the sport should be about exposing the limitations ....

​As I have always said; flat racing is biased toward breeders; it’s a class thing.
Maddy Playle in the Racing Post wrote a really good piece today on why geldings should be allowed to run in classics and all championship races. I agree with her, though there are no actual championship races on the flat, nothing that actually crowns a horse as a champion. The Champion Stakes does not produce the champion racehorse at 1 ¼-miles. In fact, the Champion Stakes is really only a consolation race for those horses either considered not up to Arc standards or horses unplaced in the Arc. ‘Champions Day, too, does not produce champions. But that is whole different can of worms.
It is argued that the Classics, Group 1’s and, the race that brought about this debate, the Commonwealth Cup, are important for producing stallions. Which may well be true. But it can also be said, these races do not always produce good, sound stallions and serve only to inflate the value of horses their owners wish to sell for breeding purposes. Yet surely the sport of horse racing should be about the racing of horses and if fillies are allowed to run in all the relevant races, why not geldings? The stallion and breeding side of the industry should be a matter for post-racing.
John Hislop, to his credit, even if truth were known, along with his wife, he was a pain-in-the-ass to Dick Hern, set out to expose the limitations of Brigadier Gerard, not to protect his reputation at all costs. It is why he won races from 6-furlongs to 1 ½ -miles; why he was determined to try him in the King George and Queen Elizabeth at Ascot. He was even thinking of keeping him in training as a 5-year-old when the Ascot Gold Cup might have been a temptation. Yet even with his brilliant race-career, because Brigadier Gerard was only by Queen’s Hussar, a disappointment at stud, and out of an undistinguished mare, he was not supported by breeders and was an only so-so success himself at stud.
As Frankel in the main sires stayers, it will remain a lasting regret that he was never tried at 1 ½ -miles.
As much as I argue horse racing is a working-class sport underpinned by the fabulously wealthy, there remains at its heart a prejudice towards the aristocracy of the world. Or the elite, if you will. Although the top breeders occasionally have a top-rated horse that is a gelding, in the main it is the lower rank of owner that has geldings and it wouldn’t do to allow the hoi polloi to pocket classics at the expense of owners considered suitable for membership of the Jockey Club, would it?
Of course, geldings, if they have achieved the right level of form, should be allowed to compete in the Commonwealth Cup, the Classics and Group 1’s. The best should always be allowed to compete against the best. No one raises an eyebrow that fillies are allowed to run in the Epsom Derby even though they have their own classic run over the same course and over the same distance. If it is acceptable for a filly to beat the colts, why not a gelding?
There is a major disparity in thinking when geldings can compete in both the King’s Stand and the Jubilee yet are exempt from running in the Commonwealth Cup, a juvenile in race terms compared to the long-standing sprints at the Royal meeting. I realise that as 3-year-old Battaash was a bit of a hooligan and not suitably mannered to appear before the reigning monarch but imagine if the Jubilee was a gelding-free zone; the best sprinter in a generation would have no race at the Royal meeting to strut his stuff.
Horse Racing was established by one man betting against another than his horse was the fastest or the best. Surely the raison-d’etre of the sport, the whole reason for its existence, is to establish the best horse in any given race and to arbitrarily decide to omit a horse on the grounds that should it win he will be of no value to breeders clashes with the principles that shape the sport?
As Ms Playle quite rightly pointed out, it is contrary that a horse is encouraged to run in races considered the main trials for a race, in this case the Commonwealth Cup, yet because it is deemed two balls short of a full sack is denied a shot at the race itself. Like so much of life at the moment, it is an illogical state of affairs and should be rectified as quickly as the slow-coach that is the B.H.A. can manage.