thoughts.

​I find it alarming when certain journalists make the proposal that the easiest way to cut the race programme and save money would be to cut summer jumping. Not all criticism of the summer jumping programme is without merit, though, that I will freely admit. For the most part, through the summer there is a lack of competitive races and that is the aspect of the dilemma that needs to be addressed.
Back in the days of my youth, the National Hunt season began in August and finished at the end of May, with a complete break in June, July and part of August. Of course, this fallow period, though it gave staff, jockeys and trainers time for holidays, meant no income, a state of affairs that made it ever harder for the smaller trainers to make ends meet. Summer jumping was established to fill this gap; in part to allow the smaller trainers a greater opportunity to train winners while the bigger stables were out of the picture. This, sadly, is no longer the situation as Henderson, Nicholls and O’Brien, with Gordon Elliott coming over from Ireland to farm races at the Scottish tracks, plundering a high percentage of the low-key races that through the main part of the season they might not bother with.
And let’s not make out that back in the day when National Hunt resumed after the summer lay-off at Newton Abbot, Devon & Exeter (as Exeter was known back then) and, before my time, Buckfastleigh, the racing was ultra-competitive because if anything it was often less so. There was no watering back in the fifties and sixties and without rain meetings were held on ground described as ‘hard’, something that would not be allowed now. And because of the hard ground many meetings would take place with six-races drawing less than thirty runners between them. On many occasions no race would have more than four-runners.
The problem with the National Hunt summer jumping programme is the lack of structure, coupled with the season proper ending at the end of April to accommodate the handing out of jockeys’ trophies at Sandown, a wholly great idea on the day A.P. McCoy retired but rather pointless, I feel, today, when the day after the end of the season National Hunt continues without any meaningful break.
Personally, I would prefer to go back to something similar to what went before, with a definite start-date to the new season. I would have the season extending between August and June, beginning with a Devon Festival and ending with the Summer Plate at Market Rasen, with no jump racing throughout July.
Yes, that would mean racecourses that rely on summer racing losing the prime month for evening racing and that would be unfair on Worcester and Newton Abbott in particular, though both these racecourses could be given priority in June and August. Uttoxeter would also have to find a new date for the Summer National but again that could be staged after my proposed Devon Festival.
That’s my thoughts on that chestnut.

Alan Sweetman in the Racing Post this week made his thoughts known about the upgrading of the Irish Cesarewitch to the value of 600,000 euros. His predictions when this was announced at the start of the season were profound with the race dominated by the three trainers who dominate Irish racing from January through to December.
That does not make the upgrade wrong, though. Ireland needed an ‘Ebor’ type handicap and the Cesarewitch fits the bill to a tee. The mistake was two-fold. First, with a reserve list above 70, why not a ‘silver Cesarewitch? This would have at least given the smaller trainer a second crack of the whip. And why not a race to the value of the old Irish Cesarewitch, to attract the grade of horse that in previous years would have run in the race, on either day of Irish Champions Day, as a sort of trial for the big race three-weeks later? 
My proposal might or might not have sweetened Alan Sweetman’s tone but it would have evened the playing-field for everyone.
That’s my thought on the Irish chestnut.