I suspect the stewards officiating at Sandown Park yesterday are descendents of Judge Jefferies or those who held the office of the Spanish Inquisition. It is lucky for Rossa Ryan that he lives in this century and not the Middle Ages when a fair and equable sentence was a sentence that included an invesigation of a felons intestines. Let's be clear, not once in the final furlong did Ryan properly drop his hands. He did pause for a stride or two from being forceful and it is arguable whether his mount slowed down during those strides, especially as Jamie Spencer on Zero Error was bearing down on him in the manner a Perigrine Falcon bearing down on its prey. Ryan erred, yet no one died, no horse was harmed in the making of his error of judgement.
Yes, I hear it, the punters who had backed Thunder Home were robbed. Or were they unlucky, in the manner the backers of Zero Error had luck on their side? Not all punters were hurt by Ryan's zero + one cock-up. But 28-days suspension of his licence to ride! His right to earn a living denied him for 28-days and for what? A jockey can expect a more lenient sentence for abuse of the whip rules, a charge that brings the sport into disrepute, a clarion call to our detractors to demonstrate in the streets, proof that everyone involved in our sport are cruel and only interested in monetary gain. Ryan only received six-days for breaching the whip rules at York recently, a misdemeanour far worse, in my opinion, than yesterday's offence.
Rossa Ryan deserved to be banned. He, like all of us, is human and all humans err at sometime in our lives. He made a professional misjudgement and some people lost money because of it, while others won money. It is a swings and roundabouts world in which we operate. Ten-days would still be more than enough for the offence committed, at least in the way I see these matters, with 7-days being a more considered punishment. 28-days is draconian, only a few short steps from a hanging offence. Ryan must appeal the sentence and if he should win a reduction in his ban, the Sandown Park stewards should be publicly flogged in order to get them to reflect on the error of their ways. A punishment as savage as the one metered out to Ryan yesterday should automatically be reviewed by the Appeals Panel at the B.H.A. This was a lynching, not a measured and equable trial.
I have reflected in the past on the difference between the policy of run and be damned of Aidan O'Brien, and, obviously his sons, and the trainers who take a more cautious approach to the running of their better horses. There was a time, a time before artificial surfaces became the must-haves for trainers, when a punter would shy away from any horse trained by any trainer having its first run of the season. It was a given that a horse would improve as the season progressed, with trainers using races to get a horse to 100% fit. Aidan, Joseph and Donnacha are throwbacks to those days, using races to battle-harden their top horses for the dogfights that lie ahead of them. It's a wonder stewards do ask them to explain why they use the racecourse to get their horses fit. Stewards, eh, you can't live with them, you can't live without them!
As is my way, I idly picked up my 1954 edition of 'The Horseman's Year', an annual that sets out to detail the previous year's equine disciplines, including 'Young Riders in the United States', a chapter which I am yet to read, 'Modern Foxhunting', 'The Horse in Brazil' and the 'Coronation Procession from the Box Seat' by Frank Gilbey. I read last night the chapters on 'Punchestown' by Michael Hall and 'The Flat Racing Season of 1953' by John Hislop.
All Irish people would no doubt be fully conversant with the history of Punchestown, that in 1953 and in the years before, what we now call the Punchestown Festival was only a 2-day affair, with every race a steeplechase and every race run over the banks or cross-country course, with stone walls still being jumped. Michael Hall mentioned that at the time there were people advocating a normal National Hunt course be incorportated on the site, along side the traditional banks and stone walls. There was opposition, of course, with tradition highly prized back in 1953. What would those traditionalists think of Punchestown now? Appalled, I imagine.
What was noticable in John Hislop's reprise of the 1953 flat season was that with the single exception of Sir Gordon Richards, no name of a jockey was attached to the winners of the major races of the season, and Sir Gordon only achieved his mention due to him finally winning the Epsom Derby. How times have changed, with jockeys no longer considered mere servants employed to do the steering and encouraged to be seen but never heard.