Change the shape, change the start. That is the hope. After long discussion with everyone that matters, Cheltenham are to realign the racecourse to put an end to races starting on a bend. This one factor is the greatest contributor for the false starts that have blighted the Cheltenham Festival over the past few years. There never was any need to start on a bend; the problem was always the distance between where the starter instructed the jockeys to gather and where he was standing, flag in hand. The new procedure, while welcomed by those who were asked their opinion, suggests to me that the starter will continue to have the jockeys line-up beyond what might be called a shouting distance from him, allowing horses all the time they need to break into a canter and scupper the start. What is clearly an improvement is that 'false poles' (why false?) will be used, which will inform jockeys that the race will not be started until, at least, all the runners have past the pole and entered the 'start zone'. What this arrangment constructs, and what I have long said was required, though being old-fashioned I suggested the use of saw dust, is a box in which all the runners must be inside before the starter drops his flag. The rule regarding starts has been amended to incorporate the new procedure, though horses now must be coming in at 'walking pace' which will do nothing to improve starts as in the cauldron of excitement that is the festival, some horses will undoubtedly be jig-jogging or moving towards the tapes at a hack-canter, requiring the dear old starter to shout 'no, no, no, you naughty jockeys'. Or something to that effect.
As is the B.H.A.'s way, the blame for a false start will remain with the jockeys, with a penalty system similar to whip offences - the more important the race, the longer will be the suspension for jockeys seen to be at fault. As was said in today's Racing Post, given the emphasis at the festival for a good position, there is an argument to be made for greater leniency towards the jockeys who fall foul of this new rule. But that would not conform with their policy of 'it's not us, it's them', where they are never wrong and never penalised. That said, the new procedure should improve matters, cross-fingers and hope never to have write about this subject ever again.
You may never have heard of Captain G.H. Bennet, which would not be surprising as he died in 1923. I was not unfamiliar with his name as he won the Grand National in 1923 on the thirteen-year-old Sergeant Murphy, a horse who was competing in his fifth Grand National. On the following day, Bennet, known as Tuppy to all and sundry, won the Foxhunters over the same course and distance.
I was reminded of Tuppy Bennet as his name appeared as a descendent of someone who died intestate on the t.v. programme 'Heir Hunters' and it inspired me to look him up. He rode in three Grand Nationals. In the programme it was suggested that his first ride in the race, Turkey Buzzard, was a poor sort of horse that could not jump. This was plainly incorrect as he started a 100/9 third favourite, finishing fourth after being remounted after falling. The owner of Turkey Buzzard, Mrs. Hollins, was not best pleased by Bennet remounting her horse and proceeded to chase Bennet around the paddock wielding her umbrella in hope doing her jockey a mischief..
Bennet, who, as an amateur, rode 62-winners in 1922, finishing second in the jockeys championship, was considered one of the top jockeys around at the time, with a great career ahead of him. Yet where the Grand National was concerned, controversy followed him around. After the fracas with Mrs. Hollins the year before, in 1922 he remounted A Double Escape several times before finishing fifth and was this time pursued by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and using Bennet's ride as any example of all that was bad about Aintree in a letter to the clerk of the course, John Crocker Bulteel, the organisation demanded that the conditions of the race needed to be amended. Not that the race should be banned, though this is the letter that began our problem with the ante-brigade.
As already noted, Bennet won the Grand National in 1923, though cruel fate determined that he would not ride in the race again. In December of the same year, Bennet lost his life seventeen-days after a fall at Wolverhampton in which a horse immediately in behind his mount, Ardean, came into contact with his skull as he lay on the ground, causing him to fall into a coma in which he never surfaced from. Yet Captain Geoffrey Harbord Bennet left a lasting legacy to a sport, much like the descendents of the subject of the Heir Hunters programme, which has saved the lives of innumerable jockey over the passing decades, as his death sparked the Jockey Club to make the wearing of crash helmets in races compulsory. Captain Bennet left his mark on the sport during his brief career as a jockey and perhaps he should be more fondly remembered.