geldings, good week for british trainers & and the 50-year remembrance of something dirty yet cleansing.

​The decision by France Galop to continue refusing to allow geldings to run in the Arc is ante-racing and a gift to the breeding industry.
Surely, the whole premise of horse racing as a sport is to discover the best horse at all the varying distances and divisions. Why ban geldings and yet allow fillies and mares to take on and possibly diminish the stud prospects of the best colts? And that is the nub of this ban; protecting the interests of the top studs. If Goliath (pronounced goalie-ath) were to beat the winners of the English and French Derbies, for instance, Goliath’s value would remain zero to the breeding industry but also the value of the three-year-old colts that finish behind him would also drop. Worse still for top breeders, what if a gelding were to win the Arc multiple times, year after year, stallion-owners would all take a financial hit. That is what the ban is in place for. The status quo. 
That to have a champion kept in training on the flat kept in training year after year would be popular with spectators and racing enthusiasts is not even a consideration. It is self-interest before the interest of all.

British trainers go home with 8-winners from Punchestown last week, including a Grade 1 courtesy of Lubamba and numerous placed horses. And the winners were spread around different trainers, which is also something to shout about. It was also good to have both Nicky Henderson coming home with a couple of winners and his stand-in jockey James Bowen. The emergence of green shoots, albeit in a foreign field, should not be dismissed as too little too late as all the wealthiest owners have their horses based in Ireland, so for British trainers to go there and record 8-winners demonstrates that horses can be trained equally successfully on our side of the Irish Sea.
The other point of interest to come from Punchestown was that Willie Mullins was winning handicaps as well as Grade 1’s, which might be a sign of things to come.

The main feature in today’s Racing Post is a reflection on the ‘Stable Servants’ (yes, that was the term for grooms fifty-years ago) Strike that saw unprecedented scenes on the Rowley Mile, with demonstrations, Willie Carson pulled from his horse and whipped (his own whip, apparently), the 2,000 Guineas started by flag and a J.C.B. used to gouge large holes in the precious turf.
The past is a different country, as someone once said. In 1974 the Trade Union Congress began a campaign for the minimum wage to rise to £30 a week. Stable Servants, because that is what they were back then, were supposed to be paid £28 a week, though it was widely known that some trainers refused to pay even that amount.
Trainers refused to even negotiate, not wanting to pay for the increase as it would entail asking their owners to pay them more for training their horses. Even the affable Henry Cecil was indignant about the strike, eventually sacking the lad that should have led-up his 2,000 Guineas winner of that year, Bolkonski.
I remember at the time thinking it a bad look for the sport, stable staff preventing racing from going ahead, walking away from the horses they were supposed to love and cherish. Yet from the perspective of now, I realise their cause was just and eventually, and this is again a bad look for the sport, only eventually, stable staff are now better-valued and seen as a team and not simply a work-force. I doubt if we are where we are now because of the infamous strike but it demonstrated to the world outside of our sport, that ‘the them and us’ stance taken by trainers was unenlightened and flawed. The industry lost a good many top-class staff due to the strike, with trainers reneging on the agreement to take back those lads who chose to enforce their civil right to a fair wage. The strike was a dirty business, yet it began a cleansing process. But it is a reminder of what can happen when the sport’s rank and file is taken for granted. Stable staff are the equal of both owners and trainers. Though the horse is king and that too should be remembered by all.