thinking out loud.

​One aspect of the bloated race-programme that receives little attention is the lack of variety these days. Racecourses seem more disposed to amateur races on the flat than staging a race that adds variety or originality to a race day. Here’s one idea: the male population in particular is getting weightier. Back in the day of Charlie Elliott and Joe Childs boys entered racing stables aged about fourteen weighing as little as 4st and not many lbs and by the time they had the chance to prove themselves as apprentice jockeys many of them were not much heavier. Say what you will but malnutrition has its advantages. Nowadays kids are well-fed from the breast onwards and if handicaps were weighted as they were in Ellioot’s and Childs’ day top jockeys like James Doyle and Adam Kirby would still be mucking out stables. Over the past couple of decades, the minimum weight in handicaps has risen in tune with the extra pounds jockeys were weighing. 7st 7lbs, apprentice claiming and doing 7, is a thing long in the past. Rightly so.
But when changes take place there are always sufferers. In this instance, those jockeys who amazingly can still ride at eight-stone or less are discriminated against. If you look back at Jimmy Quinn’s early career, he won many of the top handicaps, now he barely gets a look-in. With so many competent female jockeys now riding, which, perhaps was not the situation when Quinn was the jockey of favour by the top trainers for lowly-weighted handicappers at Royal Ascot and beyond, there is an argument for establishing ‘low weight’ races, as, I believe, are staged in the U.S.
As with many of the suggestions I put forward, as with winner-restricted races for professional jockeys, as they have established successfully in Ireland, low weight races would require no additional funding. When I say low weight, I mean top-weight would be somewhere around 8st 5. Perhaps a pound or two higher. With a bottom weight of 7st 7, as in the days of yore. Not a step backwards but a levelling of the playing field. Giving all jockeys an opportunity to increase their income a faction. I know Holly Doyle could ride in such races and she hardly needs a boost of income but in principle its an idea worth debating.
June is as good time to talk about the National Hunt season as any month, I’m sure you agree. The National Hunt season used to work fine before the introduction of summer jumping. The 3-month break between the end of one season and the start of the next was for me interminable but when the entries for the first meetings of the season at Newton Abbot and Market Rasen were published in the Sporting Life it was reason for the heart to sing with joy. Small fields back then, becoming smaller as the firm ground took its toll on horses bones and tendons but it was still jumping and it meant the  Gold Cup and Champion Hurdle horses would be off grass and back in training.
I was in favour of the introduction of summer jumping. Trainers and jockeys were denied an income by the summer’s break and some horses needed top of the ground for it to be worthwhile keeping them in training. I am still in favour of summer jumping, though less would definitely be more rewarding for all concerned. Personally, I think an autumn break of 5 or 6-weeks would better suit all concerned.
Racecourses like Worcester, Stratford and Newton Abbot can produce perfectly safe ground through the months of May, June and July, and it would be unfair in the extreme if the B.H.A. reduced their chances of an annual profit by returning to a lengthy summer break. After much thought – no, really. This issue has caused me a great deal of thought toing and froing – I believe the core National Hunt season should be between the third week of September to the end of May, with the season continuing until mid-August when the champion jockey, trainer, owner, etc would be crowned.
Yes! Yes! Yes! I hear you. The final meeting, as is, at Sandown works so well why advocate change? I would answer, why should one-meeting scupper innovation that might be in the best interests of the sport. The B.H.A. could sanction a non-flat racing Sunday for ‘Finals Day’; with the summer racecourses taking it in turn stage the last meeting of the season - Newton Abbot, Market Rasen, Perth, Worcester, Perth. To my way of thinking, a rural racecourse would be a more appropriate venue to crown champions than a metropolitan racecourse as the sport was originated when two people bet each other they could gallop between two steeples faster than the other.
I have always been of the opinion that both the flat and N.H. seasons require both a root and branch overhaul and a good deal of blue sky thinking. Let’s get the party started! Or a debate.