did anyone miss the lincoln handicap?

​Whereas I might suggest we should be looking forward to enjoying the 2020 Grand National this coming Saturday, I doubt if very many of us will reflect come the end of the year on the Lincoln Handicap that never was.
Once upon a time, even before the advent of winter all-weather flat racing, perhaps back to the 1950’s, the Lincoln was as anticipated as the Guineas. Go further back in time and you might find genuine classic horses of the previous generation lining up in the race. It is, sadly, but a shadow of its former glory, its fortune not improved, surprisingly, when it was forced to move from its titular home at the Carholme, Lincoln racecourse, to Doncaster, home of a classic. The Lincoln these days is little but a moderate-to-middling handicap, a race run on the Saturday, its relevance lost to memory come the end of the following week. Once it performed as one half of the most cherished double-act the sport had to offer, the Spring Double, perhaps the lesser half, the Ernie Wise to the Grand National’s Eric Morecambe, but a star event nonetheless.
Because of its revered place in racing’s history, because the running of the Lincoln signals the start of the turf flat season in this country, it should be revived, reprieved from the downward spiral that might one day result in its name being replaced by a sponsor’s name, with only ‘registered as the Lincoln Handicap’ to remind the punter of the race it once was.
I doubt if anyone who wanders onto these pages bothers to go through the archive of the website but, dear reader, if you did me the honour of spending time sifting through my past diatribes and ‘bits and pieces’, you will discover I have visited this topic before, and doubtless will do again, as it is a bit of a hobby-horse of mine, wanting to breathe life into the once great Lincoln. You may not agree with my thoughts; you may think me off-my-trolley with my flagrant disregard for health and safety, for suggesting the Lincoln’s future is to be found in its past. If you object, tell me. At least start a debate.
My suggestion for reviving the fortune of the Lincoln Handicap is to restore it to what it used to be – a spectacular cavalry charge. The reason the appeal and expectation of the Grand National endures, while the Lincoln has faded from the sporting conscience, is that in essence, even with the course sanitised and rather air-brushed, it is still quite clearly the race it has always been. Whereas the Lincoln is nothing like the race it used to be. It is just another 1-mile handicap, the same as any other.
This is what needs to change. The Lincoln, in this modern age, must be unique. It should entice a little fear in the jockeys who ride in it; there should be an element of lottery about it. The novelty of the race, that there is nothing like it around the world, should make it a prize every owner aspires to win. What I propose, and will continue to propose, is that the Lincoln should revert to being a forty-runner race, started from a barrier, not stalls.
There is jeopardy in starting a race from a barrier, of course. It is alien to both horse and rider and requires a technique that will send jockeys scurrying to study old Pathe newsreels to see how Sir Gordon Richards and his contemporaries achieved flying starts. True, there might be numerous false starts – if you read the biographies of jockeys who rode in the twenties and thirties especially, it was not uncommon for it to take ten to fifteen minutes to get a race off and that is where the jeopardy lies. Once horses are loaded into stalls, with few exceptions, the jeopardy is eliminated, which is as it should be for 99.9% plus of races. The Lincoln, I suggest, if only to give the modern racegoer, and jockey, an insight into the history of the sport, should operate to a different perspective.
Although I have a great liking for Doncaster and, as with Newbury, believe it should be better utilized, given a larger share of top-line races, the flat season has not traditionally started there and as it would perhaps not be able to cope with a forty-runner field, I would also propose the Lincoln should be run at Newmarket, as with its big open spaces and being the headquarters of the sport it is the perfect racecourse to kick-off the flat season.
I have also suggested that ‘Lincoln Day’, with the Lincoln at its heart, should be a day of handicaps, with the six or seven races forming a special bet, much like the I.T.V.7 or the old Tote Roll-Up, with ‘Lincoln Day’ marketed similarly as the Grand National and somehow reviving interest with punters in the ‘Spring Double’.
As with the Grand National, a forty-runner Lincoln will have unlucky losers, horses losing their chance at the start, much in the same way punters lose their money at the first fence in the Grand National, and that, in time, is what will grow the appeal of a back-to-the-future Lincoln Handicap.
Much to love, a little to fear.