Nuts

Great feedback, as always, from Neil Kearns after the last chapter.  Some of his words are particularly worth considering, on the subject of the positioning of Ascot in this necessarily strange season.  We keep hearing about what will or won't be happening as regards 'Royal' Ascot, and I'm with Neil in questioning whether any of it makes much sense.  So we'll have a look at the subject now, starting off with whole idea of 'Royal' Ascot.  And that's important because its the illogical clinging to the term and all that it seems to imply which is causing most of the problems.

Older generations, of course, did not refer to 'Royal Ascot', but to 'Ascot'.  This was because Ascot only held one meeting a year until the end of the Second World War.  It was only once it began racing more often that a term was needed to differentiate 'Ascot' (ie the meeting in June) from its other meetings, because previously there had been no other meetings.  Hence people starting to refer to Ascot as 'Royal Ascot', and the new meetings simply as 'Ascot'.  And 'Royal' was a very good term to use because the meeting was royal.  The monarch and other members of the Royal Family attended; there was a Royal Procession and a Royal Enclosure.  And widespread enthusiasm among the large and jolly crowd for the royal connection.

For much of the post-war era, Ascot's June Meeting had an extra day.  Royal Ascot lasted for four days (Tuesday to Friday) but there was an extra day on the Saturday.  But it wasn't a royal day: the Queen wasn't there, there was no royal procession and no royal enclosure.  So it was known as 'Ascot Heath'.  (Merely calling it 'Ascot' would not have worked because many of racegoers still referred to the first four days as 'Ascot', as they had been brought up to do when it was 'Ascot' and there was no need for the 'Royal' qualification).

So what's this thing about will 'Royal Ascot' be held this year or won't it?  Of course it won't.  But will the Ascot June Meeting be held this year?  I very much hope so. As long as racing does indeed return in June, it goes without saying that Ascot's fixture will take place.   But it clearly won't be 'Royal Ascot', will it?  Surely the Queen isn't planning to be there?  Surely there won't be a Royal Procession nor a Royal Enclosure?  The meeting is going to be held behind closed doors, so it would be really weird if any of the aspects of the meeting which merit its 'Royal' prefix applied this year.  It will be unlike any previous meeting, but if we want to give it a prefix, surely it would be far more 'Ascot Heath' than 'Royal Ascot'.

Unfortunately this misplaced enthusiasm to run an ersatz, unroyal, misdescribed 'Royal Ascot' has led to other problems.  It seems to have brainwashed people into thinking that the meeting should be 'Royal Ascot' (notwithstanding that its royalness will be absent) also in the sense of its programme of races, as if such a programme of races were set in stone.  But this is nonsense, isn't it?  The programme isn't set in stone at all, and never has been.  Throughout the history of 'Ascot', the make-up of the meeting has been a moveable feast.  Most obviously, 20% of the races at the meeting in the last few years were introduced (or, in some cases, reintroduced after a long absence and under different conditions, eg the Windsor Forest Stakes and the Albany Stakes) in the 21st century.

We've also had numerous other very recent changes.  The Bessborough Handicap has been rebadged as the Duke of Edinburgh Handicap.  The Cork and Orrery Stakes has become a weight-for-age race, has become the Golden Jubilee Stakes, has become the Diamond Jubilee Stakes, and has become for four-year-olds and upwards.  It is a very different race (albeit over the same distance) than the one which Danehill won as a three-year-old carrying 8 stone!  (Different name, different age conditions, different weight conditions).  Three-year-olds are also no longer eligible for the Prince of Wales's Stakes.

But we're only scratching the surface here.  Other changes in recent years have been the renaming of the New Stakes (now Norfolk Stakes, and which was originally run over just shy of four furlongs); the increase in distance of the Coventry Stakes from five to six furlongs; the increase in distance of the Chesham Stakes from five furlongs to six furlongs and then to seven furlongs (in 1996).  I don't know when we lost the Granville Stakes (which Gold Bridge won the same day and in the same time that Hyperion won the New Stakes) but I think that the Rous Memorial was only lost (transferred to the autumn and re-named the Rous Stakes) in the '60s.  It was certainly at the meeting recently enough for the Queen to have had one of her Royal Ascot victories in it (courtesy of Landau).

And this supposedly time-honoured no-sponsorship thing?  Where did that come from?  There have been numerous sponsorships.  Local inn-keepers used to sponsor the Postmasters' and Innkeepers' Plate (run on the Wednesday) but when the railways made it possible for racegoers to come down from London and return within a day, the local innkeepers found the week much less profitable - so the Ascot Authority instead persuaded the Great Western Railway, arguably the principal commercial beneficiary of the meeting's popularity, to sponsor a race instead.  They even used to get the odd local MP to sponsor a race, presumably to show his commitment to life in his constituency.

