Elaboration (on an already over-covered subject)

I don't think that I've had any feedback from my thoughts on self-certification. There was, though, a letter on the subject from Ruthven Urquhart in today's Racing Post, but I think that that was surely just a coincidence. However, I feel that perhaps it might be appropriate to add a few explanatory notes (as if the original musings weren't long enough already!).

You might think that I've got nothing to do with my time from the fact that I'm wasting so much time on this subject, but that's actually not the case at all. Emma's been at Goodwood for three days and, although the dogs and cats have been taking things very easy during her absence (as the totally gratuitous illustrations on this chapter will show) I've been very busy. Very busy indeed, in fact. But not so busy that I can't write this nonsense. No, the thoughts that have come to me actually all concern the same horse: the tragically departed Horatio Nelson, who was fatally injured in the 2006 Derby. I think that his sad story perfectly illustrates some of the points which I was trying to make.

I saw Horatio Nelson win the Prix Jean-Luc Lagadere as a two-year-old and fell in love with him: he was a beautiful colt, a really lovely horse. I was, therefore, astounded when I saw him in the parade ring before the 2,000 Guineas, because he hardly resembled at all the very fit, strong and muscular two-year-old I'd seen the previous year: he looked well short of peak fitness, just flabby and very ordinary. I couldn't really work out why Aidan O'Brien was running him as he clearly was in no state to run anywhere near his best (illustration one, that one can't just assume that because a horse is running that he is ready to run to form - one's actually got to use one's eyes) but I assumed that he had had a few training setbacks and Aidan was just desperate to get a run into him to try to bring his fitness on so that he could be somewhere near ready come Derby Day four weeks later. Anyway, he clearly did subsequently start to improve, as evidently Kieren Fallon rode all Aidan's Derby contenders three days before the big race, and was so impressed that he chose to ride him in the Derby. However, the next time that Kieren sat on him afterwards, only three days later when taking him down to post for the Derby, his impression was clearly the exact opposite, and he apparently conveyed his worries about the horse to the vet at the start. (Illustration two, that horses are very fragile animals, and that their state of soundness can vary hugely from one day to the next, so the fact that one is happy with the horse at declaration time certainly doesn't guarantee that one will be happy with him the next day). As history relates, the vet, I think after taking advice from the trainer, decreed that the horse was fit to run, and tragically the horse fatally broke his leg during the race. (Illustration three, that it is very hard to know exactly whether a horse is or is not sound to run in a race, and that vets are not blessed with supernatural powers but are actually less well equipped to make that judgement than the rider, or someone else who knows the horse better than an outsider with veterinary qualifications). Do you see what I mean? Deciding whether a horse is or isn't fit to run is not an easy thing, but it is (or can be) a matter of life or death, so the idea which one frequently hears put forward that it ought to be made harder for a trainer to scratch his horse when he has a suspicion that something is amiss is just plain wrong: the easier it is the better, because if there is any room for doubt, the benefit of the doubt should always go towards the horse not running.

And, of course, the other point which I should have made clearer is that one cannot just take a horse out on a self-certificate to save him for a race later in the week which one has just worked out will be weaker: one, rightly, cannot run the horse for a full week after thus scratching the horse. Does that make things clearer?

Anyway, one of the reasons why I've been very busy this week is that I've attended a couple of Forest Heath District Council meetings in Mildenhall. These weren't very pleasing as they saw our councillors vote to establish the principal of building a four-figure number of new houses in Newmarket, which will obviously have serious negative implications on the feasibility of training in the town (because if the roads were to get significantly busier than they are now then it would cease to be safe - not that it's particularly safe even now - to take strings of horses across them). But all is not necessarily lost, so we'll just have to see what the future brings. Anyway, as always there was a slight ray of sunshine amongst the clouds. In this case it was provided by a couple of remarkable uses of the English language which brought a small smile to my face. As we know, the American belief is that "any noun can be verbed" (including, it seems, the noun "verb"), so I was entertained to find that if we impose a condition in a document that something should be done, then the doing of that something is thus "conditioned". And, secondly, that if one applies a Tree Protection Order to a tree, then that tree is "TPOed". Splendid, isn't it? However, these were actually as nothing compared to the Racing Post's recent use of the verb "spend" as a noun. We had this twice in the same article last week (albeit on one occasion the writer was quoting someone else). I know that the writer's excuse would be that millions of people use "spend" as a noun when they actually mean "expenditure", in just the same way that millions of people use the verb "invite" as a noun when they actually mean "invitation" - but really: you'd like to think that the people who do do not make earn their living as professional writers! Anyway, this appalling misuse of the language was almost, but not quite, enough to distract me from the astounding revelation (assuming that I read it correctly, which can't be guaranteed, bearing in mind that my eye had been taken off the ball in the first sentence of the article) that the BHB's annual expenditure on policing the sport is TWENTY-FIVE MILLION POUNDS! I feel that I ought to be able to say something worthwhile on the subject, but I'm afraid that I'm lost for words. For once.