random thoughts post aintree.

​At the entrance to Laurel Park racecourse there is a statue of Billy Barton, the American-bred, American-owned, horse that finished a distant second to Tipperary Tim, after being remounted, in the 1928 Grand National. 42 set out, only two finished. I should, and perhaps will later on in the day, conduct research into whether Laurel Park remains a racecourse; my scant knowledge of American racing and my poor memory could easily count against me; or is now a business park or housing estate. I hope not. A little bit of me dies whenever I am informed of a racecourse having to make way for the bricks and cement of a multi-national money-making corporation. Even U.S. dirt tracks.
The point I am slowly getting round to making is this: Billy Barton was not a superstar of the pantheon of U.S. racing. He was not a forerunner of Seabiscuit or Secretariat. In a country where steeplechasing could not even be described as the equivalent of point-to-points in Britain and Ireland, someone financed a statue of him for no other reason than he was a gallant second in a steeplechase in a far-away land. Yes, Billy Barton won all the top timber races in his homeland and as a reformed rogue, as was Jay Trump, who had been banned from the oval dirt tracks for refusing to race and was better-loved because of it, and he was an unlucky loser in the Grand National, yet Battleship won the Grand National for his homeland and though his owner had a statue commissioned of him at her ranch, I don’t believe he is immortalised at a U.S. racecourse. Horses are, and remain, a source of pride to people.
Those who believe racing people only want the thoroughbred for financial gain, who will go to any measure to break their will so they spring to human commands, to jump and race ‘until death’, their carcass then sold in order to extract every last penny out of them, should be made aware that humans have immortalised hundreds of horses down the decades in bronze, either displayed in public places or privately on lawns in country homes. Thousands upon thousands of horses hang on walls, immortalised in oil, many painted by artists of international renown. Photographs, too, of much-loved horses hang by the million, I suggest, on walls of modest bungalows and mansions alike.
Humans do not skimp on affection for the horse. Tears of joy; tears of deep sorrow. Horses take humans to the very heights of emotion and to the very depths of despair. The sight of an ex-racehorse still enjoying life never fails to bring me joy. It is as it should be. Even though he is now 31, J.P. McManus has Istabraq treated as if he were a living God. Respect from birth to the grave. As it should be.
I love the sport of horse racing, especially National Hunt, and though I cannot hand on heart state that ‘we’ are without fault, I know deep within my heart that ‘we’ endeavour always to do right by the horse. I understand that people who observe the sport from outside of it are appalled at the sight of horses falling during a horse race and, when they rise and gallop after the field, I, too, sigh in relief. No one who lives and breathes the sport wants to see a horse injured or killed. But it is a dangerous sport that must play out in a woke world where people believe they have the right to demand that anything they disapprove of should be banned. Horse racing is not alone to this threat: motor racing has its critics, boxing, too, greyhound racing, any sport that involves weaponry, and so it goes on.
I have made my suggestion for how the Grand National might be tweaked to improve safety in a previous blog. I would reject, though, any changes to the course or its design. I would also oppose further limiting the number of horses that part, knowing that any horse race of any number of runners can provide tragedy. Sixty horses could run one year with nothing of controversy occurring. Ten might run the following year and there might be two equine fatalities. We live in the lap of the gods. I am still a naïve optimistic, after all these years. Aintree could, though, provide a few baby steps towards appeasing our critics. A cemetery on the course or close by for the fallen. If a percentage of all prize-money throughout the Grand National meeting was set aside for equine charities; if a similar small percentage of all winning bets went to an equine charity. If a small percentage of bookmaker profits on the Grand National went to an equine charity. If a small percentage of jockey fees went to an equine charity.
Allow the Grand National to be a force for good for horses all around the world.