speed kills; it's just so.

​I have been A.F.K. (away from keyboard) for the past week due to my laptop’s demand for a week’s holiday from my company. Returned to full computing health, we are now reunited, though our friendship remains as tenuous as that between guard and prisoner. 
During the past 9-days, I have watched many Grand Nationals on YouTube, which has reinforced my opinion that the great race is suffering death by a thousand cuts from custodians of the race who appear collectively to have little respect for either its history or tradition. I doubt if the Grand National’s most fervent historian, Reg Green, would approve of what has been done to the race in the time of Suleka Varma.
We are presently, I believe, in the fifth stage of the devaluation of the world’s greatest horse race, where the race now teeters at the precipice of extinction. I admit the race was not bathed in glory at its inception when in 1839 Lottery defeated 17-rivals, of which only 7 completed. To begin with the Grand National was a cross-country race, with plough and walls to be overcome. By the time of Manifesto, winner in 1897 and 1899, amateur riders were fast becoming displaced by professionals, with the race resembling the race of history up to 1960, when it was first brought to the television screen.
It is forgotten that even in the late fifties the race was under scrutiny and the jockeys in the 1960 Grand National were explicitly ‘advised’ by Lord Sefton to avoid the mad dash to the first fence, the main contributing factor for so many falls, so many injuries. Only 26 faced the starter and only 8 completed the course.
The day of the upright unforgiving black fences were numbered and since the 1960’s the mindset of succeeding clerks of the course has been to modify any aspect of the race they believe the naysayers might approve of. The fences were slopped to make them ‘easier’ to negotiate and in some cases lowered. This third stage of development did little to alter the danger every jockey and horse must defy in every horse race, flat or jumps, Monday-to-Sunday. As in stages 1,2 and 3, horses still feel, with a similar percentage of fatalities and jockeys were still occasionally sleeping the night away after a fall in the race in the local hospitals.
Stage 4 saw the advent of plastic cores to the fences, the distance shortened, the height of fences lowered, the maximum number of runners reduced to 34 and the minimum rating raised for a horse to be eligible to run. There is still the demand for a higher class of horse to take part, yet still they do not achieve the class of horse that previously ran in the race, though it is continually stated the quality of the runners is higher than in the past.
Prior to the 1940’s, every top steeplechaser would be sent to Aintree. Yes, the quality tailed-off there-after, but the genuine National horse remained – Freebooter, Irish Lizard, Tuder Line, Gentle Moya, Sundew, Tiberetta, Wyndburgh, Mr. What, it’s a long list – horses that turned-up year-after-year and returned home no worse for the experience. In 1970, though in that year you could not call Red Rum the class horse he became, Crisp, L’Escargot and Spanish Steps certainly were of the highest rank, with the three of them joining Red Rum in breaking the existing race record time. Crisp never graced the race again, though the other three became standing dishes in the race. The Gold Cup winners Alverton and Davy Lad also ran in subsequent years, with good-luck, sadly, deserting both horses. Garrison Savannah nearly won the race and The Thinker also went close to glory.
Nowadays the race neither attracts Gold Cup winners nor what might be termed Grand National specialists. Team Spirit, for instance, won the race on his fifth attempt. The race also no longer attracts horses from countries outside of Britain and Ireland, which suggests the race no longer sparks the imagination of foreign trainers, owners or jockeys. No more the days of Ben Nevis and Jay Trump, which can only be detrimental to the history and tradition of the race.
The Grand National is no longer available to everyone. The farmer-owned, permit-trained, as with Grittar, is a romance long gone. The journeyman jockey, as with Nigel Hawke and Liam Treadwell, winning the race and elevating themselves into the public consciousness, is no more. And the gallant near-miss is relegated to the past. Remember Just So, owned and trained by Somerset farmer, Henry Cole, a horse as slow as a chaser could get, a steadfast and reliable jumper whose chance was always increased twenty-fold if the race was a marathon run on heavy ground. I will never forget Just So as I backed him at long-odds only to see him denied by Richard Dunwoody on Minniihoma. There are no Just So’s anymore. No Friendly Henry’s who had never won a race yet finished sixth in a Grand National and no doubt (crossed fingers) lived a better, longer life because of it. And though one would never want to see it, there will doubtless never be another Foinavon, or a mad, bad and sad race, as when Red Marauder and Smartie were the only two horses to overcome ground that resembled ‘the battle of the Somme’, as Alastair Down described that most memorable of Grand Nationals. Should never have been run, Alastair? No, the race was memorable and added greatly to the history and intrigue of a sporting institution and, more importantly, no horse suffered for all the calamity that ensued.
The race is not safer for any ‘improvement’ implemented since 1960. I wish it were, as I am cut deep to the heart when a horse loses its life in pursuit of glory for its owner, trainer, jockey, punter or the enthusiast like myself. No tinkering will make a horse race safe. Nor will any amount of safety equipment make a jockey safe from injury or death, as we have seen quite recently at a point-to-point in Kent. In wanting the race to be safe for human and horse, we are praying for a miracle. In 1929, 66 went to post – the year the ditch was filled-in at the Canal Turn, would you believe – with 10 completing and, I believe, no fatalities. The previous year, 42 went to post and only 2 completed.
What Miss Varma and her advisors fail to comprehend is that speed kills – it is why firm ground is now no longer permitted on British racecourses, why jump racing at all-weather tracks was abandoned – and in reducing distance and height, the Grand National is now as much a speed test as a stamina test. Speed Kills! You used to see such warnings on British roads. Perhaps a speed kills sign should be erected at the start of the race. Or perhaps outside the office of the clerk of the course. Nowadays I pray for heavy rain at Aintree on Grand National day as I know this will slow the race and lessen the possibility of tragedy.
The decisions being made on the part of the Grand National are made to protect the cash-cow that the great race has become, not to protect the race itself. Listening, and acting accordingly, to the baying, rabid few, is not the same as defending and preserving the golden jewel. Not one of us can defend the tragedy of a horse losing its life while in pursuit of our glory. What can be done, though, is to ensure every racehorse is given wonderful care and attention, whether in training or retired, with no thoroughbred allowed to fall into neglect, as happened with Hello Dandy, and allowed to life lives to the fullest. It is why I have long advocated that the Grand National should be used to raise funds for equine charities.
Where next will the axe fall if, God forbid! another tragedy occurs at Aintree in April? Reduce the field to 30, remove the Canal Turn and put in a smooth bend to Valentines? Lower the Chair? Reduce the distance once more? Suleka Varma has made a rod for her own back. I suspect, in a decade, the Grand National will become a twenty-runner race, run over 3-miles. The line of travel suggests my negativity might well prove horribly correct.