And why is the June date for 'Royal' Ascot so sacrosanct?  The meeting was first held in August (on Saturday August 11th, 1711, to be precise) and definitely wasn't called 'Royal Ascot'.  But we're getting off at a tangent.  This idea that Ascot's June Meeting has to be called 'Royal Ascot' and has to have a set programme of races is nonsense.  And it's dangerous nonsense too.  And it's currently doing a lot of harm and causing considerable ill feeling.  Of course there are plenty of races which have been run at 'Royal Ascot' in recent years and which will be perfectly suitable to be run next month.

The majority of races will be fine being run then.  All the handicaps, for starters.  And then the Queen Anne Stakes, the Prince of Wales's Stakes, the three Group One sprints, the Jersey Stakes, the Hardwicke Stakes, the Windsor Forest Stakes.  But, equally, there are several which clearly would be better being delayed for a month or so. And delaying them will be no problem because Ascot has meetings throughout the summer.  The 'King George' Meeting at the end of July would be an obvious destination for most of them.

The St. James's Palace Stakes and Coronation Stakes are part of a development programme for young horses.  They will be considerably weakened if they are run before the 'Guineas' races in England, Ireland and France have all been run and the principals from them have had time to be freshened up in readiness for contesting the 'championship deciders' which these two races have become.  Similarly, the King Edward VII Stakes and Ribblesdale Stakes work ideally when coming after the Derby and the Oaks, providing a great opening for horses who have been weighed in the balance at Epsom and found slightly wanting, or who had previously been found slightly wanting in the Classic trials.  And running the Queen's Vase so early in the season would be even sillier.

I'm not comfortable about the idea of Gold Cup being held in the first month of the season so that its contenders mostly tackle the race first time out.  It is easily the jewel in the staying-race crown; and running it in a time-slot which means that, in most cases, it is the first race of the top stayers' season is about as sensible as it would be to run the Cheltenham Gold Cup at the Mackeson Meeting.  And don't come back to me with the response that it has to be run at 'Royal' Ascot because the Queen always presents the trophy, because she won't be doing so this year.  And the winner's owner won't be receiving it, either, more's the pity.

But it is the issue of the two-year-old races which really takes the biscuit.  I can't put it any better than a tweet by Matt Taylor (@VikingsRevival): 'Running the Ascot 2yo races 2 weeks after the start of the season is nothing short of ridiculous. Embarrassing lack of both flexibility and common sense.'.  Couldn't have put it better myself!  Of course, one of the main drawbacks is that, it being such a weird scenario, there will be plenty of people wanting to have a crack at them, so it would be very hard to ensure that the horses who make the line-up are the ones who ought to be there, ie the ones genuinely of that calibre rather than no-hopers flying too high just on the off chance of a weird result.  In other words, how to make sure that the realistic candidates aren't eliminated.

There is no right answer to this one, bearing in mind that, while we usually have more than two months of maiden and novice races to sort out the wheat from the chaff, this year there won't be much more than a week's worth of two-year-old races - and that'll be at a time when there are considerably fewer fixtures per week than usual.  The BHA has done its best to solve this insoluble problem by coming up with a scheme to make sure that the established leading trainers of two-year-olds are guaranteed to get a few two-year-olds in to what we might call the qualifying races in the first week of June.

Like democracy and the Duckworth-Lewis method, this is probably the least bad of all the options.  But, like democracy and the Duckworth-Lewis method, it is still a very unsatisfactory solution.  It is woefully inadequate and, worse than that, almost guaranteed to cause considerable ill feeling, for two reasons.  Firstly there will be plenty of stables around the country which don't regularly churn out two-year-old winners but which this year seem to have stumbled upon one which can go a bit, and the connections of these horses are being discriminated against.

This could obviously cause considerable trouble for these trainers, with the horses' owners effectively being told that they are being disadvantaged because of their choice of trainer.  However, the system will cause even greater issue for the trainers whom it is meant to favour, ie the principal two-year-olds' 'production-line' stables.  These stables usually have a couple of months of opportunities to run their dozens of seeming Ascot prospects, to sort out which ones are good enough to go and which aren't.  Now they have to nominate some who will be guaranteed a slot in the qualifying races, which puts them in an awful position not merely because, until they run the horses, they don't know the answers but also, most pertinently, they are faced with the predicament of deciding which owners to favour and which to tell that they are being overlooked.  And that's a terrible position to put the trainers in.

And it shouldn't be happening.  There is no downside to running these two-year-olds' races at the 'King George' Meeting.  Well, there is one: the loss of the Princess Margaret Stakes, which would have to be elbowed aside.  But that's the full extent of the debit side of the ledger, while the plus side is massive.  I can't see that anyone would object.  It's just common sense, isn't it?  Why tie oneself in knots worrying about the best way to crack a nut when there is no good way to do it, when all the while the nut can instead easily be moved to a place where it will crack itself?