Silly season

"I don't think punters have a right to know, nor do they have a right not to know". When you start reading stuff like that in the Racing Post, you know we're in the silly season. This was, of course, said with reference to the issue of whether a mare having been scanned in foal should be information which is available to the public if she is running. If the stack of pointless statistics which the Racing Post churns out every day (I don't know if the 'Owning Up' list still appears in 'Signposts', but if that's worth publishing then anything is - bar the very good, in my immodest opinion, letter which I sent to the paper a couple of weeks ago, apparently) is anything to go by, this information is definitely worth publishing. But the point is that that's something for the BHA to decide - and canvassing trainers in ever greater detail about whether they think the information is or isn't relevant is a surefire sure way of ending up with a dull newspaper. Some mares improve when put in foal, some deteriorate, and some stay the same; some remain in foal under the stress of training and racing, while some lose the foetus (which obviously means that one can't publish a statement about whether or not the mare will be in foal at the time of the race, merely that the mare has been tested in foal this year) - but if the rules say that the trainer has to fill in his 1,001st form to say that such and such a mare was tested in foal on such and such a date and then submit the form to Weatherbys, then that's a pretty simple rule with which to comply. That's all there is to it - and it certainly isn't for trainers to be agonising over whether such a rule should be brought into being, or about what punters are to do with the information if and when they receive it.

Fortunately, we've moved on from the in-foal mares issue (pro tem, at any rate) to the Sovereign Series. Anyone who loves racing in Britain loves to see the top British races each containing several world-class horses - so the BHA is to be applauded for trying to take steps to ensure that such a scenario will pertain in our best Group One races. We've had several wake-up calls recently reminding us that we can't take it for granted that our supposedly best races will contain the quality of horse which we feel ought to be there: the possibility that the obvious Derby favourite might have missed the Derby in favour of running in Ireland was a real eye-opener, as are the facts that the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes this year will almost certainly be weaker than was the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud, that today's Eclipse is a possibly the weakest Eclipse ever, and that the Irish Champion Stakes is nowadays almost invariably a better race than the English Champion Stakes. So a large bonus scheme to ensure that Europe's best horses do most of their racing in England, rather than in Ireland or France, is very exciting (unless you're Irish or French). Whether it will work is another issue: at that end of the sport, I'm not sure that there is much one can do financially to influence the running plans of the two main teams (Godolphin and Coolmore), and I'm also not sure where the money is going to come from to fund this. Furthermore, whether appreciation of these races among the non-racing public will be increased is also open to question. However, what is beyond question is that the BHA is keen to bolster the standard of sport at the top level, and to try to bolster racing's popularity among the public at large, and that has to be a good thing.

My own view (you'll have guessed that this was coming!) is that the one thing which we should have to help us in these directions is such a thing as a Horse Of The Year award. In America, the Eclipse Awards are a really big deal, a major incentive to the connections of good horses to make sure that they run enough and win enough (just in case prize money and glory themselves aren't enough) to win an Award, and a big factor in boosting public interest in the sport. Ditto in Australia, albeit probably to a lesser extent. Here we have nothing similar. The closest we have is the Cartier Awards, but they're really just a pretext for a private dining club and carry no weight with the public at large; I think Timeform have their horses of the year, and there are the International Classifications. But there is no official recognition - or if there is, it isn't working. Who was Horse of the Year in 2007? I don't know. I think that Manduro put up the top-rated individual performance in Britain when winning the Prince Of Wales's Stakes - just as Hawk Wing did when winning the 2003 Lockinge Stakes in a year when he clearly wasn't even a contender for Horse of the Year honours - but I'd be surprised if he was Horse of the Year in Britain: he wasn't trained here, and he only ran here twice, and in none of our really big races (as the Prince Of Wales's Stakes is just one of the newly-promoted Group Ones, rather than a race of traditional top-class prestige, I'd definitely regard it as a lesser race than, say, the Eclipse, King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes or Champion Stakes) so I couldn't see him as the winner of such an award in this country. But was it Manduro? Or was it Authorized? Or was it Dylan Thomas? (Sure, he wasn't trained here, but a King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes winner who goes on to win the same season's Arc has to be a live contender). See what I mean? Anyway, I've long reckoned that we've been missing a trick by not having an official 'Horse Of The Year'. Identifying him (or her - although the fact that mares are encouraged to race amongst themselves so much nowadays makes it hard to see a mare winning the award) is easier said than done, but if the Sovereign Series could be tied in with such an award (say making it definite that the Sovereign Series winner would be one of the two finalists for such an award - you couldn't just automatically give it to the Sovereign Series winner, because if you had another Ardross who went and won the stayers' triple crown of Gold Cup, Goodwood Cup and Doncaster Cup before dropping back in distance to win the Arc he'd have to be Horse Of The Year) that would be a really good thing. Keeping things simple is the key concept in trying to promote the sport to a non-racing audience, but if there was one Horse of the Year every year, and this was an honour which was keenly covetted and for which horses had to keep themselves in contention as the year progressed, that would be a really good way of raising racing's appeal to the non-racing but sports-loving public. Here endeth the lesson. (And now you know why the Racing Post doesn't publish my letters any more).

