Post-mortems on Aintree
There is only one way to eliminate the risk of horses (or their riders) being killed in the Grand National, and that is to abolish the race. If you shorten the course, the event loses the status it has held for more than a century, ceases to be the highest test of a steeplechaser and dwindles to the level of the various other races which are run, up to a distance of three miles, over the same course; and you do not eliminate the risk, which exists every time any field rides over any jump. Though you might peitaps slightly reduce the risk by sloping the fences more, you will not reduce it by lowering them, since horses will take them faster and fall, if they do fall, harder. You cannot in any case legislate for the weather, which can, by making the going bad, increase the hazards by a greater margin than any of the other factors involved. It was a tragic accident that four horses, out of an unusually small field, should have been killed at Aintree last Saturday; but wherever an element of danger is present in any sport (as it is in most of ours) accidents will happen. To do away with the danger you must
Previous page
