Have I missed the point?

Well, after heavy rain on Thursday, snow on Friday, very gloomy weather on Saturday, freezing fog on Sunday and freezing fog on Monday, we have had a glorious day today (Tuesday).  Cold, yes (a hard frost this morning and it might only have struggled marginally above zero towards the end of the morning) but oh so beautiful.  I'll apply a freezing fog photograph (of the hedge along the top side of the Limekilns, with the remnants of Friday's snow doggedly clinging on to the grass, taken at 2.30 yesterday afternoon) to this chapter, but for the other few I'll attach some taken this morning.  Pictures can be worth a thousand words.

I see that Altiorgate / Hendersongate is rumbling on.  I don't have a dog in this fight, but I still don't see the problem.  I can't see the problem in scratching a horse if something comes to light subsequent to declaration time which, if you'd known it at declaration time, would have meant that you wouldn't have declared the horse.  In Altior's connections' case that was the fact that the ground was much more testing than was expected at declaration time.  That's undeniable.  Watching the TV on Friday afternoon, not that I was paying much attention, the overwhelming impression was that the ground was more taxing than had been expected.  But that's not surprising.

Obviously I live in Newmarket, not Esher, so it would be wrong to make the mistake of thinking that Newmarket's weather was/is Esher's weather.  However, declaration time for Saturday was 10 am on Thursday.  On Thursday afternoon I drove to the evening meeting at Chelmsford.  We drove through heavy rain all the way there, and it continued to rain for the evening.  As I'm a boring sod who likes to talk about the weather, I discussed driving conditions with Liz Bachelor, who had driven Milton Bradley's box there from Wales, and Simon Humphries, who had driven Andrew Balding's box there from Kingsclere.  Both said that they had driven through heavy rain the entire journey.  It is impossible not to conclude that Sandown must have had a lot of rain on Thursday afternoon/evening.

We had heavy rain in the early hours of Friday which turned into snow for a few hours.  I don't know what Esher had, but I know that the GoingStick reading on the steeplechase track at Sandown at 6.45 on Friday morning was 6.3 (and one has to believe that it must have been significantly higher than that on Thursday morning) and 5.8 at 8.45 on Saturday morning.  A GoingStick is is very sensitive, and a reduction in the reading of 0.5 is a sign of the ground getting significantly softer.  And yet there are people peddling the myth that the ground didn't change between declaration time and the time of the race (or the time when Altior was scratched).  Lunatics.

Similarly misleading is the line that Altior had won the race two years ago on heavy ground, or whatever it was, so there was nothing to worry about now.  What's the connection?  As a general rule, the more extreme the ground - firm or heavy - the more the race takes out of the horse.  Two years ago or whatever it was, Altior was at his peak and he would have been able to cope with it easily.  Now he seems to be in the twilight of his career - witness the fact that he was only sound enough to run twice last season - and saying that he could take heavy ground in his stride two years ago so should be able to do so now is like saying to a fast bowler who has started to struggle, "What's wrong with you?  You should be able to bowl 30 overs today - you bowled 30 overs in one day at Old Trafford two years ago and took 6 for 87, and didn't seem to find that a problem."  Nuts.

In my more recent case, I scratched Hidden Pearl from a race at Chelmsford last night (which ended up not taking place because the meeting was abandoned because of poor visibility in the freezing fog) on Saturday afternoon, having declared her for it on Saturday morning.  The reason for this was that something had come to light which, had I known about it at declaration time, I would not have declared her.  She's a horse prone to back trouble.  It's very hard for a layman (even one who does know quite a lot about back trouble) to diagnose because it doesn't make her lame, and she's such an active, enthusiastic horse that it doesn't affect her gait or how she does her work.  But it does affect how she functions under severe pressure, the kind of pressure she is only put under in a race.

I have her checked by the chiropractor before and after every race.  In this case, that meant having her checked on Saturday morning, the only day that week that the chiropractor was in town.  Ideally, he would have been able to be here before declaration time (particularly from my point of view as I was leaving for Wetherby at 9.30 and would much rather have been here when he came) but he couldn't get here until 11.30.  So I declared her - only to get the disappointing news that afternoon that the chiropractor had seen her at 11.30 and wasn't happy with her.  That, as the softening of the ground at Sandown had done for Altior, changed things for her, and reluctantly I scratched her.  And I do mean 'reluctantly' because I hate having non-runners, and very rarely have them.  Surely nobody thinks I should have run her anyway?