Writing in The Racing Post today, Will Aitkenhead, head of Corporate and Industry Affairs for Ascot racecourse, assures readers that technology is a force for good and vitally needed to speed-up the time it takes to decide steward enquiries. He might be right. Personally I prefer the fallability of humans over the fallability of all-thing hi-techy.
Stewards' enquiries do need to be speeded-up, that is unarguable. The easiest way to achieve this would be remove jockeys from the process. Not all jockeys are as sportsmanlike as Oisin Murphy and jockeys, in the main, are not fighting on their own behalf but in the best interests of the owner and trainer of the horse involved. It becomes a to and fro, with both jockeys asked their opinion of each others testimony. Yet it is not a trial, merely an enquiry and for those who lose the verdict there is always the possibility of an appeal when there is more time for the parties involved to argue their case, with lawyers involved if deemed necessary.
And with due respect to Mr. Aitkenhead viewpoint, it is pure speculation to suggest that Total Performance Data can determine second-by-second how much speed a horse suffering interference can lose and how much closer it would have been at the end of the race. Yes, T.P.D. can supply such data, as it does with the speed each horse manages throughout a race. But interference at the furlong pole or before is neither evidence it would have won without the interference nor is it evidence that the first past the post was the best horse in the race, a qualifying measure that at the moment is given higher priority by stewards than health and safety on the racecourse. A horse running over a longer distance than in previous races may have its chance of winning lowered by interference during the final two-furlongs of a race but it also might be the case that the horse would have slowed anyway due to a deficit of stamina.
As fallible as racecourse stewards might be, I would prefer to have the human element determining the outcome of enquiries rather than printed data on a spreadsheet.
In Sunday's Irish Cesarewitch, Joseph O'Brien has 17-entries. Not all will run, of course. But if you add the 10-horses he has inked-in for the Melbourne Cup, plus others, it seems Joseph has seen a gap in the market.
British racing will lose the bonny face of Saffie Osborne to Hong Kong between November 8th and December 23rd. It is another feather in her cap as she builds her career. I believe Hollie Doyle was hoping to be granted a licence by the Hong Kong Jockey Club and whether this means she will have to endure the all-weather throughout the winter we will have to wait and see. Personally, I believe the temporary move to Hong Kong can only improve Saffie's riding, not that there is much wriggle-room for further improvement as she's pretty much top-class already, and it might prove providential for Hollie to stay in Britain through the winter as it will allow her to form new connections in preparation for the 2027 turf season.
At the same time as Ireland, and everyone else, it seems, has no problem with having two young horses with the same name and the same trainer in training, in the U.S. an owner has been forced to change the name of one of his horses due to the name Austrian Painter upsetting one or two easily upset folk. Now called Merrylegs, the owner, Mr. Herbertson, also asked for My Struggle and Braunau Star for his horse. He claims that the Austrian painter he had in mind was Gustav Klimt and that his wife was born in Braunau and that allusions to Mr. Hilter are merely coincidental.
Personally, I have no problem with Austrian Painter. After all, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of Austrian Painters that the name might allude to. And now is the phrase 'my struggle' only attached to the writer of Mein Kampf? The allusion here is in the eye of those who objected, though, of course, if Mr. Herbertson were to be a Nazi sympathiser, which is not mentioned in today's Racing Post, then the objectors would have good reason to kick up a fuss. And, of course, in form books, I dare say it will record Merrylegs as (formerly Austrian Painter).