SPECTATOR SPORT
In love with horses
Simon Barnes
I SUPPOSE it's an absurd story, really, if you put it to any exacting intellectual scruti- ny, which makes it rather absurd of .me to be affected by it. Still, all love is absurd, or perhaps none is: that is the moral of the story, if it has a moral.
It's a horse story, you see. It concerns a permit trainer (a small-timer who trains only her own animals) called Lavinia Tay- lor. Last weekend she had a winner at New- castle, a horse called Domaine de Pron. Although it was a tough slog over four miles and a furlong, the horse was a tough slogger, and he got home first. Minutes later, he dropped dead. Neither the trainer nor her husband came out to collect the trophy at the prize-giving, which went with a distinctly useful cheque for £35,000. They were both distraught. What are the Taylors so upset about? It was only a horse. They knew that racing is a dangerous sport, so by what logic can they Complain when a horse gets hurt? And if they are sentimental about their horses, the logic is irresistible: don't put them in dan- gerous situations. Keep the animals at home in a nice stable and give them Extra Strong Mints every hour. A high proportion of race-goers can take such a death in their stride, whether they backed the fallen winner or not, because these things happen. Jockeys get hurt, and occasionally killed. Horses get killed, some- times at the races, more often, later on, after they have broken down irretrievably.
It is a tough game; well, most horse peo- ple are pretty tough. It is also a very hard game. And there is a deep streak of soft- ness in most horse people — not racing people, horse people. With it comes a dan- gerous dislike of logic. And this is the mat- ter that is dividing the country.
No one has ever explained convincingly the reasons for loving a horse; still less why a beloved horse is deliberately placed in a situation of danger. When pressed on the point, most horse people can only respond, `You don't understand. You simply don't understand.'
This weekend's Countryside March is all about the joy of galloping about all over the countryside on your beloved horse. As a matter of fact, there are few things better on this earth. You don't think so? Then you don't understand.
Hunting people go on about what foxes do to pregnant ewes, or what farmers do for conservation in order to provide foxes and suitable country to chase them over. They go on about the individual choice. They tell us hunting is good for foxes. The more they talk about foxes, the more you realise that none of them care about foxes; it is horses they care about, and galloping about on them. Foxes are not the reason for hunting. Hunting is not the reason for hunting. The reason for hunting is horses.
People and horses have wonderful fun, and get badly hurt, sometimes killed. There are terrible snobs and ghastly show-offs out hunting; you can get terrible snobs and show-offs at football matches.
I'm a horseman myself, of course, even if I don't hunt. I love gassing about horses and I love galloping about, too. Horse peo- ple are used to hostility, but the threat to ban fox-hunting has really got to them. It has been understood across the countryside as an attack on the horsey life; worse, an attack on horses themselves. That is why people will be marching. They will do so beneath a banner that reads: 'You don't understand. You simply don't understand.'
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