WHERE TODAY ARE THE BAULKING GREENS OF YESTERYEAR.

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The title of this piece is probably not the most vital question to be asked this week, I grant you, but within any debate on the subject there lies a weakness, at least in my estimation, in our sport that the powers-that-be are either in ignorance of or are content to ignore. Of course many of you, young people who cannot comprehend a present that has anything to do with the past and those with no knowledge of racing’s glorious history, will have no idea who Baulking Green was or his relevance to this week of all weeks. I will enlighten the unenlightened.
Baulking Green ran 38 times, winning 24. He would have won more but he had the annoying habit of taking a fence by the roots on occasion. He would argue, if he thought it necessary, that he jumped 680 fences during his racing career and only 4 of out of the 680 caused him to fall, though he unseated once and was brought down on another occasion. The only time he was unplaced was when he broke down, as a sixteen-year-old, in his final race. He won the United Hunts Challenge Cup at the Cheltenham Festival 4 times, the Horse and Hound Cup 3 times and the Usher Vaux Champion Hunters Chase at Ayr 3 times, a big deal back then as it was worth more to the winner than the United Hunts at Cheltenham. He did not see a racecourse until he was eight.
Now the point I am arguing here is severely weakened by the fact that Baulking Green was trained for hunter chases, though he was hunted and qualified from a livery yard and was owned by a working farmer of limited means, by Grand National winning trainer Captain Tim Forster. In fact when Baulking Green first won at the Cheltenham Festival he was the first winner trained by Forster.
My gripe is that the hunter chase programme is becoming more and more a preserve of the professional trainer, highlighted by the ten or more entries for this week’s Cheltenham Foxhunters trained by professional trainers, with Paul Nicholls having four, any one of which could win. He also trained the winner last year.
Until recently I looked upon badly handicapped or aging horses going hunter chasing in a favourable light as it can preserve their careers and can rekindle enthusiasm. But recent changes to race programming has caused me to rethink the topic. These horses are in no way true hunter chasers. Their owners and trainers are taking advantage of easier options, especially when it comes to the Festival. A Hunter Chase is a sterner version of a point-to-point, though it can be argued, of course, that cross-country chases are more representative of the hunting field. I would argue that the more prestigious hunter chases should be confined to horses that regularly compete in point-to-points, with the horses hunted and qualified from professional racing yards differentiated from the genuine point-to-pointer or true hunter. The popular and successful veteran chase programme is now available to connections of horses such as Foxrock, Grand Vision, Pacha Du Polder, Unioniste and Wonderful Charm. If these horses are in need of ‘freshening up’ they can still be hunted, after-all, apart from being ridden by professional jockeys, a veterans chase is very much the same as a hunter chase, with the cross-country chases at Cheltenham as added variety. It is swings and roundabouts: if Wonderful Charm ran in a veterans chase he would have top weight but on the other hand he would not have younger legs against him as he might in the sort of hunter chases he would run in.
Hunter chases no longer throw up the Baulking Greens or the Freddies and Grittars of the past. Indeed I would suggest that the harvesting of hunter chases by professional trainers is stealing the romance from what should be a clearly defined amateur aspect of the sport, much in the way the revised conditions for the Grand National has removed the romance of the underdog winning against the odds. Grittar won the Cheltenham Foxhunters before going on to conquer the Grand National, ridden by a Corinthian amateur old enough to be a grandfather. True romance, literally speaking. I doubt if the winner of this year’s renewal will go on to triumph at Aintree, not in the Grand National anyway.
Here we have another example of the ‘little man’ being squeezed out or away from the sport. The Cheltenham Foxhunters should be the Holy Grail for point-to-point enthusiasts, instead it has become a consolation race for the big training yards and the Irish amateur jockey who in ability is as close to, and in some instances as good as, the professionals.
To my mind horses trained from professional yards should be directed at the Festival toward the cross-country race, bolstering, I would suggest, the quality of horses running in the race, leaving the Foxhunters to the true amateur connections and giving them an incentive to continue to have horses for point-to-points and allowing them to dream, knowing they will only be opposed by like-minded individuals. This sport must be inclusive to all strata of society. There must always be room for the one-horse owner who hunts and enjoys to attend local point-to-points and although that aspect of the sport continues to thrive I am not so sure there are as many of those enthusiasts wanting to upgrade to hunter chases, no doubt because they will have to compete against good quality horses trained by a professional trainer, sometimes a former champion trainer.