REASONABLE CRITICISM, BRANT DUNSHEA, I KNOW THE WINNER OF THE TRIUMPH, HORSES ARE WONDERFUL & 1985.

​Several trainers have expressed their view that the race formerly known as the Grand National (it still is, of course, though there is very little of the grand to it these days) will lose its popularity if it is continually won by the top trainers, top jockeys and the same half-a-dozen of owners. It is what I have said since the B.H.A. and the Jockey Club started first to tinker and then to slaughter the race. Reducing the maximum number of runners was for me the last straw and have vowed never to call the race Grand every again. It is the Aintree National as far as I am concerned.
The suggestion that there should be win and your in races throughout the season was put forward two or three years ago and yet, apparently, Aintree and the B.H.A. are still giving it consideration. Woke has won over history, tradition and romance, and when you either ignore one of the three and consign romance to the pages of a Reg Green book on the subject, the race is no longer the Grand National but just another National, albeit a richly endowed long-distance chase.

Brant Dunshea, chief executive of the B.H.A., defended the appalling starts at the Cheltenham Festival by taking the side of the starters and the protocol they have in place. He is quoted as saying ‘if the starter had let them go when the horses were jig-jogging we would have had the Charge of the Light Brigade.’ He is wrong, of course. The two main factors in horses breaking into a canter or jig-jogging was starting a race on a bend and starting a race so far away from the tape, which actually provided the sight of horses galloping past the starter, which Brant Dunshea is against, it seems.

Poniros won the Triumph. I remembered. Finally. He will be interesting to follow, not only at Punchestown but during the coming flat season. One thing is for sure, he will never start 100/1 ever again.

Did anyone watch Nick Luck interviewing Gavin Cromwell last Sunday. Although to be honest, Nick Luck might have been interviewing Inothewayurthinkin given he was in the camera lens the very same amount of time as his trainer. He only went out of shot when he changed from peering over Cromwell’s left shoulder to his right. Even when the trainer took himself out of Inothewayurthinking’s stable, the horse followed him to take up position once more on Cromwell’s shoulder.
The horse looked wonderfully well, very pleased with himself indeed. And, no, I still have no liking for his name, Gold Cup winner or not!

Finally, some perspective on last Tuesday’s attendance of 55,498. In 1985, the day See You Then won his first of three Champion Hurdles, a record attendance for a Tuesday was set at 27,880. Yes, back then, everyone was happy to get north of 25,000!