Sunday night reflections

September and October were grim months when it seemed consistently to rain at least six days a week.  With the odd exception such as the torrential rain which blighted our post-Melbourne Cup morning on the first Tuesday, November was shaping up as rather kind, as photographs from this and other recent chapters might suggest.  However, we had a temporary (I hope) hiccup last night as it rained and rained, saturating the place again, which isn't very nice.  Still, it could have been worse: we could have gone today to Fontwell, where the race in which Das Kapital was entered was run 48 seconds slower than standard and two steeplechases were run over a minute over standard.

We had runners on Wednesday and Thursday who achieved nothing.  The Rocket Park was fourth of five at Kempton, well beaten, but that was no shock as we had been guessing that the AW would not be his thing, even with a mark 5lb lower than his turf figure.  Hidden Pearl, who ran poorly at Chelmsford the following evening, was a disappointment, but again that wasn't a shock as I had had a premonition that her 13-of-13 draw might make it hard to have things go right for her.  She's a keen sort who needs things to work out well for her; and from that draw, in a race run at a suicidally fast pace, that didn't happen.  Still, we'd had the same thing happen with her at Lingfield in the summer and she bounced back from that, and she'll bounce back from this reverse.

Once I'd digested Fontwell's going and weather report on Friday morning - soft ground with more rain to come, culminating in "a more organised band of heavy rain on Sunday morning" - it was an easy decision not to declare.  Das Kapital had found the soft ground quite taxing the last time he went there, and this was clearly going to be heavier than that.  By the time that today arrived it was indeed heavy, with an inspection at 10.00 this morning to see if the racing could actually go ahead.  They'd had 21mm of rain overnight by the time that the decision was taken at 6.00 to hold this inspection, but they only had another 5mm between that time and 10.00 so the meeting did go ahead.

As we were in the first race at 12 .25, we would have needed to have been there by 10.00 had we been running, and I suspect that I might have just made him a non-runner rather than set off, because taking a horse to Fontwell for a meeting which might not take place (and which, if it did take place, would take place on ground on which the horse would struggle badly) wouldn't have been top of my list of ideal ways to spend a Sunday.  What would have been our race only had four runners, understandably, but I'm certainly not thinking that we'd have run well in it.  The third horse finished 99 lengths behind the runner-up, and I am guessing that we would have finished fourth.  In a later race, the winner won by 59 lengths, which is a memorable margin.

We should have more conventional conditions tomorrow as we'll be on the AW, at Wolverhampton.  Kryptos should have some sort of chance, but he's drawn 12 of 13 which will make things harder.  Plus he's never run on the AW previously, so I certainly won't be going there with any expectations.  The Simple Truth runs in the next race, a maiden race, which you might say is madness with a horse rated 33 or whatever it is.  But he missed out by miles in a handicap there on Saturday (he was number 42 in a race whose safety factor was 13) so even if the race, which was not divided, had been run in three divisions he would still have missed out.

So we may as well run in a maiden race, bearing in mind that the alternative appears to be not running for quite some time.  I think that he will run better than his rating implies as what has been holding him back has been his doing things wrong rather than having no ability, and he has recently been getting things right at home.  But there's the world of difference between settling and then running straight and true in a gallop up the Heath and doing so in a big field on the racecourse.  He would be well capable of blotting his copybook again tomorrow, but I'll be disappointed if that is indeed what he does.  He has to start growing up at some point (although his sibling Roy didn't get his act together on the racecourse until he was aged five, and he's still only a three-year-old) so let's hope that tomorrow he can show progress in that direction.

We've obviously been having quite a few debacles in racing in recent days and I was going to touch upon these, but it's late so I won't say much.  The dead-heat at Cheltenham clearly wasn't a dead-heat (Number 6 on the near side was a clear winner) once one had seen the print lightened up as done by Michael Rafferty (aka @anaglogsdaughter on Twitter) but, as it was in its original form, one can't blame the judge for not splitting the pair of horses.  And a dead-heat being given when there was a clear, albeit narrow, winner isn't the end of the world.

There are enough times when the judge does split them and one reflects that it would have been nicer just to call it a dead-heat.  I'm happy enough to file this away in that pile, and I'd be amazed and disappointed if anyone given a dead-heat when they should have been an outright winner were to appeal.  The time to worry would be when an outright winner is called when it should have been a dead-heat.  Under that scenario there would be someone who should have had a share of a win having a loss; compared to that, someone who should have had a loss having a share of a win isn't the end of the world.

The unfortunate incident of Alexander Thorne omitting to weigh in at Taunton was just that: an unfortunate incident.  It was understandable, as it was his first time at Taunton under the new regulations which mean that the jockeys do not pass through the weighing room on the way back to the changing room (because they are not changing in the proper changing room, but in a different, separate building).  And it was doubly understandable as his eye had been taken off the ball by being waylaid to be interviewed on TV on the way.  It's very questionable whether that should be allowed - golfers wouldn't be interrupted until they have returned to the club-house to sign their score-card, and interrupting a jockey before he/she has weighed in is very akin to that.

However, such a problem is easily enough fixed.  One would hope that senior jockeys would have the presence of mind not to make such a mistake, as weighing in for them really is second nature.  It's the less experienced riders, the apprentices (on the Flat) and conditionals (over jumps), who might be considered the potential problems.  The rule used to be that if an apprentice rode a winner, it was the responsibility of the trainer to escort him/her back to scale and ensure that he/she weighed in.  I'm probably one of only a handful of trainers who still abide by this rule - and I've observed pressmen being baffled by my doing it - but it would be no bad thing for the rule to be maintained/restored (I don't actually know if it still exists) and widely observed.  The Taunton incident would not have happened if that were the case.