Crazy business
Robin Oakley
Adelegate staying in a Blackpool hotel for a conference once complained to his landlady about being woken at 5.00 a.m. by the baying of a pack of dogs. 'Why don't you complain to the police?' he asked. 'Because,' she replied, 'they are police dogs.' There is simply no point in this life in picking fights you cannot win and, though there are times when the belligerence of British Horseracing Board chairman Peter Savill is necessary, the BHB's alienation of Britain's newspapers, by trying to screw £2 million out of them for the rights to print the lists of runners and riders at British race meetings, could hardly have been crazier. Racing needs all the friends it can get, especially those who help to publicise the sport, and with the amount of racing there is these days many newspapers had been looking for an excuse to save some of the space devoted to racecards. Other sports don't pay for the publication of fixtures. Predictably the tough words have been followed by an abject climbdown, but the damage will linger, particularly among race sponsors. It was yet another sad signal for a winter sport which
currently faces an uncertain future. III■ The last obstacle I took at speed was probably an outstretched trouser leg when I had been given the corner table at Le Caprice and wanted to secure my position before somebody important arrived. But to me there is no sight more glorious in sport than horse and jockey in unison soaring over their obstacles, locked in combat. Having had the privilege of walking the Cheltenham course with former jump jockey Luke Harvey before the Thomas Pink the other week, and had Luke indicate the take-off point where he might have asked a really good jumper to stand-off, I marvel all the more at the courage and athleticism of both horse and rider. (The finishing hill, incidentally, looked less daunting at grass level, the final bend much tighter than I had always imagined from the stand.) But it is no use us racing enthusiasts imagining that the world shares our view about the importance of such a spectacle and such a sport continuing.
National Hunt racing, mostly involving geldings, doesn't have the financial impetus provided for flat racing by a rich breeding industry. Jumping races are more costly to stage than flat races, National Hunt horses are more prone to injury and rarely race as frequently as flat racers. More patience is required of jumping owners and we live in an increasingly impatient world. The growth of all-weather flat racing on surfaces like Lingfield's Polytrack is giving owners another option. Instead of going hurdling with a second-best flat horse they can race him through the winter on the sand, running more often and facing fewer risks of injury. There was little difference between the prize money on offer last Saturday for the jumpers at Huntingdon and the all-weather exponents at Lingfield. Take out the sponsored feature race at each and the Huntingdon prizes averaged £6,686, the Lingfield ones £5,684.
In jump racing, too, the best is driving out the good. The sport is becoming so dominated by the big yards like those of Martin Pipe, Paul Nicholls and Philip Hobbs that few other trainers get the buying orders for the expensive horses likely to win the big races. The number of licensed jump jockeys is in sharp decline because agents have ensured that the ten top riders cream off virtually all the big race prospects, making it hard for the middle rankers to earn a living. And many races on lesser tracks are failing to attract big enough fields because almost anything of any class is being kept now for the Festival meetings such as Cheltenham and Aintree. Windsor and Nottingham have already abandoned jump racing. Kempton, home of the prestigious King George VI Chase on Boxing Day, is planning an all-weather track which would see a wind-up of jumping there too. and Ascot is sounding distinctively iffy about the future of National Hunt racing there. Those of us who love the sport are going to have to get out and fight for its survival.
Fortunately, we have a few things going for us too. Having re-routed from a waterlogged Ascot on Saturday I had to be content with watching Best Mate's return to the racecourse on TV. That was, of course, a better view of the race than the Gold Cup winner's permanently fretting trainer Henrietta Knight had from the trailer in the lorry park where she chose to wait out the race. But it was good enough to see the majesty of his carriage around the parade ring, the precision and economy of his jumping and the spirit with which he responded to Jim Culloty's urging to go away and win his race after the second last. The giant Douze Douze, in the hands of a clumsy French jockey who called more cabs with his flailing right arm than you see in a day in Ken Livingstone's gridlocked London, was less of a challenge than he might have been but there is no doubt that Best Mate, bigger and stronger than before, remains a class act. National Hunt racing needs its equine heroes and to me Best Mate offers the finest prospect of a Gold Cup winner collecting a second successive crown since it was last done by L'Escargot more than 30 years ago.
Today's top jumping trainers, men like Pipe, Nicholls. Hobbs and Nicky Hender son, are the best we have ever seen and in the saddle we have Tony McCoy, probably the most complete and talented rider any of us will see in our lifetimes. With those assets to hand we have to be crazy to let this greatest sporting spectacle of them all decline.
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