last fence/hurdle falls.

​I may be teaching my granny how to suck eggs in asking if you realise that the chair at The Chair fence at Aintree was back in olden times used to house a judge whose job was to instruct riders to pull up if the winner had already past the winning post. I am strongly of the opinion it would be a good use of stewards’ time if someone was posted in a similar position for every National Hunt race on every racecourse.
One of the saddest features of racing, at least to my mind, is a horse falling at the last more through fatigue than an inability to jump when clearly out of contention. I suspect last fence/hurdle falls are more prevalent in Irish racing than over here, though as anyone who witnessed the fall that put Gina Andrews in hospital at Cheltenham last week it is not an unknown occurrence on a British racecourse.
If a clear instruction to jockeys to pull-up when a fence or hurdle behind when approaching the final obstacle cannot be instigated, then a steward posted ‘at a distance post’ would be an alternative worth experimenting with. All the steward would need to do is to wave a red flag and blow a whistle to attract the attention of a rider who if he had the welfare of the horse in his mind should present enough of a distraction for him to stop riding.
Jockeys have a duty of care when riding in a race and just trying to finish a race simply to have a nought after a horse’s name rather than a P is to ignore his greatest duty as a licensed jockey. No jockey should be criticised for pulling up a jump too soon, though criticism might be justified when he or she fails to pull up, an inaction that results in both horse and rider sprawled on the ground. If pulling up early is not a duty of care issue, it is very much a health and safety issue.
Much is made of the modern-day prevalence of low sun causing hurdles and fences to be omitted on health and safety grounds. Why does no one raise the issue of needless last obstacle falls, a subject with a far easier solution than combatting low sun?
Incidentally, in case my thoughts on the low sun problem in a recent ‘blog’ are not known to anyone reading this current ‘blog’, the term ‘low sun’ tells you the sun is close to the horizon; I cannot think that some kind of mobile screen or shield cannot be invented to block out the sun’s glare. If mounted on the back of a lorry at this time of year it could travel from meeting to meeting. If successful every racecourse where low sun is a problem might eventually have one – if such a device can be invented.

The very definition of madness is to do the same thing over and over again and to eventually expect a different result. Plunging London into Tier 2 didn’t work, so let’s try Tier 3, which, in effect, is Tier 2 without any sort of hospitality outlet. When Professor Karol Sikora was asked his response to the present plague virus mutating into what conceivably might be a lesser version of itself, he said. “So what?” Because that is what viruses do. It is what it did back in March. This is only pertinent to this site because this draconian response to not very much will doubtless have an effect on racing over the Christmas and New Year period.
At the moment Kempton, which is in Surry not London, even though it is known as a London racecourse, will still be allowed to host a limited number of racegoers on Boxing Day. Not though anyone who lives in London, only people local to Kempton Park. But we are talking marginal distances here between true London and the outskirts of London, which is where Kempton Park is situated. Who knows, old father Thames which passes close to the racecourse (by the by, Kempton Park is the only racecourse mentioned in ‘Three Men In A Boat’. Not that it was a racecourse at the time. I digress, as Jerome would often do) and flows through the centre of London, might it bring a shipment of the virus on to the embankment where Harris and the others had their argument with the riparian custodian? It’s an odd virus; doesn’t pop up the noses of people eating at a pub yet is potentially lethal to people only consuming alcohol. It would only need a sharp breeze to send the virus skittling around the locality, raising the R-number by a fraction high enough to scare the pants of Hannibal Hancock and have him, in our best interests, you must realise, plunging the whole of the South-East into Tier 3. We walk on egg-shells. Soon there will be wagonettes marauding the streets, their steersman shouting ‘bring out your dead, bring out your dead’. You have to laugh, haven’t you?
Wishing you all a Merry ChrisWhittyMas, saviour of humanity (British sector).