to hell in a handcart: more virtual signalling by the b.h.a..

​If reducing the number of runners in the Grand National by six is not ‘significant’, is this a case of change for the sake of change. And anyway, the reduction is not the point here. What Aintree and the B.H.A. has said loud and clear is that the protestors are right, the race in its present form is dangerous and they are obliged to placate them by shearing the race of its unique character, denuding it further to achieve the purpose of having it look like every other race in the calendar. Not one alteration the B.H.A. has authorized since 2012 has the made the Grand National safer for horse or jockey because you cannot make the sport of National Hunt racing any safer than it is because galloping a horse at speed and over any sort of obstacle you wish to mention is an inherently risky occupation. Reducing the field by six is like improving your odds of winning the lottery by buying two tickets rather than one.
This year’s race, I guarantee, will have half the field, perhaps over 50%, comprised of horses trained by Gordon Elliott and Willie Mullins or owned by J.P. McManus, with the smaller trainers unrepresented, even if they have genuine 4-mile horses with unimpeachable jumping records. For instance, Chantry House, a notable sketchy jumper, who because of his inflated rating, will get to run if connections decide to run but unless his rating goes up markedly, Kittys Light, one of the best long-distance chasers in the country, could easily not make the cut. And the B.H.A. want to make the race safer!
Tom Scudamore has made the comment ‘the race comes first’. Well, he’s wrong. Placating an ignorant public comes first. Virtual signalling flown from the highest mast is more of a priority than safety. ‘We care about horses’. ‘Horses come first’. Yet no restriction on jockeys using the whip on the long slog from the last fence! Mustn’t upset the jockeys, must we!
What happens next year if there is another equine fatality? Take out fences and replace them with hurdles. Reduce the distance to 3-miles 3-furlongs. Allow only 15-horses to compete. In 20-years the Grand National will not exist; it is has been the line of travel since 2012. The race makes the B.H.A. nervous and there are those in its fold that would rather not have the bother every April. The Grand National is not safe in the hands of the present clerk of the course and the B.H.A. are poor overseers of National Hunt racing.
It is one thing to point out that if 34 was the limit in 2021, no female jockey would not have won the world’s ‘greatest race’ but its chastening to think that out there somewhere in one small stable or another there waits another Red Rum, not that with the ratings rise and the new field limit he would get a chance to display his stamina and jumping expertise.
I predict that both during the ‘Morning Show’ and Ed Chamberlain during the racing in the afternoon that the I.T.V. presenters will be unified in their praise for the changes. As it is with all the grandees of the sport to have commented so far, including Ruby Walsh, Barry Geraghty and Uncle Tom Cobbly and all. They are all wrong. They see no further than their noses. The future for the Grand National is bleaker for this latest capitulation, this latest round of virtual signalling. The hole that has been dug for the sport is wider and deeper than ever, with the day the sport will fall into it ever closer. We are on the road to Hell in a handcart made of bad decisions and pointless change.
To affect changes in the wake of a race that was compromised by protestors is a knee-jerk reaction that shows the B.H.A. and the present clerk of the course in a very poor light. They are entrusted with the crown jewels of the sport and they have betrayed the race and its heritage. They have not protected the race; they continue to put it in grave danger of extinction.
The problem with the Grand National is not 40-runners, the course is wide enough to accommodate 60-runners (recall what was said when it was first reduced to 40? No one suggested going to 34 then; in fact, the overriding feeling was that the reduction was unnecessary) but the scrimmaging at the first three-fences. The course is wide enough to accommodate 60-horses, yet jockeys all verge toward the inside of the course. The solution is simple if radical: a rough draw on the morning of the race so that 20-horses start on the left-side of the course, a gap and then 20-horses starting on the right, the jockeys instructed to stay straight until after the third-fence. In this year’s race, I will guarantee, 34-horses will be packed between the inner and middle of the course. Horses will still fall, horses will still be brought down or baulked. And in the near future a horse will be fatally injured. I don’t want to see it any more than the B.H.A. but that is the sad nature of our sport.
I am angry about these changes and my love of the race is diminished, a man who has worshipped the race for the best part of sixty-years, a man who has four books close to him dedicated to the Grand National. Reg Green must be turning in his grave!