the 2023 st. leger: a weak or good field?

​The holders of world records in athletics are without fail the best at their chosen discipline at the moment they broke the previous fastest time, longest or highest jump or throw. The record might stand for a decade or more or, as with triple jumper, Jonathan Edwards (it has taken me five-minutes and a peruse of a baby naming book to recall his Christian name) he remains the greatest of all-time as no one has yet to triple-jump further than him in the best part of 30-years.
Of course, in athletics it is Olympic and World gold medallists we more easily recall than world record holders. At least those people with sharp as a tack memories can easily recall.
As I wrote in a previous piece, along with women’s football, athletics is one of my three surviving favoured sports and if I ever had the good fortune to meet Steve Cram or the aforementioned greatest triple jumper of all-time, I would ask them why the sport fails to trial intermediate distances on the track and other forms of field events. I see so many 200-metre events where a runner looks in need of a longer distance. Not, perhaps, 400-metre but a try at the intermediate distance of 300-metres. And why no intermediate distance between 800 and 1500-metres, for instance? Or 60-metres on the track or 2,000-metres? But that is a debate for another day and on a different platform.
Horse racing has a vast range of different distances and different disciplines, everything from 5-furlong sprints to 4-mile plus steeplechases. Horse racing, though, unlike athletics, cannot rank horses via best recorded times. In racing, we use ratings or ‘marks’ as some people refer to the number ascribed to the ability of each horse. Some see these figures as a form of science, with some ‘experts’ holding the same belief in them as a vicar holds in Biblical scripture. To my mind, a median mark after 3-runs would be more informative of the ability of a horse than a knee-jerk figure after a single performance. May I draw the reader’s attention to the mark given to Mum’s Tipple after winning a sales race. He has barely won anything since.
In his column in the Racing Post this week, the excellent Chris Cook poured cold water on this season’s running of the St. Leger. He thought Continuous a worthy winner who will doubtless go on to greater achievements, whilst disparaging the opposition as ‘weak’. He may be proved right in both considerations but he and other experts cannot possibly know with certainty as the evidence for such a claim lies in the future.
To dismiss Arrest, Desert Hero, Gregory and Tower of London, all of whom ran perfectly respectable races, as ‘weak’, is taking a leap in the dark. Middle Earth, too, on firmer ground next season and with a winter of strengthening-up, might prove to be a Group 1 horse. Anyone of those five-horses might prove to be Group 1 class next season, with Arrest looking a Gold Cup prospect, and what if Desert Hero were to win the Melbourne Cup?
Chris Cook, I believe, would not crow if his considerations proved correct and if he is proved incorrect, he would be gracious enough to admit he spoke too soon. At least he doesn’t get hung-up on ratings, as others do.
What the ‘experts’, and the B.H.A., should get hung-up about is the small number of trainers represented in this year’s St. Leger. 4. If Aidan O’Brien had suffered travelling difficulties, with his runners having to be withdrawn, only 5 horses would have contested a classic race in Britain. That’s the story to emerge from this season’s Doncaster St. Leger.
On This Day:
In 1825, 30 horses faced the barrier in the St. Leger. Interest in the result was so great the result was rushed to London by carrier pigeon. The race was won by Memnon, the favourite.
In 1836, Elis became the first horse to be transported to the races by horsebox, with post horses doing the pulling in relay from Goodwood to Doncaster.
In 1950, Lester Piggott lost his apprentice claim at Brighton when riding Zina to victory. He was fourteen.
1n 1989, Ayr was the first British racecourse to install sectional timing.