Best laid plans

Our second proposed National Hunt runner has gone by the board too, I'm afraid, as the Plumpton ground had turned to soft before declaration time for tomorrow's meeting, which meant that it was a fairly easy decision this morning not to declare Ex Con. Still, these horses' races should only be deferred as we'll enter Douchkette for Bangor on Saturday and Ex Con for Wincanton on Sunday. It felt rather strange on a glorious, warm day to have abandoned running plans because of wet tracks, but there you are; and if the week continues as clement as it has started, there should be no worries about running the horses next weekend.

So I suppose that we shall just have instead to concentrate on the oddest story of the weekend, which was the assault on Kieren Fallon and Elna Bright's connections at Lingfield yesterday. For the benefit of those unaware of this incident, it would appear that Kieren's mount Elna Bright was struck into during the race, so Kieren, feeling his horse go lame, pulled him up - and that the horse behind him (who, presumably, was the horse who had struck into him) was carried back as Kieren eased his mount. This horse, who was favourite, thus lost whatever chance he had had of winning the race. Afterwards, it seems that the owner of this horse, David Reynolds, rather than approaching Elna Bright's connections to apologise for his horse having injured theirs, rushed into the group (Kieren plus Elna Bright's owner Peter Crate and trainer Brett Johnston) as they stood examining their horse's injury and started throwing punches - one of which hit Kieren and another of which hit Peter Crate - as retaliation for his horse having been hampered. Amazing! Racing, seemingly, has become no different from society at large in that it is generally felt that no one is ever to blame for anything and no one ever should have to take responsibility for his or her actions, but in this case I'd say that, hard though it is to be sanctioned nowadays, David Reynolds is likely to discover that he has found a cast-iron way of copping a very lengthy disqualification.

Sadly, we have had a warning-off closer to (our) home, as our neighbour Jonathan Jay has been placed on the forfeit list. His license is thus invalidated as he has become a disqualified person. This is very sad, as Jonathan is a good member of the local training community and has been enjoying a decent measure of success with his small string of, largely, moderate horses. I can confirm that it is definitely 'business as usual' in Jonathan's Exeter Road stable, so let us hope that it does not take long for the matter to be resolved and for his license to be restored. Jonathan has a loyal bunch of long-standing owners (which is a recommendation in itself) so I hope that he will soon be able to put this sad episode behind him. We all know how very hard it is to get a small training business to break even, never mind to show a profit, but hopefully Jonathan's ship will be back on an even keel before too long - there but for the grace of God go most of us. There has, though, been one rather strange aspect of the case which ought be commented upon. Jonathan's disqualification was presumably enacted during the day on a Friday a couple of weeks ago as that morning he had been able to declare a horse for the Sunday's racing (who obviously then became a non-runner) but then found himself unable to run his horse that evening as his license had just become invalid. What was really strange, though, was the fact that his apprentice, Matthew Cosham, was still able to take his outside ride in the same race. It could, of course, be the case that Matthew's indentures had been transferred to another trainer during the day, but it seems very unlikely that that could have happened so expeditiously, especially as Matthew (pictured riding a horse in Jonathan's green 'JJ' exercise sheet) was still riding out for Jonathan the next morning. It would, therefore, seem more likely that the stewards merely gave him permission to take the ride, which they were probably safe enough doing because he was on a seeming no-hoper (who duly ran badly). However, if this were the case, I'd say that the stewards were extremely rash: had Matthew's horse won the race with Matthew riding on an apprentice's license held by an unlicensed trainer (ie riding on an invalid license), it would clearly have become the case that any objection to the winner by the connections of the runner-up would have had to have been sustained, because the winner would have been ridden by a jockey whose license was not valid. While it was obviously a kind gesture by the stewards to allow Matthew to take his ride, it was not a wise one, if indeed that is what happened.

Another interesting stewards' enquiry piece of rule-application must have been the deliberations to clear up the mess after the novice chase at Hexham on Thursday. As I hope will be explained in the letters' column of the Racing Post within the next few days, this was not the first time that a jockey had taken the wrong course at Hexham, Ian Watkinson having told me a story of Paddy Broderick having persuaded Jeremy Glover to do so in a steeplechase there in the '60s. This race, from our point of view, was not, though, interesting merely from the point of view of it being the latest example of a jockey getting lost during the race: what was particularly nice was that it saw Noble Alan, who is one of Nicky Richards' horses who stayed in Abington Place during and after the freeze-up this winter, win his first race since returning home. He is a lovely horse (as one would expect of a Scottish Champion Hurdle winner) whom it was a pleasure to see on the Heath (pictured) and it was now a pleasure to see him winning another race.

Further interesting observations on officialdom are prompted by the news that a horse called Easterbrac has had to have his name changed because it was belatedly decided that the name was too similar to Istabraq. That's rather a strange one, particularly as there are currently so many horses running around with names not similar but identical to those of great horses from the past. I think we've commented on several of these in the past, but I think that we probably ought now to highlight the fact Hot Spark ran second in a maiden race at Wolverhampton earlier this month. I presume that this isn't the Group One winner Hot Spark (successful in the Flying Childers Stakes in 1974, then a Group One race) nor the Hot Spark who figures as the maternal grandsire of the Group One winners of Rodrigo De Triano (2,000 Guineas plus four other Group Ones, and subsequently a successful stallion in Japan) and Ya Malak (Nunthorpe Stakes). That Easterbrac should be deemed an unacceptable name but Hot Spark allowed (particularly as, on the subject of distinguished National Hunt horses of the recent past, there is a Coombe Hill running around now who definitely hasn't won a Hennessy Gold Cup) is hard to understand.