To move from the general to the particular/local, we've had an interesting week. Jill's trip to Windsor provided a rare example of a horse running disappointingly for no obvious reason, but we won't let that knock us out of our stride. Lady Suffragette's run at Yarmouth too was less spectacular than I'd hoped, but I don't think that we need worry too much about that; we just need to get her a bit fitter. The writing was on the wall in the parade ring. We had Charles Eddery riding, the young and extremely light (he did 8:03 with a really heavy saddle and lead in all four pockets of his weight-cloth) son of Paul and Sally (nee Guest, now Noseda). If ever a lad was bred to be a jockey, this is the one. How many Eddery brothers rode/ride? Pat, obviously, and Paul, obviously. Robert was champion apprentice in Ireland. Michael was a good young jumps jockey until he lost a leg as a result of a fall. There was a David who rode a few winners (for Robert Williams, I seem to recall) here before going to Germany. Their father was Jimmy Eddery. Their maternal grandfather was Jack Moylan. Michael's son Ciaran rode a few winners over jumps in the north ... And moving on to the Guests, Charlie's children include Grand National-winning Richard and St Leger-placed Rae; and there were obviously Charlie and his brothers Nelson and 'The Iron Man' Joe; plus Joe's son Jimmy who rode winners for Fred Winter (while his dad was still riding, I think); and Eddie, nephew of Charlie, I think; and Ed Babbington, former jumps conditional and grandson of Charlie; and Charlie's sons-in-law Henry Cecil and Jeremy Noseda have both trained a few winners! And now we have little Charles, who gave the mare a very nice ride and conducted himself very well. Anyway, Charlie was there so I invited him into the parade ring to brief his grandson, and while we were waiting for the riders to arrive, Charlie looked at the mare and said to me, "She looks a bit tubby - has she not run for a while?". So that told me!! Anyway, it was a very pleasant trip to Yarmouth, as any trip with Lady Suffragette is, because she is a wonderful horse who gives pleasure and pride to anyone involved with her; and one made all the better by enabling us (Hugh, Tunda and myself) to wish Amy Weaver well on the occasion of her first runner as a trainer - and she'll train a winner before too long if the promise shown by her debutant is anything to go by, which is just the way it should be because she is a very diligent, conscientious and industrious horsewoman who deserves to succeed.

Mention of Tunda reminds me that she has been one of the highlights of the past week, the second of the three which she is spending here on secondment from the Racing School. Communicating with her is becoming slightly less difficult, and her riding is coming on nicely. She has been cantering Polly up Warren Hill, and she has good balance and a steady but gentle touch on the reins, which is excellent. And she rides with confidence too, which is probably the biggest asset of all. So we've had her here all week. We were missing one of our usual stalwarts at the start of the week, because Gemma, as usual, headed off to Glastonbury, which excursion proved very worthwhile because she made it into the social pages of the NME, fetchingly togged out in "short shorts" (apparently there is a difference between short shorts and hotpants, although one has to be a member of the Y-generation, which I'm told I'm definitely not, to appreciate this distinction) and wellingtons. Anyway, she and Simon survived three days of boiling up Camp Coffee on a Calor Gas stove and folding up their pyjamas inside their neatly rolled sleeping bags (inside their "pop-up tent", and that's not my phrase) without catching pneumonia and have returned to the fold safe and sound. Bless 'em.