define a poor ride? summer jumping & the wonder of youth.

​To return to the Newmarket 2,000 Guineas and the criticism of Kieran Shoemark’s ride on Field of Gold. Having the data provided to him by both the form book and Kieran Shoemark’s own critique of the ride he gave Field of Gold, Colin Keane produced a copybook ride to win the Irish 2,000 Guineas. John Gosden described the ride as ‘brilliant’ yet when a jockey is on by far the best horse in the race and there are no bumps in the road from stalls to winning post, ‘brilliance’ is not required, even if ‘keeping it simple’ is perhaps a possible definition of ‘brilliance’.
Now let us look at the Tattershall Gold Cup on Sunday. To use modern parlance, Colin Keane on White Birch was all dressed-up with nowhere to go in the final furlong, trapped on the rails and last in line to free himself of the queue in front of him. Circumstances played against him, I agree. But why was his ride not judged to be as ‘poor’ as the ride Shoemark supposedly gave Field of Gold at Newmarket? Explain to me what defines a poor ride? Colin Keane had more than one bullet in the barrel and yet due to making a wrong decision during the race his gun went unfired. Whether he would have won with a clear run cannot proved one way or the other, in the same way no one can say with any degree of certainty that Ruling Court would not have pulled out more if Field of Gold had headed him at any stage in the 2,000 Guineas.
Colin Keane is, I have no doubt, one of the best jockeys riding in the world today. My point is this: Kieran Shoemark is not one of the worst and his ride at Newmarket did not deserve the humiliation of being removed from his position as first jockey at Clarehaven.

In his column today, Lee Mottershead makes the argument for returning to the days when jump racing finished in May and started again in August. I have long complained that there was a) too much summer jumping and that b) what summer jumping there is during the hotter months should be structured around ‘local festivals’, as is the case in Ireland. I also believe there should be far less all-weather racing through the summer and autumn months, thereby freeing up horses to run on the turf to bolster field sizes and allowing prize-money saved to bolster prize-money on the turf.
Lee Mottershead makes use of the ‘oceans are boiling and the ice-shelfs are melting’ narrative -neither of which is true by the way (Heartland Institute. Look them up) – and that water preservation will become a huge fact of life going into the future, which is perhaps true, though more due to the number of illegal migrants in the country than a lack of adequate rainfall.
It is all too easy to say ‘I am not interested in jumping through the summer months so let’s just get rid of it’ as too many people earn a living from jump racing in the summer months. The problem is the jumps season (proper) ends too early and begins too early. Let the jumps season go to the end of May, allowing our smaller courses to benefit from the two bank holidays and begin again in late September when, crossed-fingers, there is less likelihood of firm ground. In between June and the August bank holiday, which is where I would end the ‘summer jumping programme’, there should be a limited number of jumps meeting based around, as they do in Ireland, around festivals, with ‘festival meetings’ with a valuable handicap as the major race of the two, three or four-day meeting. It works to great effect in Ireland, why would it not work in Britain?

Hells Bells for someone of my age and experience it is annoying when a craven youth of 23 writes a piece for the ‘Another View’ column in the Racing Post that nails an argument to the wall of which there is no comeback. His name is Oliver Barnard and he pours scorn on Great Britain Racing’s first advertisement in its ‘Going is Good’ campaign. My criticism could be defined as it was largely ‘inoffensive’. I think I used the word ‘fluffy’. Young Oliver, backed-up by the opinion of his non-racing mates, was more decisive and on point. ‘Crap’ or words to that effect was how he chose to underline his feelings on the subject. G.B.R. take notice and get your act together. 
Good on you, Oliver, you young scamp.