Reunited - Lanzarote and Comedy Of Errors

Well, yesterday truly was a day to remember. For several reasons. Firstly, it was truly splendid. We had a hard frost, but once the sun came up we just had the most magnificent views all day. Friday had been good in this respect as the previous chapter had shown, but yesterday was even better. We just had 'bootiful voo' after beautiful view, and I'll insert a few of such vistas in this chapter. We then had the thrill of watching William ride a terrific race to get Swincombe Lane home by a nose in the Lanzarote Hurdle. That was really great as we like William so much, so it's great to see him ride a big winner (a) because it's nice for him and he deserves his success and (b) because it's good for the world to see what a good jockey he is, because that seems to have been a well-kept secret for too long. However, this great result came with two stings in the tail. Firstly, and most obviously, William was banned for seven days and fined his share of the prize money (about two and a half thousand pounds, I believe) for supposedly improper riding (ie hitting his mount ten times during the course of the race, with one of these whacks supposedly being in the wrong place). Secondly, and only Racing UK viewers will know this, he was savagely criticised by the TV pundits, who had come to the conclusion that he gone to sleep on the horse and hadn't ridden her hard enough far enough from home, and that she'd won despite the jockey. Honestly - but I'll come on to that later.

I'll start by setting the scene with Cornelius Lysaght's post-racing Tweet from Kempton: "@WTKJockey widely-considered to have shone; one official sighed: 'Before the new rules you'd have called that a really great ride.'" Anyway, William's ride really was a classy one. He was in a difficult position because he'd been told to race prominently, but the leader ran off the track with a circuit to go, so he found himself in front a long way from home. This is a very difficult position for a horse and jockey: you'll find yourself facing one challenge after another, and the real temptation is to be forced into using one's mount up too early. The first horse to put pressure on William was the other joint-favourite Decoy, but running down the back straight there were a host pressing up behind him. Thankfully William resisted the temptation to keep increasing his advantage and, while he was obviously already sooling her along to a certain extent, he still hadn't really asked his mount as they turned into Kempton's long straight. Worryingly, there was one horse following him through going seemingly better, and this horse duly joined him at the second last hurdle and went a length up on him. At this point, William could clearly wait no longer and rode the mare strongly. He hit her five times between the last two flights and another five times after the last. She responded admirably to his urgings and stuck her nose in front right on the line. It was a wonderful win, and tremendous performance by both horse and rider. I was left feeling slightly sorry for the runner-up, who would surely have won had he not hit the front too soon. However, that is no criticism of his jockey James Best, who is a terrific young rider whom I've been admiring ever since I saw him win a steeplechase one evening at Stratford in the summer with a terrific ride. He is surely a star jockey of the future, and when he's had enough experience to have ridden out his claim he will surely be on a par with even the best jockeys. However, yesterday he didn't ride his horse as well as William rode the winner, but that's only to be expected: he's a seven-pound claimer and thus is entitled to make a good seven lengths' worth of mistakes during the race. As it was, he made maximum of two lengths' worth of mistakes, so it's fair to say that his mount would have run worse if any top professional had ridden, because he'd have carried 7lb more, and the top professional certainly couldn't have got the horse to find another seven lengths. The comments in the Racing Post are rather harsh on James Best ("... almost 1 length in front and looked winner last, idling flat and edging left, rider changing whip hand and fumbling with reins final 150yds, driven close home, headed on post") but I wouldn't be too harsh on the technicalities - but would say that, had he held on to his mount a bit longer rather than sending him past the leader with 400m remaining, he would have won. Anyway, that's by the by - but you'll see why I'm labouring the point when I start the next paragraph.

Straight after watching the Lanzarote Hurdle, I was left flabbergasted by the post-race analysis on Racing UK. Having been impressed by William's 10-out-of-10 ride, I was more than stunned to hear Lydia's side-kick (whose name I don't know) tell us that Swincombe Flame had won despite the ride. William had, apparently, gone to sleep early in the straight, hadn't ridden her hard enough early enough, had let the runner-up get first run on him and had been lucky to get out of jail, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat in the final stride and thus fluking a win which should have come easily and decisively. Lydia must have been put in a difficult position: she'd have been loth on air to tell her side-kick that he was talking nonsense, but at the same time she clearly couldn't endorse such idiocy. To me it was perfectly plain that the runner-up should have won but had come too soon, and that William consequently, by riding more patiently, had been able to beat a horse who should have beaten him. But therein lies the problem, and it's one which I have aluded to in the past. Traditionally, we have regarded the ability to remember that the winning post comes at the end, rather than at the 200m, as the hallmark of a great jockey. Nowadays, however, it is all too often the case that the jockeys who get the plaudits from the pundits are those who ride as if it is at neither the end nor the 200m, but at the 400m. The pundits love busy jockeys, those who ride their mounts hard from a long way out, those who can turn what should have been a straightforward, relatively easy win into success (or even defeat!) in a hard-fought slog. How often have we heard that "the strength of whomever proved decisive"? And that's why the over-use of the whip has become an issue: jockeys nowadays are under so much pressure to be seen to be as 'strong' that 'strong' riding has become almost compulsory. If you can be slated for riding a well-judged race and resorting only to pressure as a last resort, but praised for 'strength', you're going to make sure that you look busy, thus giving your horse a harder race than need be and thus needing to be busy. It's a vicious circle, and I'm afraid that the ignorance of our pundits has an awful lot to answer for. And, as is shown by the fact that the aftermath of the race has been dominated by rightful condemnation of the injustice of William's punishment while the crassness of the Racing UK analysis has passed unremarked upon (other than here), the pundits get off extremely lightly for the part which they have played in causing the current sorry state of affairs.

Let's hope that our trip to Wolverhampton tomorrow can be more straightforward.