too darn hot: the racing post.

​The news regarding the forced retirement of Too Darn Hot is regrettable as he was providing an interesting narrative to the flat season. It would be silly to argue against the informed opinions of John Gosden and Frankie Dettori, as the evidence is there for all to see that the horse possessed a magical turn of speed. Yet though he looked capable of winning over 6-furlongs, as he had as a three-year-old won over 7-furlongs and a mile, to my way of thinking he also looked like he stayed most of the Dante trip and was only beaten by a fitter horse on the day. As with Frankel, Too Darn Hot gave me the impression that if he learned to settle any distance would be within his remit. And, of course, if his connections now must wonder what might have been, they could consider allowing him to come sound – a split pastern is not necessarily a career ending injury as many a horse has returned to the racecourse after similar set-backs– and return him to John Gosden for another season of racing. After all, if, as with Barney Roy and others, he proves infertile, the obvious next step would be to race him again. And anyway, he is only three-years-old; he might have twenty years as a stallion. But then again, financial considerations come into play and Godolphin did not buy into him to have him competing against their own horses for an indefinite period of time, did they? I suspect he was always destined to retire at the end of this season and really and truly we have lost very little of his racing career. I am inclined to believe, as with Frankel, that the majority of his progeny will win over longer distances than he did himself, as long as they settle better in their races than he did.
 
As anyone who has visited this site over the past couple of years will be aware, I am a devoted supporter of the Racing Post. It’s cover price is outrageous, of course, a clear indication that it is a newspaper teetering at a financial cliff-edge. It is the trade paper of the industry, though how it can be part of the campaign to boost the sport’s popularity amongst the wider sporting public when its cover price is the most expensive out of all the other newspapers and therefore can only be afforded by the wealthiest in society, is impossible to fathom. It is very much a newspaper that preaches to the already converted.
It’s new editor, Tom Lee, has, either voluntarily or with his hand forced, made changes that do not sit comfortably with this reader. The squeezing together of the reports on the previous day’s racing reads very much like a cost-cutting exercise, as if Post is no longer represented at the racecourses on a day-to-day basis and the reports are cobbled together from pictures beamed into Racing Post offices. This condensing of reports comes across as cheap-skating; something you might associate with one of the lesser tabloids, not the sport’s only daily news-outlet.
Also, now that Tom Lee is up to his knees in decision-making, and no doubt endless meetings with ‘higher beings’ and ‘finance’, the reader no longer has his weekly column to look forward to. I used to rely on Tom Lee to put me right about the political aspects of the sport that quite frankly pass over my head.
If the Post wanted to help in the campaign to regenerate interest in the sport, I have suggested it could come to an arrangement with one of the leading papers, the Daily or Sunday Mail or Times, say, to publish articles that have previously seen the light of day in the Post. For others to see the sport as we are privileged to do we need them to be reading Alastair Down, David Jennings and others, not reading about our sport penned by journalists who care nothing but to sensationalise their script with the muck that make eye-grabbing banner headlines.
On a similar theme, though much more in-house. Having the Post’s journalists writing articles on the great and the good of the sport makes for good journalism and fills space but what is the point of devoting two pages to Kieran Fallon, as in today’s copy, if all that is written can be found in Kieran’s autobiography? It will be the same next week when Frankie is featured or with any of the other celebrities featured in the same slot. On Sunday, Mark Tompkins was featured. Surely it would have been more rewarding to Tompkins if he had been so honoured before he had retired from the sport. I thought the guest columnist on a Tuesday was a great innovation but alas that is now also lost to us.
What is going on, of course, is cost-saving. Writing about Fallon is cheaper than interviewing Fallon and allowing him to comment on his son’s progress, on the current state of racing play. Fallon is rarely anything but interesting.
I would rather the Post sent a reporter to the lesser lights of the sport – owners, trainers, jockeys etc – and shine a spotlight on them, on how they perceive the current state of racing play, inform the reader about people in the sport who are rarely heard about or perhaps seen.
The Racing Post, to justify its outrageous cover price, should be obligated to inform and entertain, not to overwhelm the reader with so many various suggestions as to who will win the 2.30 at Ripon or Warwick. I want race-cards, facts and more than one brilliant columnist a day and far fewer tipsters. I would also like Tom Lee, columnist of the year, back. If that is not too much trouble. Oh, and Steve Dennis. I miss him and want to know what he is up to. And more of Alastair Down, even if it means raising the cover price up again.