straight lines, not in top ten, low sun.

​It is good, nay brilliant, news that I.T.V. are close to signing a new contract to cover British racing till 2030. May I live that long. I.T.V.’s presentation may not be everyone’s cup of tea but to my mind they provide the best terrestrial coverage we have yet to enjoy. I wish they would scrap the parade ring interviews with trainers with more important matters on their minds and if Oli Bell asks a trainer, and especially Aidan O’Brien, ‘how is the horse’ I will implode with the sheer pointlessness of the question. ‘Well, actually, Oli, the horse is not pleasing us at all. We do not know what is wrong with him but the lads thought we would give it a go as he has no potential to be a stallion.’ A reply such as that would be informative, while ‘he’s well’ would be the expected answer from any trainer with a horse in any race. But I digress.
Apparently, I.T.V. have had a request to re-jig the Christmas fixtures so that Kempton stage a one-day bonanza whereby the King George, Christmas Hurdle, etc are all run on Boxing Day, followed by the Ascot meeting, usually staged before Christmas and then the Challow Hurdle meeting at Newbury, forming a 3-day Festival. A great idea scuppered by the racecourses. I.T.V. also proposed that the Welsh National would swap places with Ascot, which I believe made good sense, allowing our top jockeys to ride in both the King George and the big race at Chepstow. There we go, an example of what is wrong with the governance of British racing, a mouthwatering proposal killed at birth, not even put out there for the racing public to debate.

In athletics, which would be the closest sport to horse racing if athletes carried a sack of coal on their backs, sprints are run in lanes. Now, do you think times would be faster if the lanes were done away with and athletes were allowed to jostle for positions, some preferring ‘cover’ while others wishing to make the running? No. They run the 100-metres in straight lines as that is the quickest way to get from point A, the start, to point B, the finish. So why do jockeys deliberately take their mounts off a straight line? Yes, some horses relax when in the middle of the pack, while others do better when allowed their heads, and sometimes the draw bias makes the decision for a jockey to seek the faster ground, but as a generalisation would it not be better to run as straight a course as is practical? When running around a bend, it is considered a disadvantage to be three or four-wide as that adds distance compared to the horses hugging the rail. Isn’t deviating off a straight line the equivalent?

Very pleasant to see a trainer not in the top ten win a Group 1, and even though it was Neil Callan, not my favourite jockey by a long chalk, at least he is unused in recent years to winning Group 1’s. Richard Hughes has worked hard as a trainer to get where he is, keeping the boat afloat by placing his horses in races they have a chance of winning and not thinking his geese are swans. Whether the wealthiest owners will now look differently towards him only time will tell.

Mr. Gill of Gravesend writes in the Letters Column of the Racing Post of the frustration of spectators when hurdles and fences are taken out due to low sun. He said, as many do, that there appears no solution to the problem, yet if we look to cricket and the screens they use so that batsman can see the ball coming at them, there is a grain of an idea that requires debate. We are talking here not about the sun in general but the sun in particular when it is low on the horizon. Where the sun rises and falls is not random, so if there is no cloud cover it is predictable where it will lie. My idea is that some form of screen, movable up and across, should be erected – it may well need to be fifty-feet high, perhaps less – where the sun is positioned to affect the sight of jockeys and horses as they approach a fence. Science will be involved to perfect the system, I suspect.