The B.H.A. are standing their ground. They fight alone,doubling down, their only comrades the faraway stewards of such places as Australia and Hong Kong. Rule (h) 6 seems to be the hill on which the B.H.A. want to fight their illogical fight with those on whose standard bears the legend Common Sense is an Undeniable Truth.
As Mr. Monger of Hertford points out in a letter published today in The Racing Post, if the B.H.A. were to be consisted in their thinking, how many horses at the Cheltenham Festival last season should have been declared non-runners due to being left standing as the tapes went up? Jockeys who, as with Ryan Moore, had to change from from plan A to a makeshift plan they may have considered beforehand but had rejected as unlikely to suit their horse. I suspect the answer would be in the dozens.
Rule (H) 6 is a rule of good intention made hazardous by lazy thinking. It is a rule of woke. At Epsom in the Dash 2-years ago, punters were disadvantaged, as doubtless they have been for a hundred years, and after a similar period of not giving two hoots about punters, the B.H.A. put on their heavy boots and rubber gloves and moved themselves to show a little love to them. When mechnical failure or human incompetence at the racecourse is the cause of a punter not having a fair shot at winning, it is correct to compensate them. Only Rule (H) 6 has no full stop; it is open-ended and at Epsom on Saturday punters who did not win were compensated, while punters that did win had 20% of their winnings withheld. The more facts and opinions show themselves, the stupider the rule becomes.
In the Racing Post today there is a photograph of the Derby runners on the uphill climb from the start, with a shabby garden and house in the background, which clearly shows Benvenuto Cellini upsides the eventual fifth (beaten a nose for fourth) Alderman, only around six horse-lengths behind Christmas Day. From that position, Ryan Moore had every chance of winning or at least finishing in the first four if, on the day, the horse had been good enough. Game, set and match to those preaching common sense, I contend.
Applications for the post of the next B.H.A. Chair close on June 19th. If you are considering applying for this arduous yet well-paid job you will have to prepare yourself to work a full 2-day week. In a new twist, though, you will be expected to have to have a working knowledge of the sport you will be leading for 3-years. What a bloody nonsense. The B.H.A. are also wasting money by employing Elevate Talent, a firm of headhunters, to round-up likely candidates. All the B.H.A. had to do was interview Peter Savill and Nigel Payne, two men of vast experience of the sport, who have both put themselves forward for the post and appoint one of them!
The past is a different country, isn't it? Yet the thoroughbred racehorse is not much changed since the reign of Queen Victoria. Of course, what I am about to say will be easier to put to bed by those who rightly say 'it is the European Pattern' that changed the way horses are trained nowadays. And you would be right. Yet trainers will often say they cannot find a race over a certain distance for a horse, when clearly there are many races over that distance in the calendar, even if they are handicaps. Also, and this is my point, why stick religiously to one distance? Captain Boyd-Rochfort, and this is back in 1930 (? might be 1929) ran his 2,000-Guineas runner-up Royal Minstrel in the Epsom Derby, followed by the Cork and Orrery (6-furlongs) which he won and then on to the Eclipse over 10-furlongs which he won, beating Fairway, the best horse of his day, by 4-lengths. As I said, the thoroughbred racehorse has not changed in a hundred-years, only the thinking of trainers who have trained themselves not to look outside the box of expectation and safety.