High horse!

As we know, there seems to be a big push towards steering trainers into running horses against their better judgement. The Racing Post is particularly keen on this, and I don't know why. As we know, the Racing Post is in favour of making it harder and more expensive for trainers to scratch horses which they think ought not to be running. I'd have thought that it's in everyone's interests to ensure that horses which the trainer thinks shouldn't run shouldn't run (if that's gramatically sound). It's certainly in the horses' interests. I can't see that it's in punters' interests to have a load of horses running round which the trainers think shouldn't be running - and you've got to remember that trainers are desperate to win races, so you can be sure that they'd be running the horse if they thought that he had a (safe) chance. I can't see that it's in jockeys' interests to have their regular rides running on occasions when they oughtn't: far better to wait until the horse is right than risk mucking him up, just for the sake of a losing riding fee. Dale Gibson, whom as you know I admire greatly, has made the mistake of allowing himself to be dragged into the Post's campaign, and I was disappointed to see him, for once, confusing the issue: he appeared more vexed by trainers taking the horses out without telling him, and thus making him have pointless journeys to the races, than the fact that the horses were coming out, so his complaints, which were basically about lack of courtesy shown by trainers, were allowed to cloud the issue.

Anyway, what's brought this on was a telephone call from Weatherbys trying to persuade me to run Ethics Girl at Wolverhampton tomorrow. This really annoyed me. Re-opening races after the entries or declarations have closed is wrong. If a race closes at noon tomorrow, it should close at noon tomorrow, full stop. And if the declarations close at 10am tomorrow, that's when they should close. The people who have done the right thing by getting their entries/declarations in on time should not be disadvantaged by the people who haven't being rewarded for their failure to do so by being given a second chance. It's clearly wrong, but it's not that aspect of the wrongness which pissed me off yesterday. If I enter a horse (or declare him), it is because I want to run him. Most of the times when I enter a horse and then do not declare him, it is because, come declaration time, I deem him not fit to run. (Otherwise it is usually because I think that the ground is not suitable for him). This is not usually an open-and-shut decision, ie the horse is not usually clearly lame, blatantly sick, or dead. Usually it is a case of suspecting that the horse isn't quite right to run, rather than him definitely being incapable of doing so. So, when having rather unhappily made the unwelcome and uncertain decision that it would not be right to run the horse, it is bloody irritating to have Weatherbys ring me up to try to twist my arm into running by telling me that there will be a small field. This happened yesterday. Ethics Girl ran at Lingfield on Sunday. On Saturday morning I had entered her for Wolverhampton tomorrow, thinking that if she came out of Sunday's race all right I'd probably like to back her up. Anyway, the entries came out for Wolverhampton and I would love to run her in the race, but unfortunately she had a very hard race on Sunday and seemed like a tired and rather stressed horse after it, so - reluctantly - I reached the decision that it would not be in her interests (and hence the interests of her owners) to run on Friday. So it was then really annoying to have Weatherbys ring me up 20 minutes after declaration time to tell me that only four horses had been declared and that I could belatedly declare her. As with the previous occasion (from an earlier chapter) of the potential for changing the jockey, this was clearly trying to tempt me into doing something which I felt to be wrong. It's a valuable race tomorrow and I'd love to run her in it - but it would be wrong. If I'd thought it would be right to run, I'd have declared her prior to 10am. So why wave the carrot in front of me? The answer, of course, is that we are supposed to be paranoid about small fields. But, in the great scheme of things, does it really matter whether there are four runners or five in the 8.50 at Wolverhampton tomorrow night? Of course it doesn't. But it does matter that the whole system seems to be being geared towards steering trainers towards running horses whom they feel should not run. That's just plain wrong. The horse is meant to be the king in this sport, but contemporary thinking seems to be that he's just an expendable pawn to be used to make the machine run smoothly supposedly for the humans' benefit - only it's not for the humans benefit at all, because if we do the wrong thing by the horse, we all suffer: owners, trainers, jockeys and punters. Here endeth the lesson.


To a happier topic, this time of year sees many of the horses go off for a holiday. We've always been lucky enough to be able to spell horses at Kerry Oldfield's lovely farm in Norfolk and I hope that we'll send some up there shortly, but today we had Batgirl head off to spend ten weeks or so at the home of her owners, Tony and Becca Fordham. They have a lovely field and Batgirl thought all her birthdays had come at once today when she arrived there
(along with a mate - Rhythm Stick - because it wouldn't be much fun being there on her own). She should have a lovely break, and if Tony and Becca enjoy having her there as much as she'll enjoy being there, it'll be a very successful spell all round. The only problem, of course, is that Batgirl's not the easiest to coax into a truck, so if she gets her feet as well under the table as I think she will, getting her back here next January might be a very lengthy procedure!