In today’s letters column of the Racing Post, Mr. Mayoh, a breeder of National Hunt horses, takes Peter Thomas, senior writer for the Post, to task over his stated opinion that championship races over jumps should not allow mares a 7Ib allowance as he believes races like the Champion Hurdle, Cheltenham Gold Cup and others should be about establishing the best horse, on the day, over a distance or type of obstacle.
As with so many people when in want of making a point, Mr. Mayoh makes a comparison between horse racing and other sports, in this case athletics. In track and field men and women do not compete against each other for the obvious reason that at elite levels men are always going to be stronger and faster. But the comparison is flawed. A Percheron mare, for instance, is equally as strong as a Percheron gelding, with the two able to pull a plough for as long a period of time as each other. How often have we heard Alice Plunkett while doing her parade ring analysis describe a mare as ‘a bull of a horse?’ If strength is a guide to the weight carried, there is an argument for giving geldings under 16-hands an allowance given they are smaller and less strong as a horse of 17-hands.
Mr.Mayoh also uses an excess of a bucket-load of words in order to win his argument with Peter Thomas, when ‘it’s not fair on the breeder’ would have sufficed . Nobody has ever suggested that fillies should not be allowed to run against colts and geldings in Group 1 races on the flat and instead have their own versions of these races. I do not believe that Peter Thomas even mentioned the flat in the article that has peeved Mr. Mayoh enough to want to have brought to the public’s attention his disquiet with one of the Racing Post’s finest journalists.
The elephant in the room, obviously, is the Mares Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival. If it were to be transferred to, for example, one of the Cheltenham fixtures before the New Year, renamed the Mares Champion Hurdle and run over 2-miles, it would establish the mares pecking order, with the best mares then forced into the Champion Hurdle itself. Whether mares should continue to be allowed a 7Ib allowance is another matter altogether. This issue peeved me when Honeysuckle, (or any mare in the future), unbeaten against geldings and winner two successive Champion Hurdles, and is the proven best 2-mile hurdler in training, continued to receive the 7Ib allowance, which she would have continued to receive even if she won five successive Champion Hurdles. Surely, in fairness to the geldings, once a mare has won a Champion Hurdle, the allowance should be reduced to 4Ibs and if a mare wins two Champion Hurdles, the allowance should no longer apply.
Personally, I am with Peter Thomas on this issue. Championship races should be run on a level playing field, after all, if a trainer puts a 7Ib claiming rider on a horse in a championship race, there is no allowance for inexperience on the part of the rider and the claiming rider must ride without the benefit of his or her 7, 5 or 3Ib allowance.
Jonbon should have poetry written in his honour. How many Grade 1’s must he win before he receives the accolades he deserves. Yes, he has never won, let alone run in, a handicap giving lumps of weight away and the races he usually competes in will always have less than 7-runners and are not always as competitive as we would like to see. Yet never being out of the first two in 25-races must be verging on unique. A great horse, by anyone’s standards and would doubtless stay 3-miles if they gave him the chance to add versatility to his c.v..
I have come up with a candidate to run the sport if only we could rid ourselves of the ineffective and labouring B.H.A. Max McNeill. He has a passion for the sport; he has a long association with the sport as an owner and now as a board member at Cheltenham, and he knows people, in and out of the sport, who know people of influence. If the sport should ever get the opportunity of a supremo, Max McNeill would prove an excellent appointment.