MISINTERPRETATION OF THE WORD 'FINALE'.

​Look, I know that when it comes to flat racing I am hard to impress, and it is not that I did not enjoy ‘Champions Day’. I did, honestly. Frankie was at his brilliant best, Cracksman showed what the season on the whole has lacked and Sheikh Fahad demonstrated again both what a great bloke he is and huge asset to the sport.
But: finale – ‘the last part, piece, scene, or action in any performance or exhibition, the last piece in a programme, the last movement, the close, end, the final catastrophe’. That is the dictionary definition of ‘finale’. Saturday was not the finale to the 2018 flat season, was it?
Also: the champion jockey was crowned, as was the champion apprentice. Both worthy winners. The champion trainers’ title, though awarded due to John Gosden’s unassailable lead, does not terminate until the final day of the season. The champion female rider was also not awarded on ‘Champions’ Day’. Nor the champion amateur. But most importantly, no racehorse was crowned a champion. And though the Qipco series strings the top flat races together throughout the summer, there was no mention of the various winners or award of prizes during the afternoon. Quite, apart from sponsorship money, obviously, what the Qipco series adds to the season is beyond me?
Today, Monday 22nd October, the flat jockeys are back in action at Pontefract, Windsor and Kempton. Saturday’s racing constituted part of the 2018 season, as does the race meetings today and on into November and the final meeting of the season (turf, obviously) at Doncaster. The success of ‘Champions’ Day’, and one cannot imagine the back-end of the season without it, should not hide the complete nonsense that is the format for the Champion jockeys title. No other sport, I would suggest, even horse racing in other parts of the world, would take the number of winners ridden up to the start of the ‘jockeys’ championship’, disregard all the races in between, and then add the winners after the ‘jockeys’ championship’ trophy has been awarded. It is as convoluted and in need of editing as the previous sentence.
In my opinion, there should be a turf champion, the season taking in all turf races between the first day and last day of the season, and an all-weather champion taking in every race on the all-weather starting in January and finishing in December.
When A.P.McCoy retired and the powers-that-be decided to make a festival of his last day when presenting him with his trophy, it was an eye-opening success, and it seems the memory of it has become the template for ‘Champions’ Day’. But it just does not match the original. The presentation of the trophy is shoehorned into a tight schedule and looks more like a duty to be performed rather than a celebration of a remarkable achievement.
And it is not the finale of the season, not for horses, owners, trainers, stable staff and most of all for the jockeys. Come Monday and it is just another day at the office. One day off and back to the grindstone. If you are going to have a true ‘Champions Day’, one that is true to the definitions of ‘Champion’ and ‘Finale’, then stage it at Doncaster on the last day of the turf season and make it one huge celebration, with the awarding of all the trophies to all of the champions. The north always gets left out when the sport dreams up innovation; the re-routing of Champions’ Day would, if nothing else, right a historical wrong.
On a personal note, I would like the Champion Stakes returned to Newmarket. A straight mile and a quarter race is unique, whereas the same distance at Ascot is just another Group 1 over that distance. I would also get rid of the fillies and mares’ race and replace it with a similar race over a mile and a half for three-year-olds and upwards. I would move the big mile two-year-old race to my new ‘Champions Day’, the old Racing Post, Observer, Timeform Gold Trophy, and instigate a five-furlong championship race. Indeed, I would use the word ‘champion’ in every race title, even if ‘champion’ might be stretching the word definition a wee bit.
There needs to be less emphasis on our top horses going abroad to find the big prizes. Why ship a horse halfway around the world to the Breeders Cup or Melbourne if the money and prestige could be earned here. ‘Champions Day’ could become Europe’s version of the Breeders Cup. Perhaps Doncaster in the mud is not so inviting as Del Mar under a scorching sun and journalists would not relish staying home at the expense of an all-expenses paid jolly to the U.S. but horse racing is our sport, our concept, our gift to the sporting world, so why should we hide our light under a bushel. Doncaster in the mud in November is, I would suggest, a truer reflection of the sport’s history than dirt under a scorching sun in California or Melbourne.