southwell, i.c.w. & o'donnell

​I admit it, I do not understand the buzz around City of Troy. Yes, he is a top-class racehorse; the best 3-year-old of his generation. Thus far that can only be the highest of accolades given to him on account of his form this season. The worst of it is, we will only get one more chance to judge him on a racecourse and that will be at far away Del Mar at the Breeders Cup jamboree in a race that has more credence given it than it deserves. In my opinion, the races worth winning on the flat are not necessarily the races with the largest amount of prize-money thrown at them. When the Arc becomes less prestigious than a Breeders Cup race, well, to use my favourite phrase, the sport is going to hell in a handcart.
So, it took me by surprise to learn today that Southwell expect to open their gates to 1,500 people when City of Troy gallops a mile at the course next week in preparation for his ‘bid for some sort of fake immortality’. 
This being a Ballydoyle expedition it is unsurprising that it is being planned with military type strategy. Not only will City of Troy have four of his mates accompany him on the flight over, along with, I suspect, a similar number of Ballydoyle’s top work riders, but Coolmore’s own vets, stalls staff and a set of American style starting stalls. All this and the surface at Southwell will bear little resemblance to the ground the horse will race upon at Del Mar. But people of rare genius think out-of-the-box, their rank of genius based on all the decisions they have got right in the past, when the majority thought him wrong.
Where Southwell has missed out is that instead of allowing onlookers free entry to the work-out, they should have charged £1 or more and donated that money to one of the rehabilitation equine charities, R.o.R. or as the fun and intrigue is provided by Ireland’s best, Treo Eile.

Irish Champions Weekend continues to frustrate. In the coldest month of winter, Leopardstown can be rammed for the Dublin Racing Festival, yet be half-empty on a warm autumn day for its most important flat meeting in the calendar, with the Curragh proving equally disappointing.
My idea of a solution would be to either stage both days at Leopardstown, both days at the Curragh, to stage the meeting in alternate years at the two courses or go mad and think of staging it at a lesser racecourse that has the potential for drawing in the crowds. Dividing a meeting between two different locations, to me, does not make the I.C.W. like a joined-up experience. It is as if they could not make a decision of which of the two racecourses deserved the prestige of staging the meeting and when they tossed the coin it fell upright in the mud – ‘by gad, it is a sign by God that we must use both of the racecourses!’

In the Racing Post today there was an interview with Irish trainer Pat O’Donnell and what a breath of fresh air it proved to be. A man who speaks from the hip, tells it as he sees it, and yet talks common-sense.  A man with diverse interests in life, devoted to racing and the small number of horses he trains, a family man with justified complaints on how society is being frog-boiled to eventually destroy or diminish all he holds dear. He lit up York with his enthusiasm and his view should be regularly sought when a topic requires being spiked with a good old dose of clear and unbiased thinking. And this sent a thought to the front of my thinking.
I have always been an advocate of a citizens’ forums to oversee the decisions made by our parliaments. In Britain, I would scrap the House of Lords in favour of such a sounding board of sober and intelligent men and women.
Perhaps horse racing might benefit from a forum of wise racing men and women, a cabinet of the non-elected where every change can be debated, disected and on occasion vetoed by those most affected by rule change. In Ireland, though there are many who might chair such a forum, after his interview today, I would have no hesitation is putting forward the name of Pat O’Donnell.