With the start of Glorious Goodwood only a day away, you might be surprised to discover that the first overseas winner of a race on these shores was achieved in 1850 when the German-trained Turnus won both the Stewards and Chesterfield Cups. Not on the same day, though those short of achievements were not exactly uncommon back in the 1800's, but in the same week. Three-years later, France won its first race on British soil when Jouvance won the Goodwood Cup. I would imagine it is not a coincedence that both these successful forays into racing history occured at Goodwood as in 1850 and 1853 there was no such conveyance as a horsebox to transport horses from port to racecourse and Goodwood must be a comparatively short walk once leaving the ship.
The Americans arrived on our racecourses some thirty-years later, with Iroquois winning the Epsom Derby in 1881, though his achievement was eclipsed, I believe, by Foxhall who came, saw and conquered both the Cambridgeshire and the Cesarewitch. The Australians celebrated the new millennium by rocking-up with Merman and taking home the Ascot Gold Cup. Now, of course, Australians only come with sprinters and more often than not are sent home with their tail between their legs. Perhaps they should recall Merman and start a new tact. In 1904, the New Zealand horse, Moifaa, was either shipwrecked off the Irish coast or simply waded on shore through a few inches of sea-water - it all depends of whose history of the Grand National you care to read - and went on to win the Grand National for his homeland in 1904.
British-trained horses rarely raced abroad during this period, though the Grand Prix de Paris did occasionally tempt trainers to board the boat to the French coast, with Minting winning the race in 1906. The truth is, and this takes some believing when you look at the general level of prize-money in this country today, trainers did not have to look abroad as prize-money was so much better here and it was 1923 before a British-trained horse set-off for the U.S. It was as much an experiement as anything else, to see if a horse could travel by ship across to the U.S., to understand how much fitness a horse would lose, how stressed it might get and howlong it took to regain weight and race-fitness, as for the actual racing. The 1923 Epsom Derby winner Papyrus undertook this journey, his connections persuaded by the challenge of a duel with Zev, the best grass horse in the U.S. and a £25,000 stake, with £20,000 going to the winner. Zev won comfortably, with Papyrus never winning a race again.
We take international racing as a given these days, with no country on the planet too far distant to preclude travelling a racehorse to race there. Some horses, of course, accept the travelling with indifference, while others, I am sure, are stressed by it. Outside of the Breeders Cup and the Arc, horses from this country only travel to other countries to find easy pickings, a Group 3 they might not be able to win here or even a listed race to give a mare some black type. The prestige races are still here and we should be grateful, though as time passes, I fear, the big-money 'newbie' races in the Far East, Hong Kong and Australia might hold both big purses and the sort of prestige that will force British trainers to forsake the historic races in this country to satisfy the ambitions of their foreign owners. Such a move might become known as 'taking the Rebel's Romance' route.
In the 'Another View' column of The Racing Post today, Peter Thomas, not wanting to get drawn into a dispute with David Jennings, I suspect, suggests that no matter the length of the ban, jockeys, being human and not as saintly (my words) as D.J., will always be liable to error. He also makes the point that if a jockey dropping his hands and coasting to the winning post is wrong when the horse he is riding gets beaten, it must be wrong on the whole, even when the jockey wins or finishes in the pack. As when I suggested that David Jennings would like to see jockeys flogged when beaten when the race is all but won, Peter Thomas has taken the debate to the edge of the universe. Where Mr.Thomas is wrong is that he believes jockeys ease down through some form of laziness or showboating, when in fact what a jockey is intending is to give his mount as easy a race as possible while still wanting to win.
What punters would like to see as a regulation is for every horse in a race to be ridden out to the line, no matter how tired the horse might be. Jockeys, unlike Mr.Thomas and D.J., care about the welfare of the horses they ride. They would rather win cosily and spare their mounts a hard race. Kindness should not be seen as a crime, with as many cracks of the whip as the rules will allow evidence that the jockey is trying. If I were a religious man, which I am not, I would be praying for the soul of the sport that Rossa Ryan wins a reduction in his sentence when his appeal is heard this Thursday.