Fatalities & being-out-of-form.

​Despite ground concerns and a general smallness in field sizes, the 3-day November meeting was an enjoyable watch, if not overly informative for the major races post-Christmas. Of course, though, it was not a happy 3-days, was it? For 2-days and 4-races it was a small feast of interesting races … Then the spectre we all fear came from our peripheral vision to terrorise our soul. It came without warning; it came without sympathy. And there was I, during the race, thinking how much safer the sport had become due to the implementation of white woodwork on the fences, and I remain of that opinion. You cannot strategize for heart attacks, not with horses or humans. Fit as a flea athletes can be taken down by heart problems and it is the same, sadly, with our equine partners.
It is particularly distressing when you are witness to the spectre’s strike, especially when the spectacle that preceded the macabre event gloriously memorable. It was as massively unfair to the horse and is it was for you and me, and heartbreaking for the girl who looked after him, and a real-time  tragedy for his owners and trainer who literally moments before were celebrating what for them was a dream-like win.
Abuffalosoldier had skipped around Cheltenham with the aplomb of a gazelle on a home run. He pinged every fence as if spring-heeled, defeated the unforgiving hill without his jockey having to ask him for more energy than he was already willingly providing. At journeys end, Sean Bowen dedicated the win to ‘Margaret’, his greatest supporter, who had died the previous night and then spoke effusively about Abuffalosoldier as a possible National horse.
Then the happiness became a horror show.
What made the death of Abuffalosoldier’s demise ever-more heart-wrenching and hard to believe possible was that during the race Bangers and Cash had suffered a similar fate. Luckily for both the squeamish and the hard-bitten, the medical incident happened just as the camera panned towards the leaders and I only caught a brief glimpse of whatever was occurring. The odds of two horses dying in one race of similar, if not the same, fatal affliction must be long-odds against. One finished the race, the other only completed half the race and yet both perished. I hope there is no causal link and cannot imagine there can be. Both, I hope, will be subject to an autopsy and that the findings will be published in quick order.
I realise we live a stupidly woke world that I hope will come to end very soon, and I am in no way criticising I.T.V. or the ever-excellent Ed Chamberlain, but I wish the ‘very best veterinary care spiel’ could be excluded at such times, as to my ears, it comes across as counterfeit sincerity, as in ‘we did all we could’, which does not need saying. It was clear to all that the horse had suffered a heart attack and that is what the viewer should have been told in the immediate aftermath.
If the day could not plummet any further in despondency, in the very next race Napper Tandy fell at a hurdle and suffered a fatal injury. The bone he broke also should have been conveyed to viewers, whether it be neck, shoulder or leg. We are a fact-based sport and we should be treated as the adults we are.
One final point, I would be interested to know how many fatalities occur in France over their version of a ‘hurdle’, as they are static, unlike the British and Irish hurdle that has the propensity to swing if a horse should clip the top of them. I believe the reputation French horses have for being better jumpers of an obstacle is due to the type they learn to jump when young, younger than British and Irish trainers would ever dream of schooling young horses. It is a hobby-horse of mine, asking a horse to jump an obstacle that can be moving as no other equine disciple would think to do so.

People, as with horses, can be out-of-form for no particular reason. Harry Derham, as an example, whose horses have been winning here, there and everywhere up to know, suffered to see two of his stable stars run quite deplorable over the weekend. The much touted and expensive to purchase Imagine ran a stinker in the Paddy Power and the naughty-boy that is Teddy Blue was equally bad in the Greatwood. Next time either of them run, either might be win and Harry will be, perhaps, unable to offer a reason why.
I am out-of-form at the moment, unable to form coherent sentences or transfer my thoughts to page with any degree of softness or readability. Thankfully, I have no editor to chuck my ‘copy’ back at me, with ‘must better write’ in red pen to subtly inform me that I might only be keeping the seat warm for someone who can ‘better write’.