four quick horse racing observations.

​The top Irish jumps trainers are threatening to go to court over the proposal to have sixty-races next season restricted to trainers who trained less than fifty-winners during the past 12-months. Yes, these sixty-races may breach restraint of trade regulations but to every other trainer and owner in Ireland this threat must seem niggardly, miserly and a cheap trick by wealthy individuals determined to keep all the pie for their own little cohort.
Will senior jockeys follow suit and go to the courts to have amateur and conditional restricted races banned as they also may breach restraints on trade? All that is intended by this charitable restriction, which will go some small way to helping the sport survive, is to put butter on the breakfast table for the majority of Ireland’s licenced trainers. It is what J.P. McManus hopes to achieve by leaving horses he buys from small yards with the same trainer. I would hope J.P., who would have horses trained by all those who signed the intent to go to court, will offer his wise council and persuade them to back down and suck-up this minimal restriction placed upon them.

As Tom Kerr reminds his readership in the Racing Post today, the great and the good of racing who signed-up to deliver change for the sport have thus far achieved very little of what they promised. The conclusion can only be that they believe money spent on this venture will be money going down the drain or they have crossed-fingers in hope of a white knight appearing over the horizon with a cunning plan up his or her sleeve. And that would be a case of hope over experience. What is needed is a consortium of proper experienced racing people to get together one weekend and decide upon a strategy. Given less racing would be an obvious starting place, I suspect they could draft a plan by mid-morning on the Saturday, finalising the details on the golf-course during the afternoon. You see true racing people, those who work at the coal-face of the sport, who shed and blood and sweat on a daily basis, would have the will to get things done as they know the consequences of doing nothing at a speed that hardly moves the second-hand.

The segments of the ‘Full Gallop’ documentary series that I thought gave the outsider an insight into the true heart of the sport were those involving the families of Nico de Boinville and Dan Skelton. In fact, I thought Nico came out of the programme a more engaging and rounded personality than Harry Cobden, mainly as the viewer was only introduced to Cobden the jockey and were offered no glimpse into the non-racing human side of him.
On I.T.V. racing one Saturday, Nico was seen in his riding gear with one of his daughters in tow. He didn’t know the camera was on him but in that brief interlude he was seen as 100% the father and nil-per-cent the jockey. It was an ordinary moment, a father buttoning up the coat of his daughter, if I recall correctly, but at all times he was engaged with her, with eye-to-eye contact, his daughter as one with him. And then there was the scene where he was at the stable door, caressing the head of a nameless horse as if engaged in a mental update of his health, how he was feeling, if he could do something to help.
Dan’s daughter telling him she still loved him even if he did not become champion trainer was another ordinarily endearing moment, exampling the obvious yet often overlooked, that trainers, as with jockeys, are as human as everyone else and the driven part of their personalities can easily be put in its box when surrounded by family. If someone had the idea of buying a racehorse or joining a syndicate after watching ‘Full Gallop,’ don’t you think they would want that horse with a man who is obviously a good and loving father?
This sport is choc-a-block with good people; that, I know from experience, is not as widely known as you may believe if you rarely step away from the racing community. To my mind, the sport would be better off attempting to sell that aspect of the sport to the public than the winner-takes-all mentally and money to be won that was the main driving narrative of ‘Full Gallop.’

The runners for the Jonathan Sheppard Handicap Hurdle at Saratoga tonight, run on the Mellon course, no doubt named after Paul Mellon, owner of Mill Reef, gold cross on a black background, includes three horses that only a few months ago were trained by James Owen, Willie Mullins and Olly Murphy, Too Friendly, Zarak The Brave and Pickanumber. Three good quality horses lost to the U.S., lost to British racing, all of whom capable of winning a nice race on these shores, as they had already proved. Another sad indictment of the state of British racing.