in britain, as it is in ireland.

​The top trainers, flat or National Hunt, although they may use different training methods, seemingly have one thing in common – they know how to delegate. Although having faith in your staff is a successful formula for the likes of Paul Nicholls, Willie Mullins, Mark Johnston and William Haggas, delegating responsibilities is not achieving results for either the B.H.A. or its Irish equivalent the H.R.I.
Of course, we are not comparing like with like when we judge the B.H.A. against the H.R.I.. Horse Racing Ireland is a quasi or semi-state authority that is part-funded from government revenue and as a result are not 100% independent of thought or action. But in learning that the Irish Racehorse Trainers Association has bent the ear of Horse Racing Ireland to have 48-hour declarations changed back to 24-hour, only to discover their bread-and-butter patrons, the Association of Irish Racehorse Owners, quite like 48-hour declarations as this longer period gives them more time to plan ahead. How the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board find compromise in this debate is anyone’s guess. What it does highlight, is that as it is in Britain, Irish stakeholders also do not talk to each other.
Now, trainers and owners, as well as stable staff, bookmakers and racecourses, should have federations, associations or whatever you would like to call a union of like-minded souls, but when decisions have to be made that affects the whole of the sport, those paid to administer and regulate the sport should listen to everyone and then take the decisive action required. The buck, in all matters regarding the sport of horse racing, should stop with the people earning the big salaries. Delegation just does not cut the mustard, as is being proved on both sides of the Irish Sea.

Those invested in ‘The Racing League’ are putting on a brave face but the cold truth is there for all to see – it has limped into existence; it is a pale shadow of what they proposed and all the evidence suggests it will not achieve its goals of promoting the sport to a wider audience by getting a more diverse attendance at racecourses.
When first proposed, it was suggesting ‘The Racing League’ was to be based on Formula One in that people would come to support a team as is the case with motor racing. Of course, the big flaw they failed to appreciate is that Mercedes, Maclaren, Ferrari and others are established teams with a fan base grown on decades of racing. The teams in ‘The Racing League’ are not true teams but what is termed scratch-teams, as when you lined-up as a kid and the captains of the opposing teams took turns in picking those they wanted. Outside of race-weekends, Mercedes, Maclaren, Ferrari, still exist and on the roads of the world you will see Mercedes, Maclaren and Ferrari, road cars. Outside of the five Thursday evenings of ‘The Racing League’ the teams taking part do not exist and as such people are not going to invest their support in any one team. At the end of the day, a Thursday night ‘Racing League’ meeting is actually very little different from any other race-meeting, except, of course, that the top jockeys, for what ever reason, are giving ‘The Racing League’ a wide berth.

Apart from believing a few more conditions chases and hurdles would not go amiss throughout the season, especially in late October and through to mid-November, I think the B.H.A. were over dramatizing Ireland’s thumping of the British trainers at last season’s Cheltenham Festival. It was a mite bit humiliating and extraordinarily repetitive, I admit, but by meetings end I had come to the conclusion it was also laughable, something I perhaps will never witness again during what I have left of my lifetime. It’s a bit of knee-jerk reaction to suggest that B.H.A. handicappers re-evaluate the way they assess and reassess horses for handicaps, to give, it seems, British-trained horses a better chance of beating the Irish come next March.
And although a Dublin Racing Festival type event in this country would not go entirely amiss and though Newbury deserves such a high-profile event, as suggested by Paul Nicholls, I would prefer the 2-days shared between Cheltenham and Newbury – if only to protect the ground and if one track should be in jeopardy because of the weather, the other might be able to take both days – and to be staged on the same days as the Dublin Racing Festival to make the weekend a true racing highlight, the lamentations of officialdom does come across as self-pity and a bit if a conditioned response, especially as Cheltenham last season gave us a great narrative that spilled over from the racing pages to general sport and onto mainstream media.
Cheltenham is Cheltenham: it doesn’t matter who wins as the Irish are more our friends than our competitors. And didn’t we embrace Rachel Blackmore as one of us, even though she is definitely one of them?