hennessey/coral, the sir gino conundrum, kennedy, bias & TO APPEAL OR NOT TO APPEAL.

​The Coral Gold Cup, or the old Hennessey as it continues to be called, as people of my age will always refer to it, is not the race it used to be through no fault of anyone in particular. Perhaps the days when the prestige handicaps were over-subscribed, with many a trainer sweating to discover whether their lively outsider has made the cut, are gone, never more to be seen. Thirteen, though, was a disappointing turn-out from a British point-of-view when you consider of the thirteen three were from Ireland and one from France.
That said, Kandoo Kid was an impressive winner and if Paul Nicholl’s were not committed to running the horse in the Grand National, we might be thinking of him as a possible for the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Not that I am suggesting he is that class at the moment yet his new rating will put him close to that of a lively Gold Cup outsider and in the past, winners of the Hennessey were often spoken-of in terms of Cheltenham in March.
It is my problem, of course, wanting to be back to the days when the Hennessey was the bright shining light of pre-Christmas, when every 3-mile chaser from Arkle downwards would be entered, with the majority running in the race. They were the golden days of National Hunt and only comparatively recently did it occur to me that I would never experience such days ever again. Those days were consigned to history when Kauto Star, Big Bucks and Denman departed the stage, and even then, I suspect the ‘golden days’ were only hanging on by their boot-straps.
That said, the first three yesterday were all young progressive horses that with the racing gods on their side will win top-class races for seasons to come.

The star yesterday was, of course, Sir Gino, who passed his jumping examination and sauntered his way into Champion Hurdle contention. Why Mystical Power ran so poorly we will no doubt find out over the next few days and the poverty of his performance removed most of the informative interest from the race. Sir Gino won as he should have given the ratings of the horses that separated the two favourites at the finish and he remains ‘a could be anything category of horse’.
It was a nice win for Nicky Henderson to absorb, though if Sir Gino had not won there would be no decision to be made about how to proceed with him. Now, Nicky, Nico and the Donnelleys have a conundrum to untangle, is it plan A and steeplechasing or plan B and the Champion Hurdle. If my advice was sought, and no one seeks my advice on any matter of importance, I would be swayed by Sir Gino’s age. He will be five come January and he has plenty of time to go chasing and if State Man were to get injured, Joe Donnelly might be pleased to have Sir Gino as super-sub for the Champion Hurdle. That decision, though, would hand the dilemma over to Nico who would then have to choose between Constitution Hill and Sir Gino. At least, hopefully come the Christmas Hurdle and then March, Nico will have to untangle the tangle.

Who is the unluckiest man in horse racing both now and perhaps in history. Yes, it is Jack Kennedy, a man, seemingly, in want of getting into the Guiness Book of World Records for breaking bones, specialising on leg bones. To look at him and to go back through his medical records and all the herculean comebacks he has pulled-off at his young age you might think him a man made of iron. Yet despite his rugged outer appearance, Jack Kennedy is seemingly as fragile as a bone China tea-set. Keep everything crossed for him that this period of time on the sidelines is shorter than when recovering from previously broken legs.

A letter in today’s racing Post was written in support of Karen Wiltshire, the first female jockey to win against her male colleagues. That she suffered bias and mockery back in the seventies should not come as a surprise. The past was a different country, as is said in defence of the mores of past ages. The reason why women did not call-out sexual references and discrimination in previous decades was because at the time it is what they expected, with many giving it back tit-for-tat. Anyone was ripe for ridicule; it was a time when people recognised the difference between a joke and racism or discrimination. The stupidity of woke is far more disruptive to good living than a rude joke or sexual overtones.
Karen Wiltshire was trying to forge a career when the expression ‘if you cannot see it, you cannot be it’ was yet to be heard as a rallying cry. Back when Wiltshire held a jockeys’ licence, Holly Doyle and Rachael Blackmore would have also struggled to get a ride, let alone a winner. If society, as collective wokists, keeps harking back to the mores of different ages, history will have to be rewritten from 1066 onwards. What needs to be written about in the racing pages of today is that forty-years on only two female jockeys finished in the top twenty in the jockeys’ championship in 2024. A massive improvement on ten-years ago but minimal in the overall context of the matter. What peeves me is that Holly Doyle, the most successful female jockey of all-time when it comes to Group 1 success, is yet to ride in a classic. Is that sex discrimination, riding for the wrong trainers or simply bias against female jockeys?

David Jennings in his column in the Racing Post on Saturday made the proposal that appeals should be done away with and that the result on the day, irrespective if the local stewards had changed the finishing places, should stand without recourse to the appeals process. As he rightly said, no other sport changes results days or even weeks after the event and in this highly technical age it should be possible to have all the electronic whistles and bells either on tap at the racecourse or back at Portman Square with adjudicating stewards to make the final decision, as with VAR. I hope David’s colleagues will take-up the cudgels and discuss his idea further. There is little hope the B.H.A. will take the issue on board.