Winners and non-runners

We need to pull our socks up because Exeter Road is on fire. Not literally, of course - but the trainers are "doing enormous". Willie Musson's horses have been going really well, as was highlighted by his winner at Goodwood this afternoon, while Don Cantillon has had four winners this month: Sir Boss won when we were at Chepstow and then followed up at the opening meeting at Ffos Las, Alfie's Sun won a steeplechase and then he had a French horse win a bumper yesterday. Jonathan Jay had a winner yesterday, and Dave Morris (pictured, with Cragganmore Creek the other morning) has had Iceman George win at Newbury in an amateur race with his son Ben and then at Newmarket under Tom Queally. The Newmarket win came two Fridays ago on the evening that Douchkette ran, and the intention was that the horse would try to complete a treble back there seven days later. Sadly this did not come to pass because he pulled a shoe off on the way down, and it is Dave's policy that the horse doesn't start if he's lost a shoe, while it is Newmarket's policy to have a farrier at the start for big races, but not for amateur races at the start of a mundane evening card. So poor Ben had to canter the horse back up the course once the field had run the race; and, adding insult to disappointment, had to endure the jeers of 10,000 yobs who felt it appropriate to sound off as this unfortunate pair came past. Thank God this was the first race and they were only semi-drunk!

We, meanwhile, while revelling in what must be a very good strike rate, are only turning the score-board over very slowly, thanks to not running anything. Fingers crossed Ethics Girl will run at Bath on Friday night, but Anis continues to avoid running, and I also scratched Douchkette from Windsor yesterday. This gives me my cue to mount a hobby-horse. One often hears on the racing channels and in the papers pundits whingeing about non-runners, and implying that it is too easy for people to scratch their horses. This really gets my goat. Every day horses run who shouldn't run. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find a race in which there are no horses who shouldn't be there. I don't know whether it is fully appreciated, but it is extremely hard to have a horse 100% fit and 100% sound simultaneously, never mind being 100% healthy at the same time. In advance of this year's 2,000 Guineas, the two pundits on RUK - I think they were Nick Luck and Steve Mellish, but I could be wrong - gave a preamble which roughly ran as follows: "Well, we've had the trials when so many horses were supposedly only x% fit, and we've had all these bulletins about trainers not being sure they were going to have their horses ready on time, but now the big day has dawned so we've got to assume that all the horses who have showed up are 100% fit and ready to run". I almost fell off my chair in disbelief when I heard this, and I can only assume, because Nick and Steve are both sensible and intelligent people, that the speaker didn't actually believe what he was saying. (If it were the case, what would be the point in inspecting the horses in the parade ring before having a bet?). You could probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of races through the year in which all the horses are completely fit, sound and healthy - so why should the 2,000 Guineas be one of them? In virtually every race there is at least one horse who runs badly below form, so why should the 2,000 Guineas be the one race of the year in which every horse puts in his peak performance? Of course there is no reason, and of course plenty of the horses there shouldn't have been there. One, obviously, was Lord Shanakill, but happily he took no harm from the run and has subsequently won the Prix Jean Prat - and might win the Sussex Stakes tomorrow for his new trainer Alan Jarvis. I wasn't at Newmarket that day (I was en route to Goodwood) so can't tell you which others weren't ready - I only know that Lord Shanakill comes into this category because Karl Burke subsequently told me that, in retrospect, he shouldn't have run him there because the race had come too soon for him and he'd had to rush him to get him there, and that the plan had back-fired - but if I had been there I'm sure that, from simple paddock inspection, I could give you a list of at least half a dozen horses who were significantly below their best and ideally would have been better staying at home.

So, why should it be the case that we feel that, if a trainer decides between declaration time and race time that his horse shouldn't, after all, be running, it should not be a straightforward matter to scratch him? In whose interests it is that, if the trainer comes to the conclusion that his horse is insufficiently sound or insufficiently healthy (it's unlikely to be lack of fitness which comes to light, because that would have been obvious beforehand) to run, that the horse should run anyway? It definitely isn't in the horse's interests. It definitely isn't in the connections' interests. And it definitely isn't in punters' interests to have horses showing up at the races - with punters being encouraged by TV pundits to believe that that implies that they are ready to run to form - when they are very unlikely to be in a position to give of their best. I think what people who complain about non-runners overlook is that one doesn't declare a horse unless one wants to run him. I was really looking forward to running Douchkette yesterday. However, I was not happy with her at exercise on Saturday morning, when she seemed sluggish. It is not, however, as straightforward as saying, "This horse is sluggish, therefore she should not run"; were that the case, very few really fit horses would ever run, because when a horse is really fit he tends not to be at all boisterous. (Witness the late Dick Hern's reply to the question of how one knows that a horse is fit, the answer being that he does not misbehave in the parade ring). On Saturday afternoon, however, I was watching Douchkette in the field with the other horses, and she was definitely significantly less exuberant than usual, forcing me to come to conclusion that, unless she seemed less lack-lustre at exercise on the Sunday, it would be unwise to run her, because she was clearly not totally comfortable. Anyway, she was still thus on Sunday, so on Monday morning I, very reluctantly, took her out of the race. Thankfully this is now a straightforward procedure because we no longer have to go through the farce of the vet's certificate.

The vet's certificate is a nonsense for two reasons. Firstly, there is no vet alive who could walk into this stable, inspect a horse and then give a better assessment of whether the horse would be likely to run to form the next day than the assessment I would make myself. And secondly the vet is forced to fight, metaphorically, with one hand tied behind his back, because he is making a snap judgement along very narrow perameters. For example, I took Anis Etoile out of a race a few weeks ago (I can't remember if she was a non-runner, or whether I didn't declare her - ie I can't remember at what stage it became clear to me that she oughtn't to run) because I didn't think she was right; but the previous day, feeling not happy with the mare, I had had the vet out to inspect her and he, because she was sound and apparently healthy, had given the opinion that I should carry on with her. However, I was sure that something was bothering the mare, so followed my gut instinct, over-ruled this advice and didn't run her - and then was ever so thankful that I hadn't as two days after the race I had the chiropracter visit her, who diagnosed strained gluteal muscles in her hind quarters. If she'd have run, she'd have probably started favourite, and would have run badly. So why should anyone have wanted her to run, notwithstanding the fact that she would have passed any pre-race veterinary examination, when clearly her participation would have been to punters' disbenefit, never mind to the disbenefit of her connections, and of the mare herself?

I've lost count of the number of times I've heard the talking heads on the television refer to the process of self-certification as a step in the wrong direction, but as far as I'm concerned it is one of the best innovations which the BHA has made. If, having declared a horse (and having done so wanting to run the horse) I am then forced to conclude that the horse, after all, is not right, it makes no sense that his owners, who already have to swallow the disappointment of my telling them to abort their plans to go to the races, have to pay (because vet's certificates cost money) not to inflict an unsound horse on the racing public - especially as in the majority of cases the vet's certificate will only reflect the trainer's, rather than the vet's, observations and opinions (ie very often the symptoms of the problem will not be immediately apparent to the quickfire inspection which the vet undertakes, and the main reason the vet will have for knowing that the horse isn't right is because the trainer, whose judgement (one hopes) he trusts, has told him that he isn't).

Does that all make sense? I'm not sure that it does. But the essence of it is that the punters' champions who pontificate about the evils of non-runners are barking up the wrong tree altogether; and that, in introducing the process of self-certification, the BHA have got one thing very right. (Having praised the BHA, am I now allowed to ask why, oh why, Nasrullah's dam Mumtaz Begum came to be running in a maiden race at Yarmouth last week?)!