A SOCIALLY DEMOCRATIC SPORT, SLAVES TO BREEDING & OH, ALBERT, IF ONLY YOU COULD GALLOP SLOWLY.

I have long argued that our sport is very much a working-class sport underpinned by the wealthy and the mega-wealthy. Stable staff are obviously working class even if members of that staff were born to rich parents and were educated at Radley or Eton. To get anywhere in racing it is a requirement that you must work as hard as everyone else on the team and be twice as dedicated. Jockeys, too, work their asses off, working seven-days-a-week either riding out for a trainer or (and) on the racecourse. In fact, all sectors of the racing industry, including farriers, racecourse staff and bookmakers, are all working class irrespective of how large their financial assets are. Trainers, too, even if they served in the armed forces or came out of universities with degrees, or if set-up by a wealthy parent, cannot get by with a superiority complex. Trainers are out of bed before the cock crows and is on call to his/her clients until long into the evening. They work, are on their feet most of the day and are, whether their parentage suggests otherwise, a class of people who work for their money. Some may become rich from their efforts but that does not allow them to tink of themselves as middle-class or superior in anyway to the people they work with. People who sit at a desk and look for greater wealth from the money at their disposal can never be working class. That is their lot in life in they choose the suit of clothes over the outdoor wear of the noble outdoorsman.

I was reminded of this by something in Peter Thomas's feature on Jamie Snowden in today's Racing Post. At his Folly House Stables, Snowden trains a horse for the King and Queen, Fine Shot. In a stable opposite Fine Shot is a horse owned by 4,000 members of the Racing Club, including Snowden's local postman. This is a snap-shot of our sport, and it is something that should be used in marketing this great sport. Horse racing is not all about Royal Ascot and elitism, a sport for the wealthy and mega-wealthy. There was a time when both jockeys and stable staff were merely servants to the owner, with the trainer merely a middle man between the two classes. And that view pervades today, believe me, and it is a view that needs to be challenged.

Horses bred to be sprinters, with speed uppermost in their pedigree, can often be found winning long-distance chases, the most famous example, of course, being Red Rum. Very few jumpers, on the other hand, have a long-distance pedigree, with the majority sired by horses that won over 12-furlongs or less. Constitution Hill is a prime example of a horse defying both his age and his breeding, a horse considered National Hunt bred, yet able at the age of 9 to transfer seemlessly to the flat, winning twice over 12-furlongs.

My point is this: established trainers, especially, stick unwaveringly to a horse's breeding when it comes to the distances in which they run their horses. Not that I am suggesting the top trainers get this aspect of the sport wrong. To use William Haggas, solely because on picking up the latest copy of Horses In Training in my possession, I opened the book randomly on the Haggas string, how many of the 213 horses listed won a race and would those who disappointed and doubtless were packed-off to the sales may have benefitted from a little outside of the box thinking. Horses we think of middle-distance horses get sold to Australia and other places where they win 6-furlong races or vice-versa. A smaller trainer, when they get hold of one of these blue-bloodied horses, tend to be more versatile in their thinking and simply see the horse in front of them and not the pedigree from  the sales catalogue.

We must not gloat. We must not gloat because Aidan O'Brien very often has the last laugh. Remember City of Troy. A dud in the Guineas, a bolt of lightening in the Epsom Derby. But all is not lost. The problem with Albert Einstein is though he y eat up the gallops with the elan and power of a super-hero, he cannot gallop slowly. He is not a puller; he just cannot master galloping a stride slower, as can his less illustrious companions. He is possibly a sprinter now - the lads will convene and come-up with a new strategy to make Albert a hit with breeders - with hopes for the Guineas thrown to the wind, as are all those ante-post vouchers that bettors awed by Aidan's eulogy on Albert's uniqueness believed to be the gospel of all O'Brien gospels. What Aidan did not say during his press come-together is that Albert is not only unique on the gallops but he is also unique in being big, as broad a chaser and very unlike a normal 3-year-old. Albert now heads for the Commonwealth Stakes at Royal Ascot. Poor Albert, from mythical creature to mere sprinter in one fell swoop. Perhaps we will eventually see him in the Triumph Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival!