Reflections, Cheltenham-related and otherwise

Gosh, it's all happening, isn't it?  There's Cheltenham, of course, but there's also the question of whether there should have been Cheltenham because we have the Corona virus pandemic, which is a much, much bigger thing than everything else.   And, aside from that, we have the US drug-use indictments, the Sheikh Mohammed / Princess Haya custody battle in the court in London, and various other matters which escape me at present.  There's so much hand-wringing about whether Cheltenham should be happening, but I think it's a case where there are no correct answers: Corona virus is not going to go away any time soon, whatever we do.

In the aftermath of the judgement of Sir Andrew Macfarlane that Sheikh Mohammed's behaviour had been "contrary to the criminal law of England and Wales, international law, international maritime law, and internationally accepted human rights norms", I read plenty of people saying that, as he clearly comes into the category of someone who has been the subject of an adverse finding by a judge in civil proceedings, he should not be eligible to own horses.  While the letter of the ownership guidelines from which I have drawn these words might suggest that that should be the case, surely nobody actually believes that he shouldn't be allowed to own horses?  That's idiotic.

Furthermore, those guidelines are for applicants, and Sheikh Mohammed is not an applicant: he is already a racehorse-owner, and has been so since the '70s.  And during this time he has shown himself to be pretty much the model owner.  I can't think of a single non-trier case involving any of his horses; no betting scandals; no scandals of any type bar the discovery of widespread use of anabolic steroids in Godolphin horses a few years ago, and we don't even have any idea of what was going on there thanks to the BHA's bizarre decision at the time not to investigate the matter.  (Being handed a confession and promptly closing the case without testing the validity of the confession does not equate to conducting an investigation).

And the other line of thinking, as raised in several publications, is that racing should, like the Queen, try to sever its links with him because of fear of reputational damage resultant from being associated with him.  There is, of course, something in that.  (And I'm amusing myself by speculating about whether Sheikh Mohammed under any of his guises might win either the Diamond Jubilee Stakes or the Gold Cup this year as that would spawn an awkward presentation for both presenter and recipient.  He won the former race last year and has collected several Gold Cups over the years).  However, racing has firstly survived Lester Piggott going to jail for tax evasion and then leading jockeys testing positive to cocaine, with the people concerned being at least as synonymous with British racing as Sheikh Mohammed is, so I'm sure that we can survive this.

The only mystery, of course, is why Sheikh Mohammed allowed this debacle to happen in the first place.  There was no chance of the court not finding in Princess Haya's favour, so his choice was to cede to her demands in private without anyone being any the wiser about anything, or to contest them unsuccessfully in public and have his reputation inevitably demolished.  Common sense should have said the former option would be vastly preferable.  And even if he couldn't work that out himself, one would have thought that his advisors should have pointed him towards the wise course.  I suppose it might just be that, as one sometimes finds, advisors to very powerful people can be more concerned about keeping their jobs, particularly if they are being well paid, by telling the boss what he wants to hear than about doing their jobs well.  Whatever - the result is a sorry situation which should not have happened.

The situation in America with the indictments of Jason Servis, Jorge Navarro and others is even sorrier.  But at least there there should be a happy post-script to that debacle in that ethics might start to be a major priority within the sport there and elsewhere, rather than be seen as an inconvenience.  Not just in America but in all racing jurisdictions there have been too many trainers for too long prepared to work on the Travelling Wilburys' assumption (from Tweeter and the Monkey Man) that "anything's legal as long as you don't get caught" and too many owners happy to give their business to such people.  Hopefully the upshot of this case might be that more trainers might behave in a more ethical manner, and more owners might be more discerning about whom they patronise.

To move from the major to the minor, I suppose that one topic upon which we ought to touch post-Cheltenham is starting.  It really annoys me when people complain about the starter doing his job well.  Robbie Supple did nothing other than follow the protocol to the letter.  The only mystery is why we don't use standing starts as a matter of course.  They worked well for many years until inexplicably a few years ago they were deemed to be useful only as a fall-back; and they worked very well any time they were used as the back-up option this week.  They're much the most satisfactory way, and the easiest for the jockeys.

I didn't ride in many races because I wasn't much good; but, when I did, I never used to regard the starts (which were always standing in those days) as one of the hard parts.  I don't think that anyone used to find them difficult.  (It was everything else I struggled with).  I can't believe that the standard of jockeyship has fallen so much in a generation that jockeys now find them hard, or that the standard of training has fallen so much that the horses are harder to ride.  What has happened, I suppose, is that standards of discipline have fallen, in racing as in everything else, and disobeying the starter no longer seems to be considered an offence at all, never mind the serious one which it used to be, so jockeys might be more likely to try to take liberties.  But it's not difficult: you put your horse into the line and you jump off when told to do so.  And it's not on to blame the starter if people can't manage that.