Wafer-thin

I had a very pleasant trip to Brighton on Tuesday, but again it was a case of the afternoon being very enjoyable other than the couple of minutes (well, the last 30 seconds or so) of our race.  Sussex Girl did what she generally does: travelled well and ran OK but not well enough.  She finished fifth of 13.  The funny thing was that she and her old rival Rocksette (they have run against each other several times there, including when Rocksette won for the only time and including when Sussex Girl won there in the autumn of 2017 with Rocksette second, beaten a neck, and including when Rocksette was second and Sussex Girl was third behind Fort Jefferson there nine days before that) again passed the post closely matched, Rocksette (who started favourite this week) finishing in sixth, half a length behind us.  Two consistent horses.  Two frustrating horses.

As regards being frustrating, when writing the previous chapter previewing the trip to Brighton I mentioned how frustrating it was that when Solitary Sister had finally got in a race, she had gone lame the day before it.  The brahma was that I'd forgotten the fuller extent of the frustration which she has prompted: the last time she went to the races (in February) she did not run for an even more unforeseen reason: racing at Chelmsford that night was called off midway through the card because of thick fog!  This isn't a good game for people who can't cope with setbacks.

It's also not a game for people who can't cope with being cold and wet because we spend far too many hours cold and/or wet in the course of a year.  However, happily this week that's the least of our worries as the weather has been lovely.  Temperatures in the low to mid 20s, and sunny just about all of the time: absolutely perfect.  I've taken loads of photographs this week and a few of them will illustrate this chapter.  Parek (Sussex Girl) and Dane O'Neill in the first paragraph, and then just general shots from the mornings thereafter.

Just two general points upon which to touch.  The announcement of the passing of John McCririck has been the biggest news story today.  (Well, it has been easily the biggest racing news story, and it hasn't been far from the biggest news story in general because it made the main section of the One O'Clock News on BBC 1 this afternoon, which tells one all we need to know about the size of the part which John played in British life in recent decades).  There isn't much which I can say to add to the outstanding obituary which Lee Mottershead has written of him for the Racing Post.  John deserved a good tribute and he has certainly got one there thanks to Lee.

I didn't know John well at all, but I am thankful that in recent years we appeared on the same 'Sunday Forum' panel on At The Races a few times.  Before that I don't think that I'd ever even spoken to him.  I'm glad that I did get to meet him those few times.  There was one occasion when people observed to me afterwards that he'd given me quite a hard time (I can't remember what that was about) but it hadn't seemed like that to me at the time.  With him you expected spirited dialogue, and sitting next to him the jousting was a pleasure rather than an ordeal.  He was a brainy man who cared, and he wouldn't have been the special person which he was if he hadn't been moved to engage in spirited debate.  And the further bonus of appearing on the same show as him was meeting 'The Booby'.  Even a brief meeting with her made it plain that she is a saint, and a saint who was the perfect match for John.  She will be mourning him grievously, and I offer her my most most sincere condolences.

On a far less substantial topic, I was glad to see that Katherine Begley had a ride for her boss Richard Hannon in the last race at Newbury last night.  On occasions officialdom has one scratching one's head (the totally unnecessary forced withdrawal of Aweedram from the Britannia Handicap at Royal Ascot being one of the more obvious recent ones) and the difficulty which she appears to have had in being granted a jockey's license is a case in point.  This appeared on my radar as she asked me to provide her with a reference as she has ridden for us this year (Roy in an apprentices' race at Brighton in the spring) and I was stunned to find that she was meeting opposition.

Kathy turned 26 recently, which meant that she ceased to be eligible to ride as an apprentice.  The convention has always been that if there is a doubt about whether a jockey will get 25 rides in a year, then the granting of a jockey's license is not guaranteed.  It used to be (but is no longer) the case that the trainer for whom the jockey worked would be asked to guarantee that the jockey would receive 25 rides, the commitment being that, if the jockey ended up having had fewer than 25 rides, the trainer would pay him riding fees to make up the shortfall, a commitment which certainly focussed the trainer's mind and meant that the guarantee was not given lightly.  

Anyway, I've never been totally comfortable with the idea that if someone has served an apprenticeship and is prepared to pay for the license, and is working full-time in racing, he/she should not be granted one.  I can understand the theory of applying some sort of quality-control to the jockeys who are riding in public, but that sorts itself out without interference from above: if the jockey isn't good enough, he/she just won't get the rides.  But if the would-be jockey has been riding in races as an apprentice for years, it's hard to justify starting to say that he/she suddenly is not good enough to ride in races.

That's by the by, because there was no evidence to suggest that Kathy wouldn't be able to get 25 rides a year.  I've looked up on the Racing Post site and seen that in the first half of 2019 she had 46 rides for six wins.  Very few of these rides were in apprentices' races, so there's no reason to believe that the total would have been significantly fewer had she been riding on a jockey's license rather than an apprentice's license (bearing in mind that, since the rule-change which meant that jockeys, rather than merely apprentices, can claim an allowance, she would still claim 5lb whether riding as an apprentice or a jockey).

One should point out that most of those rides came while she was still working for David Evans, but she's now in a stable which has thousands of runners, one of which she rode last night, so it's not as if she's moved to a stable which can't or won't support her.  Anyway, she was finally granted a senior jockey's license, no doubt in part thanks to a tweet from John Reid.  Replying to Kathy's tweet on 24th June, "I'm fit, strong, dedicated & natural on horseback and the BHA are making a fuss about upgrading my license to professional (due to age) citing 'lack of rides' yet their dithering has cost me two rides at Newbury tomo ... go figure", John wrote, "I personally don't understand your lack of rides.  I think you are an excellent jockey and if I was a trainer I would definitely put you up."

Fortunately, common sense has prevailed.  Let's hope that she can go on to mirror other jockeys who have been close to the borderline of being eased out of the game but who have gone on to glory.  Padraig Beggy gets even fewer rides than she does, yet he has just added the 2019 Irish Derby to his 2017 Derby victory.  I wonder how long the Irish stewards spend pondering whether to refuse him a license because of 'lack of rides'!  James Doyle and Danny Tudhope are two others who nearly fell off the map after the end of their apprenticeships (and I think that it is worth pointing out that the key figure in the renaissance of Danny Tudhope was Jim Goldie, not that you'd have known this when Danny's fall and rise was being documented on the TV at Royal Ascot).  I suppose the moral of the story is that one should never forget (as so many people, including seemingly the BHA, do) that the gap in competence between the fashionable jockeys and the unfashionable ones is wafer-thin (if it exists at all).