Have a good Christmas, a decent Christmas (whatever that means)

Ooh, I don't want to go two weeks (again) without without writing a chapter, so here we are on Christmas Day.  I'd hoped that we might end the year with a winner when we took Konigin to Lingfield on Saturday, ie three days ago, but that was not to be.  What I had feared might happen did happen, ie we suffered from the 'equine bingo' factor of Lingfield and didn't get the best of runs.  Still, she ran well which is always pleasing, even if in this case frustrating too: a strong-finishing fifth, beaten neck, neck, neck, head.  We have one more chance in 2018, Sacred Star at Lingfield on Sunday, but it would probably be unrealistic to expect her to win second time out, having finished a good but well-beaten fourth first time out.

No racing on TV today - terrible!  How can this be allowed?!!  I don't enjoy the run-up to Christmas at all, as I always have too much to do even at the best of times, and the run-up to Christmas is very far from the best of times in that respect.  And the very short days (you'll note from the photos that the race was run as the sun set, and it was the 3.25) and the cold/wet/windy (delete as applicable - usually one deletes nothing) weather get me down, mentally and physically.  But the good thing about Christmas is that (not perhaps that the 'Are you ready for Christmas?' interrogators realise this) it arrives whether one is ready for it or not.  And it's generally a pleasant day.  And then we make up for the three-day lack of racing on the TV by being treated to a feast over the subsequent few days.  I'm looking forward to that.

What I'm trying to work out is whether we'll have our Boxing Day racing spoiled by hearing too much agonising about the ground being too soft or not soft enough.  We seem invariably to hear complaints about either one or the other nowadays.  We had the not-soft-enough lament for months and months and months; and then earlier this month we went from the one to the other within a week, and we were then hearing about how difficult it was with the ground being so soft.  Hard to tell which we'll have to endure tomorrow.  Possibly both.  And I'm not joking about that, bearing in mind that Kempton is currently (and strangely) described as "Good to Soft, Good (in places)".  Could go either way.  Could go both ways at the same time.

We had a Kempton meeting around three weeks ago at which the ground was 'good' and there were tiny fields because the ground apparently was not good enough.  And I noted a non-runner earlier in the autumn (I think that it was at Exeter) when a horse was taken out because of the change in the ground, the going having been changed after the first race from 'good to soft' to 'good to soft, good in places'.  I was further scratching my head the other day when there was a stable-tour on the TV and the trainer was asked about a certain horse, "Do you think he needs decent ground?".  Under the circumstances, it was impossible to know what was actually being asked.  I can't remember the answer, but that was probably fairly Delphian too.

You might wonder where I'm going with this.  The thing is that I've become intrigued by this idea that horses can only race on a very slender part of the going spectrum.  (I'm not sure that that sentence makes sense, but I hope that you can work out what I mean).  This never used to be axiomatic.  Far from it, in fact.  And I don't know why this idea has become so strongly lodged in everyone's minds.  (And I'm not casting aspersions on anyone because I'm probably as guilty as anyone in this respect because I am aware that in general I am over-protective with horses and usually err on the side of caution).

Anyway, a few weeks ago I happened to be leafing though an old Timeform National Hunt annual from the mid-'70s when doing some research on an unrelated subject.  Two photographs caught my eye.  One was of three horses jumping the final flight of hurdles in a selling hurdle at Folkestone.  One of them was Hit Parade (who didn't win the race, which was won by Oh Brother, trained by Giles Beeson at Lewes) whose place in history is secure because he was Martin Pipe's first winner.  The other was the Susan Chesmore-trained Stay-Bell winning a race under Maurice Barnes.  Anyway, while poring over these two photographs, I started reading the comments on the horses featured on these two double-page spreads.  Effectively, these two double-page spreads were picked at random, and they make startling reading from the point of view of the topic which I'm discussing.

I wrote about this in my column in Al Adiyat, the UAE weekly racing magazine, three or four weeks ago, and I'll reproduce what I wrote.  Nothing could better illustrate the change in mindset which has come in in a fairly short period.  This is only the 1970s we're talking about, not the 1870s.  Anyway, here is an extract from the article:-

"One doesn’t have to go back too far in time to find that it hasn’t always been like this.  Earlier this autumn I stumbled upon an end-of-season Timeform comment for one of Fred Rimell’s good horses (it might have been Another Dolly, but I can’t remember for certain) which included a sentence along the lines of, ‘Ran well all season although was disappointing on hard ground on his seasonal reappearance’.  On hard ground!  By modern standards, that’s unthinkable.  (In fact, nowadays the trainers don’t have to worry about whether to run on such a surface, as the racing is abandoned anyway).

"Fred Rimell was an archetypal old-school steeplechase trainer ... And it was not that Fred Rimell stood alone as a trainer happy to run his horses on ground a lot faster than good (or even merely slightly faster than good to soft).  While perusing Timeform’s Chasers & Hurdlers 1975/’76 annual last week for an unrelated reason, I chanced upon one double-page spread which contained the following examples:-

"Station Master, trained by Stan Mellor: “… has won on firm going, but seems better with some give in the ground”.  Stay-Bell, trained by Susan Chesmore, whose five wins during the season came on firm (three times), good to firm and good to soft: “… acts on any going”.  Steamer, trained by Peter Bevan: “… acts on hard going and is not at his best in the mud”.  Steves Pigeon, trained by J. Rawlings: “… acts on any going but is suited by firm”.  Stiphado, trained by Fulke Walwyn, who raced that season on ground varying from soft to hard: “… acts on firm going”.  Stone Thrower, trained by Richard Head, whose first and last races of the season were both on firm ground: “… acts on any going”.  

"On another double-page spread, we have:-

"Ocean Voyage, trained by Tony Dickinson: “… probably acts on any going”.  Off The Cuff, trained by Wilfred Crawford, whose two wins that season both came on good ground: “… acts on hard going”.  Oh Brother, trained by Giles Beeson: “… appears to act on any ground”.  Old Chad, trained by Jack Hardy, who won on good to soft that season as well as being placed three times on firm ground and also on soft ground: “… probably acts on any ground”.  Old Man Dimplex, trained by Fred Winter, whose win came on good to firm that season and whose minor placings came on ground varying from soft to firm: “… acts on any going, but is suited by some give in the ground”.  Old Policy, trained by Ian Jordan: “… acts on a firm and an easy surface”.  Old Stephen, trained by Arthur Stephenson, who recorded five wins that season on firm ground and one on soft: “… acts on any going”.

"Another era, isn’t it?  You’d think that that was a couple of centuries ago, but it’s only the 1970s.  What would the likes of Fulke Walwyn, Fred Winter, Fred Rimell, Arthur Stephenson, Tony Dickinson, Stan Mellor and Richard Head (all great old-school National Hunt trainers by any standards) make of today’s seeming axioms?  And as for ‘getting the horses on the grass’ (the supposed difficulties of which we've been hearing so much about over the past few months) at home?  Well, they wouldn’t have had any option but to do so as all-weather gallops didn’t exist in those days!"