SAME OLD. SAME OLD.

​The topic of today’s lecture is a familiar one, hence the title. Given my views on this matter it must seem my aim is to make life difficult for those trainers who have the good fortune to train top-class horses, and no doubt if I were to be listened to by the powers-that-be life would become less straight-forward for messrs Henderson, Nicholls, Mullins and Elliot. Racing, though, would benefit, if the hurdles programme at Grade 1 & 2 level were to be less linear than it has become.
Horse racing is not a throwaway confection confined to the racing results of today. We are blessed that horse racing, rather like our country, was conceived by an aristocracy that had, in many instances, more money at their disposal than good sense and because they had little to occupy their time but to acquire ever greater riches the sport of horse racing, and of course betting on horse racing, flourished, and because, as today, the care of the horse was governed by those of lower rank, the sport became a fascination for all classes of society. To this day we take advantage of civil buildings large and small built on the largess of the aristocracy, with schools, museums and churches still in use.
Horse racing mingles with the history of our country.
My gripe is that the racing programme, as well as being largely disorganised on a daily basis, is designed, at the top level, to make rich men richer without taking into the account the historic narrative of the sport.
Let me try to explain my point of view. There is no argument, or at least there shouldn’t be, that Arkle is the greatest steeplechaser of all time, and perhaps will never be surpassed. The form book tells us that during his career no horse was capable of beating him at level weights or indeed when receiving two-stone or more. No horse in the history of steeplechasing was so dominant and if ill-luck had not stopped his career at such an early age he might have won Grand Nationals under big weights and surpassed Golden Miller’s record of five Cheltenham Gold Cups.
The hurdle division, though, is far mistier when it comes to assigning true greatness, with opinion based on visual inspection the only method that can be deployed as the form book down the ages is of little help.
It does not take a genius to declare Buveur D’air the top hurdler of this and last season. In my opinion he is, if such a category exists, an ordinary champion who could not as yet be considered alongside hurdlers such as Night Nurse, Sea Pigeon, Monksfield and the horses the columnists of today seem to forget about, Persian War and Sir Ken.
When Persian War won the Schweppes Handicap Hurdle the race was worth £6,751 to the winner, only a £1,000 short of what he received when winning the Champion Hurdle the following month. His opposition contained many of the top hurdlers in the country, yet today’s equivalent race will never see the likes of Buveur d’Air even entered let alone running. We now have a situation, because of the proliferation of graded hurdles, where the most valuable handicap hurdles are not won by top-class horses but horses of ‘potential, horses ‘ahead of the handicapper’, horses whose merit is a matter of interpretation. There should, of course, be races in the programme for such horses but not, I contend, the most important handicap hurdles.
To know the true merit of the generations we need the best hurdlers to be tested on a regular basis and not ‘saved’ for Cheltenham and the consolation of Aintree and Punchestown. The proliferation of graded hurdles does the sport no real good. Races like the Contenders Hurdle and the Kingwell do nothing to aid betting turnover, provide virtually no spectacle for the race-going public and are in no way informative as in the main they are only a paid alternative to a racecourse gallop closed to public view.
As opposed to the trainers of yesteryear who perhaps had only the basic of training facilities and needed to run their horses to have them 100% for the big days, modern day trainers have all-the-year-round training grounds with no reliance on grass gallops and consequently it is easier for them to send a horse to the races fully fit even on debut. Yet, seemingly, the best hurdlers must be trained as if fragile, with races framed so that they are never tested until the day that truly matters. This cottonwooling of our best horses is detrimental to the sport and the programme of graded races should be halved in order to encourage the top horses into the top handicaps so as to allow historians and the race-going public to gauge their true merit.
You may argue, and with justification, that it is the responsibility of a trainer to act in the best interests of his owners but I would contend that along with the honour of training great horses comes a responsibility to the sport, the race-going public and the history of the sport. And it is the responsibility of the powers-that-be to have a programme of races that bring about a combination of exciting races and a form book that informs the race-goers that follow us where the benchmark of greatness is to be found. As is the case with Arkle.