'this world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.'

​The above quotation is from Horace Walpole, fourth Earl of Orford. Walpole is not a usual source of material for anyone writing on the subject of horse racing, not being known as a man who habitually kept ante-post betting tickets in his wallet. To be truthful, I was scratching around for a title, what with Sir Winston Churchill letting me down. I did consider using part of his ‘We will fight them on the beaches’ speech but it seemed, finally, to be over-egging the pudding a mite bit.
What came to mind when my eyes fell upon the Walpole quote in my copy of The Oxford Library of Quotation – a sort of literary ‘get out of jail free card for brain-dead wordsmiths – was the comical sight, at least on reflection, of the pink-shirted brigade attempting to scale the wire barricades at Aintree while the local constabulary hung on to their legs. The Pink Brigade think about our sport, while we, the horse lover and its protector, feel. What is data to the Pink Brigade, is tragedy to those whose pride and joy is no more.
The U.S., with its merciless dirt tracks, do not help our struggle against the cruel and malicious Pink Brigade. U.S. trainers do not help our cause by fighting tooth and nail to overturn the Horse-Racing Integrity and Safety Authority’s attempt to initiate nationally recognised uniform anti-doping rules, even though a judge has already ruled the proposed new regulations to be constitutional. It is the combination of dirt tracks and trainers allowed to run a horse under medication that fuels my dislike of the Breeders’ Cup and U.S. racing in general. To my mind, U.S. racing is home to the Openly Cheating. If that statement is libellous, if only in a broad sense, my reply is to ask how many trainers have their licences terminated in the U.S. for persistent rule violations. Only last week, Saffie Joseph became the latest to have his name added to the list of trainers to stain U.S. racing’s reputation.
For those who do not know, 7 horses lost their lives at the Run for the Roses’ meeting at Churchill Downs last week, two on the undercard of the Kentucky Derby.
The U.S. are upholding their responsibility to improve equine safety, I admit, and the 42 equines fatalities at Santa Anita in 2019 was cut to just 12 in 2022. That, though, remains, 12 at one single racetrack spread over a period of several months.
And, of course, we are not talking about jump racing here. One can only assume jump racing in the U.S. must have a less jaw-dropping fatality rate. We are talking about flat racing and flat racing on dead-flat racetracks. Excuse the unintentional and possibly offensive use of dead and flat to highlight my point. I can understand a spectator being bored to death by horses forever running short distances on a left-handed racetrack, with no undulations for variety, no stiff miles, no breakneck 5-furlongs, no race over 2-miles or more. Indeed, very few races beyond 1-mile 1-furlong. If Britain and Ireland adopted the U.S. style of racing, I, too, would consider wearing pink t-shirts and carrying super-glue in my pocket.
As we all know, horse racing in the U.S. falls a long way down the popularity ratings with both the media and the public and, as with in this country, the sport only appears in the national headlines when something awful or controversial occurs. I suspect the New York Times and the Washington Post wouldn’t much bother with reporting on the Kentucky Derby, yet both publications filled its boots with the tragedy of the 7 equine fatalities at Churchill Downs last week.
Until U.S. racing digs up its dirt tracks and replaces them with the kinder Tapeta surface it should be regarded as a pariah racing country. I quote from Jane McIlvane’s wonderful book ‘The Will to Win’, the true story of Tommy Smith and Jay Trump. ‘At the gate the starters work to get a horse into one of the padded stalls. The horse is a gaunt black. Sweat runs down its legs as though it is standing in a shower. It belongs to a used-car dealer, and it showed in its early races that it could run a little. So, its schedule was speeded up, two races a week, sometimes three. Now the horse is overtrained. It’s nerves have frayed. The last time it started the knot in its mud tail got caught between the bars of the rear gate. When it broke, lunging forward onto the track, it pulled half its tail out by the roots. Memory of the scalping agonizingly fresh in its mind, it rears straight up, unseating its ashen-faced jockey. The starter puts a chain around its puzzle and strives to get it to the gate. Three man stand behind the horse with buggy whips.’
I suspect the above is unfair, a depiction of the sport back in the early 1960’s. It was as hard to write now as it was to first read. But it reinforced my opinion about U.S. racing. Jay Trump was treated appallingly when he was racing on dirt tracks in the U.S. and wanted nothing to do with the sport. When switched to grass and timber racing, when treated with kindness and raced on a forgiving surface, he became a superstar to the initiated in the land of his birth and a Grand National winner when raced for a season in this country.