murphy/MULLINS/CHELTENHAM.

​A quick summary of my thoughts regarding the punishment given to Oisin Murphy for being a very, very naughty boy.
Does the punishment fit the crime? I am swayed towards saying no to this question. If you compare ‘the crime’ he is adjudged to be guilty of, against, for example, persistent whip abuse or dangerous riding, fourteen-months, reduced to eleven-months to take into account the three-months from when he handed-in his riding licence, is the stuff of the jackboot. Yes, he is a persistent offender and has shown a belief that as champion jockey he is above the law of both the land and the sport in which he earns a very nice living, yet the only person he has hurt is himself.
As an alcoholic, to be cast into the racing wilderness for the best part of a year will shackle him to the precipice of falling back into drink. As an addict, a young man with little or no will-power, it seems, he should have been offered the life-line of a return to the sport far closer than next season. The St.Leger meeting, perhaps. Initially, when his misdemeanours were first made public, I thought six-months out of the sport would do him good, allow him time to unwind, seek all the help afforded to him by people trained to get alcoholics back on track and his friends and family.
What Oisin must realise is the sport will get by quite happily without him. Horse racing does not need Oisin Murphy as much as Oisin Murphy needs horse racing. Yes, the Covid rules were senseless and ineffective but in circumventing them by telling porky-pies he committed a grave injustice to the sport and muddied his already shaky reputation. I like Oisin and I hope he can get himself together during his enforced absence, improve his show-jumping skills and return next February a more rounded and sensible human being. 

Willie Mullins will have at least sixty horses running over the four-days of the Cheltenham Festival. Sixty! That is more Festival runners than most trainers will have in their lifetime! He will have more runners than Paul Nicholls, Nicky Henderson and Dan Skelton put together. It’s not just Ireland v Britain. It’s Mullins v Britain. He has so many horses coming across the Irish Sea that the Racing Post did not have room to accommodate them all in their Festival Stable Tour which today set down at Closutton. And not just two or three were left off the page but close on thirty. And you can guarantee that one of those thirty will breeze in at a ridiculous starting price.
What this remarkable fact exemplifies is that the Cheltenham National Hunt Festival has become the essential element of life for both the major owners and those who train their horses. In its self this is okay. It is something to be proud about; that horse racing has a product that all sporting editors and t.v. outlets must keep at least one eye on. But for the overall health of the sport, it is counterproductive. More and more horses are being kept ‘fresh’ for Cheltenham in March, though these same horses, win or lose, horses, that apparently love ‘to be fresh’, will turn-up at Aintree three-weeks later and again at Sandown and/or Punchestown. This ‘fad’, though, can only lessen the quality of the season leading-up to Cheltenham, diminishing the sport rather than enhancing its richness.
The Cheltenham Festival should not become an out-of-control monster munching all the competitiveness and leaving only crumbs for the races that historically have helped make the sport what it is today. What can be done to stem the tide?
As some horses may be trained solely for the Festival due to inherent weakness or injury problems, it might be worth giving some thought to preventing any horse having its first race of the season at the meeting. If this rule was in place for this season, Appreciate It would have run before now. Willie Mullins more or less admits that once his chase career was stopped in its tracks by a small injury, he had no intention of running the horse before the Champion Hurdle.
Perhaps, and I am only thinking out loud, there might be a stipulation for running in any of the three Blue Riband races that a horse should have run in one of a number of selected races during the season to qualify.
I do know that trainers hands need to be forced to run their star horses more often than is becoming the norm. Given his liking for sticking to tried and tested routes, if Appreciate It were to beat Honeysuckle in the Champion Hurdle, Willie Mullins may use the same first-time out strategy for all following Champion Hurdle attempts, which though an added ingredient to the mix this season, will pale into ‘See You Then’ in succeeding years.