the covid-19 interlude.

​Look, I’ll come right out with it; I believe there is more to this coronavirus pandemic than meets the eye. I do not deny there is a virus inexorably wending its way around the globe and that people with serious health conditions, as well as the frail elderly, are at imminent risk of death because of it. But what is accompanying the virus around the globe is a collective hysteria that is as disturbing as the long-term consequence of the restrictions on freedom that the world’s governments are placing on its citizens. Behind this pandemic, believe me, is something far more frightening than a health issue than in reality is just, for the fit and healthy, no more than a serious flu contagion, a little worse than any other flu outbreak. And the figures are being manipulated to suit the official narrative. When it is announced that 2,000 people have been diagnosed with Covid-19 it is assumed by the public that at that very moment 2,000 people are ill, perhaps on their death-beds. If the majority of people who contract the virus only suffer mild-to-moderate symptoms perhaps as few as 500 will actually be on the serious-side of ill, added to which the official figure also includes those people who have had the virus and who are now well again.
That said, and someone has to say it, it is what is, even if we might never get to know why it is like it is.
And this might be a good opportunity for the B.H.A. to show some real leadership and put together a racing programme for the day when we are all allowed to get back to our racing lives. If we assume that we might be back racing in May, which I suggest will be too late to stage the Guineas meeting, but not too late, even if dates have to be altered, to do as the organisers of the Kentucky Derby have done and come up with a new date for both the Epsom Derby and Royal Ascot, neither of which, I suggest, can take place on the dates scheduled and without any races to ensure trainers have their horses hard-fit for the important races at both meetings.
I am a diehard jumps man, and I have already urged anyone reading this blog to lobby Aintree, Randox Health, the B.H.A. and may I add the big bookmakers, to ensure the 2020 Grand National is run at some point during the remaining eight-months of the year (I have suggested Aintree’s November meeting) as the sport will be in dire need of a sporting and financial fillip, though I am equally aware how vital it is the breeding industry and to flat trainers that as much of the 2020 flat season takes place as possible, even if some of the big meetings might need to be reduced from 4-days or three-days to one or two-day meetings.
And it is not only humans who are impacted by a cessation in activity. It is too early, too cold in part, with the fields too wet, to en-masse rough-off horses and turn them out into the paddocks for a long rest. Jump trainers can do this more easily than their colleagues on the flat but they need to have an idea when the sport might conceivably be alive again. You cannot keep a very fit racehorse in wraps for long as it will quite quickly go stir-crazy and no doubt hurt itself with an excess of over-exuberance.
I am of the opinion that there should be no two-year-old races before June at the earliest as I believe too many young horses are thwarted in their natural growth and development by being hard-trained and hard-ridden before their bones and muscles are fully mature. Thanks, but no thanks, to Covid-19, this season I may get my way and it would be a display of great foresight if the B.H.A. were to set in motion a veterinary study to discover if my thoughts, and the thoughts more eminent people than me, have substance. The breeding industry, I fear, place monetary gain before the soundness of the breed, as does the racing programme.
This baffling, in some way exciting and intriguing, but in other ways deeply disturbing, staging post in all our lives, is the moment when we need the B.H.A. (and racing’s stakeholders – how I hate the idea of stakeholders, which is just another name for passing the buck) to display proper leadership skills, to be proactive rather reactive (which is its greatest fault in my book) and to show foresight and not to rely on the least line of resistance. There are thousands of people employed in one way or another in this sport, it is the B.H.A.’s duty of care to the sport to ensure the least amount of damage is incurred while we are in the grip of this Covid-19 hysteria. The money lost to the sport by the cancellation of the Grand National must be recouped, not by government hand-outs but by moving heaven and Earth to ensure 2020’s big races and big meetings are not sacrificed. The 2020 Grand National must be run, as must the Epsom Derby and, hopefully, if possible, all of the races at Royal Ascot.
This sport has suffered, and survived, two World Wars, foot and mouth epidemics, long periods of snow and ice and the equine flu-outbreak of last year. We will survive this pestilence but the sport’s finances, at a time when it can least afford to do so, will be diminished, the B.H.A. must act to ensure the sport’s crown jewels are not lost and we can salvage as much of the race programme as is humanly possible.