post grand national blues.

​This time of year for anyone who as with me has had a life-long love affair with National Hunt racing and for whom the months from October to April are a time of consummation and romance, whilst the flat for the remainder of the year provides a similar level of entertainment as a pen-pal who you once lusted after as a teenager but who now lives happily in New Zealand with her All-Black lock-forward husband and her ‘wonderful’ children, one of which is a product of his previous marriage. I used to love the flat; not so much now, unfortunately.
There is a predictability about flat racing that chills my natural inclination toward romantic interpretation. It is only question of how many of the classics and Group 1’s fall to Coolmore, Godolphin or John Gosden. They may not carve-up all the top races but you can bet your bottom dollar that the majority will head in their collective direction. And if another trainer does muscle into the cartel it will be someone who we are all familiar with, the horse or horses owned by someone who is a powerhouse of the sport. Perhaps it has always been so, but back then I was callow, even more naïve than I am now, without the experience of a life lived as an under-achiever and eternal underdog.
It will be the same with the jockeys: Dettori, Murphy, Doyle, Moore etc; all brilliant jockeys, of course, but wouldn’t it be nice if someone unsung got in on the act, someone equally as talented in the saddle but who until now has not had the opportunities to prove their mettle at the top table, that when a good spare becomes available trainers and owners do not look to France or a foreign jockey but to someone closer at hand.
Also, does no one in flat racing, trainer or owner, give any thought about the boost the sport would receive through the summer months if a female jockey was given the opportunity to compete in, let alone have a chance of winning, the important races, the classics and Group 1’s. Do they not watch National Hunt? Do they not recognise the impact Bryony Frost, Racheal Blackmore and Lizzie Kelly has had on the winter game, winning high-profile races and taking the sport from the back pages to the front pages? If only the likes of Nicola Currie, Hollie Doyle, Hayley Turner and Josephine Gordon were given similar opportunities? Dream on, eh? It is why I have championed the idea of a big money race confined to professional female jockeys at somewhere like Goodwood or Newmarket.
And wouldn’t the flat season start with more oomph if the Lincoln reverted to being what is was in its heyday, a 40-runner race started from a barrier. This radical, some would say mad, idea would give the flat a race of jeopardy, a flat (not quite) equivalent to the Grand National, and would give present day jockeys an idea of what race riding was like before the appearance of starting stalls.
 
This time of year, when we seem to gallop frantically to Sandown and the last day of the season, is too chock-a-block, to my mind, with staying handicap chases. In a short space of time there is the Midland National, the Grand National, the Scottish National, the Irish National and whatever the race known as the Whitbread has become. It is odd race-planning, especially as the season begins with a succession of top-level 2-mile 4-furlong chase and I have always thought it would be more appropriate if the ex-Whitbread was run over this distance.
 
Someone, it might have been the official handicapper or someone who holds a similar job with the Racing Post, suggested that this year’s Grand National was the ‘classiest ever’. Was he not around in 1973? 1st Red Rum. 2nd Crisp. 3rd L’Escargot. 4th Spanish Steps. The last three carried 12st, 12st and 11st 13lbs respectively. The following year Red Rum carried 12st to victory, beating L’Escargot, 11st 13lbs, by 7-lengths. Carrying 11st 9lb, Spanish Steps was fourth. That is class. It is by the standard of such races that the magnificent Tiger Roll must be judged.
Incidentally, and I am as enamoured by Tiger Roll, as anyone, but I would argue he did not create history last Saturday but equalled an historic racing event. At the moment Red Rum continues to have the edge. He may have carried a good few less pounds than Tiger Roll when he first won the Grand National but he carried 12st in his second, beating far classier horses than were in Saturday’s race. Such statistics, though, will pale into insignificance if The Tiger wins a third consecutive Grand National, which given the relative ease of Saturday’s victory is far more likely than not.