THE 1965 STEEPLECHASE. (AFTER THOUGHTS)

​I suspect that this season’s renewal of the Ascot 1965 Chase will become rather infamous for ‘breaking’ the only two runners to take part as I fear Cyrname will no longer be the horse the handicapper thought him to be and if Altior fails to hold on to his 2-mile crown next month he also might be considered ‘not the horse he once was’.
I have no complaints about the Ascot 1965 Chase (the year in the race title a reminder of when Ascot’s National Hunt course held its first meeting, though you knew that, didn’t you?) It is a necessary and important race for the time of the season and its pretty generous of Mr. Christie or his company to sponsor it. And Ascot is a fine racecourse for steeplechasing. And you cannot blame Ascot for Britain’s winters becoming the monsoon season. That’s climate change. Or far too many people on the planet. Or forest fires, volcanic eruptions or the indiscriminate use of plastic. What is important from a racing point of view is that Ascot bears no blame.
The problem this season, and it might prove a one-off, though the laws of averages does suggest it will occur again in the near-future, is that the race programme between October and the middle of November does very little to help trainers get their horses race-fit for the multitude of top-class races that pervade the National Hunt season like an overly-laden Noah’s Ark during the last two months of the year. To assuage public pressure to try Altior over a trip beyond his customary 2-miles Nicky Henderson had little or no choice but to start his star horse in the 1965 Chase and if he had withdrawn the horse on the day of the race, as he now professes he wishes he had done, he would have been forced to go the King George without a prep race.
I have said this before but it bears repetition: there should be a chase in late October/early November over 2-miles 6 or 3-miles for horses that have not won a steeplechase over a similar distance. In fact, there should be a lot more variation in race conditions over both hurdles and fences in the early months of the National Hunt season proper to give trainers of good horses, up and coming horses and the badly handicapped, options that at the moment they are denied. For 3-mile chasers it is almost a case of the Charley Hall at Wetherby or go straight to the Betfair or Ladbrokes Trophy without a prior run.
It handicaps those in the sport who market and publicise the sport to make life difficult for trainers. It’s one thing for it to become fashionable for trainers to try to prove how ‘adept’ they are in getting their charges fit enough on the home gallops to win first time out. It’s another thing entirely for the B.H.A. to force them down this road with unimaginative and bland race-planning.
In Ireland, where admittedly they have an over-supply of good-to-top-class horses, the programme, even during the summer months, has plenty of condition races to help trainers bring their horses to a peak for the winter ahead. There is a window of opportunity here for the smaller courses, as is the case in Ireland, to stage chase and hurdle races with conditions to suit the good-to-top-class horses. At Navan only this week attendance was swelled because they staged a race where the conditions suited Tiger Roll. Couldn’t Ludlow, Chepstow, Newton Abbot, to name but three, stage similar races to the Boyne Hurdle in October or early November? Racecourses these days have the facilities, within the confines of whatever weather the gods believe we deserve, to provide decent jumping ground twelve months of the year. There really isn’t any reason or excuse for every race meeting during the time period I am discussing to have one novice hurdle, one novice chase and four handicaps and a poorly subscribed bumper.
If I were Nick Rust’s successor, my first initiative would be to hold meetings, singularly, with trainers (not their federation but actual trainers), jockeys, owners, racecourse clerks of courses etc, to establish what changes each occupation could suggest to improve both the sport and their place within it.
Nicky Henderson, in my estimation, was not wrong to up Altior in trip. Indeed, I would urge him to try again at Aintree. Subsequent events suggest he should have listened to his gut reaction and have withdrawn Altior from the 1965 Chase, with the abscess he suffered around Christmas a saving grace as it turned out as it forced him to give Altior longer to recover from his Ascot exertions. But he should have had options to race beforehand to ensure Altior was 100% when he went into battle with Cyrname.
To my mind, to my reading of the 1965, Altior stayed the 2-mile 5-furlongs, irrespective of how fit he was. To say he did not stay does a great disservice to Cyrname and to Paul Nicholls. What beat Altior that day was a combination of the heavy ground and the paucity of opportunities the current race programme provided by race-planners to help Nicky Henderson have his horse 100% on the day.