FESTIVALS - ENOUGH ALREADY, SURELY.

​I suppose the proposed Northern Racing Festival planned for next season is, on balance, a worthy initiative. A good wodge of extra prize money for racecourses that in main just make up the numbers, even if the three racecourses umbrellaed in this venture, Musselburgh, Carlisle and Ayr, are amongst the best in the entire Union, without a doubt deserving of a bit of spotlight shone in their direction.
I have two small problems with the concept of supporting our backwater cousins ‘up north’, a devoted lot with hardly a penny to rub their backsides with. Number 1 is my lack of enthusiasm for the ever-swelling number of ‘racing festivals’ and the use of the word festival to overarch what is in fact three separate race-meetings. The definition of festival is as follows: pertaining to or characterising a feast; festal day or time, a joyous celebration or anniversary; a merry-making; a musical entertainment on a large scale, usually periodical; an entertainment or fair where fruit and other eatables are sold. Away from Galway and Punchestown in Ireland and the Cheltenham Festival and Aintree, use of the word ‘festival’ is tantamount to theft of meaning. Could you even buy fruit at any of the aforementioned venues? If The National Hunt Festival is the epitome of a racing festival, which it is, every other ‘festival’ must pale by comparison.
My other problem is the North is awash with trainers of the highest calibre, jockeys too. I would suggest that Donald McCain, Lucinda Russell, Sue Smith, Tim Easterby, Ian Jardine, Keith Dalgleash, Ruth Jefferson, Nicky Richards – look, the list goes on and on – are as good at their jobs as any southern-based trainer. What happens, as inevitably it will, when the Northern trainers turn from being poor relations to an equine powerhouse and raid the big Southern tracks with the aplomb and uncaring attitude of Vikings taking over Wessex? Will Nicky Henderson and Paul Nicholls demand ‘fair play for the poor Southern trainers’? It has happened once already in my lifetime. It was Winter and Rimell versus the massed battalions of Richards, Dickenson and the two Easterby brothers. It was a kindness that Arthur Stephenson preferred little fish to fishing in the big pools.
The actual answer to the problem, as it is for the majority of racing’s problems, is better all-round prize-money. If the Northern racecourses received a greater amount in general prize-money – not five-figure prize-money for the Northern trainers who already train top-class jumpers but large four-figure prize money for every race and every trainer in the north – then top owners, and perhaps new owners, would place big-value horses with Northern trainers. Build it and they will come.
It never fails to make me wonder how big money can be found for ‘festivals’, six-figure amounts of money, yet the same amount cannot be distributed to increase the reward for every-day fare, the wonderful every-day.
 
Fate is fickle. I was pondering on fate and more importantly the arbitrary, almost unfair, nature of it, the other day. Why some horses are granted three score years and more while others – I was thinking particularly about Denman and Kauto Star – are not granted any-more than their teen years. It struck home once again yesterday with the news of the death of Iain Jardine’s work-rider, a girl with the best years of her life ahead of her, or should have had. I cannot claim any acquaintance with either Natasha Galpin or her employer but you would have to be made of stone not to appreciate the engulfing black hole that must be central to the everyday thoughts of her colleagues and family. What might have prevented the tragedy? What might have been? The life that will not now be lived.
It must be a one in a hundred-thousand chance for both a horse and rider to die in a single incident on the gallops. It is easy to surmise the chain of events and I hope the folly of Health & Safety do not use this accident to get themselves involved in the welfare of stable employees. No back protector designed will prevent a horse crushing the air from the lungs of a prostrate man or woman. So, so unlucky.
When I remember the scrapes foisted upon me when I too rode gallops and across fields – saddles slipping, reins snapping, horses rearing over, stumbling on the roads, kicks in the head. Yet until the last horse I rode, nothing worse than bruises and bruised ego. Apart from the kicks in the head, they certainly scrambled the brain and are doubtless responsible for my failing memory and general diminishing intelligence. Why I, or you, should be spared and someone far more useful to the world should perish is a conundrum that very few of us will ever be able to unravel.
It was wonderful to see the photograph in Sam Twiston-Davies column last Saturday in the Racing Post of Young Hustler, 32 and looking absolutely wonderful. Obviously, he is well cared-for, yet fate decrees that caring for an animal with love and devotion is not enough to grant them a full and healthy life. Nor is being a good human being. But then no one said life would be fair, did they?