sad times, festival handicaps, yet more group 1's & welsh greyhounds.

​Today’s Racing Post reflects the sad times we are experiencing in our sport. Yesterday, Neptune Collonges led the cortege at the funeral of John Hales. The gallant grey represented not only John Hales’ greatest moment in the sport but his love of horses in general. It reflects great credit on the man himself, as well as his family, that people as busy as Paul Nicholls and Clifford Baker were both in attendance, as were Dan Skelton and Oil Murphy, as well as Sir Alex Ferguson and Ged Mason.
A great and good man who will both long-missed and long-remembered.
And, of course, the sport continues to mourn the loss of Michael O’Sullivan, whose funeral is also this week, I believe. Today there were touching tributes from the sport’s greatest amateurs, Patrick Mullins and Derek O’Connor. As Patrick expressed in his opening sentence, he wrote out of duty, wishing he did not have to write at all. In his piece, Patrick revealed, it was a revelation to me, anyway (I dare say the better informed were already informed) that he is father to a four-month-old, whether it is a boy or a child he did not enlighten. This week he has seen at first-hand the growing of new life and the taking away of life cut short.
Derek O’Connor, writing in the Irish point-to-point section of today’s paper, highlighted not only O’Sullivan’s talent in the saddle but his prowess as a human being, his kind nature, his willingness to learn and his calm demeanour. It seems no one in the whole of Ireland has a bad word to say about the young man, which, for his family, is the testament they must hold dear to in this hardest of all-weeks for them.
It is not only individuals passing on their thoughts and memories of O’Sullivan. The final page of today’s Racing Post was bought by Coolmore, not to promote their stallions, but to pass on their condolences to the O’Sullivan family and friends. It was a reaching out that showed the kind-heart that the majority or racing people are blessed with.
And, of course, we also lost Joe Saumarez Smith this week, a man the sport could ill-afford to lose.

With the exception of the Ultima, the handicaps at Cheltenham have held up, with a few of them numerically superior to last year. Pleasingly, for someone who advocated the old 4-miler, now the 3-mile 6-furlonger, should be open to professional riders, though I did not advocate it being a handicap, and entries have soared which should provide a more competitive race than for many a long year.

The European Pattern Committee have upgraded the City of York Stakes to Group 1 status, as well as the Long Distance Cup on Champions Day at Ascot. There is also a new Group 1 in France. As if flat racing needed more Group 1’s. Less Group 1’s is what is required to ensure these races are competitive and not merely laps of honour for the one true Group 1 horse that usually takes part. No mention in the article was made of downgrading any Group 1’s to Group 2’s, either.
What also amazed me was that in times of financial hardship a new 2-year-old race is to be included on Champions Day, worth £250,000. All this will do, mark my words, is make existing Group 1’s at the end of the season less competitive and make one of the top stables, no doubt Ballydoyle, ever more-wealthy. As always, flat racing looks after the rich, while allowing the rank and file to feed off crumbs. Wrong impression, old boy, is my thinking on the matter.

The ignorant Welsh Government, Labour, of course, is to ban greyhound racing in Wales. With only one greyhound track in Wales this is more political gesturing than concern for the welfare of greyhounds or even the people who earn their living from the sport, but it does represent the slow creep towards the extinction of all sports involving animals. What next, the forced closure of Welsh racecourses? A ban on keeping horses for the pleasure they provide? A ban on Pony Clubs? A ban on dog agility classes. A ban on using dogs in mountain rescue?