Re-affirmation

It was good to read the comments after the last chapter, thank you: good points well made by both Jason and David.  What was also good was to see affirmation today that the glorious uncertainty of racing is such that, no matter how hard a small group might like to corner the market of success, Flat or jumps, it just isn't possible - in just the same way that Leicester have been reminding us of the same thing in the Premier League all season.

Flat racing changed 30-odd years ago when a small group of investors decided that they would invest so heavily in so many of the best horses, and that money was no object, that it would become very hard for anyone else to get a look in.  Of course, it has proved that the relatively ordinary owner still can occasionally strike gold on the Flat, but the main beneficiary at the time of what was seen as a step away from the sporting spirit of the game was National Hunt racing: plenty of people who might previously have been relatively major owners on the Flat (eg David Johnson, who owned a Group One winner on the Flat in 1986 - Mister Majestic, winner of the Middle Park - but soon made the transition to the jumps) decided that National Hunt racing offered an environment where it would be less unfeasible to make an impression, now that the top table on the Flat was seeming to become again as closed a shop as it had been in the 19th century.

Over the last decade or so, a similar thing seems to have happened in National Hunt racing, and it is now much harder for anyone who isn't in a position to throw totally unrealistic amounts of money at it to make any sort of impression in the higher tiers other than on a one-off fluke basis.  My own disillusionment with National Hunt racing started when Sleeping Car, who had previously been maybe the most expensive French import into British jumps racing after showing top-class form at Auteuil, won the Foxhunters at Cheltenham in 2005, trained by Paul Nicholls and ridden by the leading "amateur" in Ireland.  The only way that this win could have been more in contravention to the spirit of the race  and the sport would have been if Ruby Walsh had ridden him - and even then it would have been only very slightly more so.  That was the day when I began to think that the winning seemed to have become more important than the spirit in which people took part, even among people who didn't need to sail close to the wind to stay afloat.

Anyway, even to a cynic like me today's racing was wonderful.  Just going back to my last chapter, it's probably worth pointing out that there has, of course, always been an amount of trade in proven and semi-proven horses.  Smad Place - a horse who exemplifies everything that is best about National Hunt racing, as do his connections - had shown four indifferent pieces of form in the French provinces in 2010 before arriving in Britain.  Six years later he is delighting us all, and it's a pleasure to see that.  Thistlecrack, too, is a horse in whose success it is easy to rejoice, and ditto Barters Hill.  So that's all good - and thus I don't think that we need be losing too much sleep over any monopolies on the top table.

I'm actually more worried at present about a potential monopoly (mine) on the bottom table, as we haven't had a winner since Blue Sea Of Ibrox won at Pontefract in early October.  We've had quite a few runners since then so we must be nearing the Cold List (I think that one normally has to have around 25 consecutive losers to get on that) so it would be good to have a winner before too long.  God willing, Indira should run on Monday, Koreen (seen in the previous paragraph on the Severals with Hannah earlier this month) on Tuesday and Zarosa (seen in this paragraph with Hannah yesterday leading White Valiant and Jana up Long Hill) on Thursday, so that'll give us three chances.  I'd hope that all three would run well, and if one of the three could salute the judge, then that would be lovely.  We live in hope!