The stranger song

Both of our fillies ran adequately.  Amenta finished fifth of 12 in her maiden race on a grey and wet but very pleasant afternoon Lingfield on Saturday; Freediver finished seventh of 12 in her maiden race on a grey and wet but very pleasant afternoon at Wolverhampton yesterday.  Both horses and their connections are probably wiser than we were as both fillies were having their first run for this stable, are still lightly-raced and hadn't run for a while (in fact Freediver was having her first race for exactly a year).  Most of what we learned was fairly encouraging: both fillies did plenty right through the day, coping with everything well and running on resolutely to the line in their races.  Onwards and upwards, we hope.

Otherwise, Altiorgate, or Windgate, has been the big topic on the wider landscape.  Funnily enough, this was the second time during the week that the topic of horses' wind problems had appeared on my radar.  Earlier in the week I had discovered why the implementation of the seemingly straightforward introduction of the reporting of wind operations to be made compulsory is taking so long.  Apparently the National Trainers' Federation is not keen on the idea.  I couldn't see what the objection could be, but now I do.  And it is a serious issue which the BHA are right to be cautious about.

Basically, the objection to making it compulsory to declare that a horse has had a wind problem is irrelevant for the vast majority of horses and the vast majority of trainers, but is a big issue at the highest level.  The worry is that making it public knowledge that a top-class stallion prospect has had a wind operation could potentially knock a million pounds off the horse's value.  More even.  If that's the case, then so be it; and arguably there's no harm in that because, if we are serious about the long-term good of the breed (which we should be), then we should be making things like this public knowledge anyway, so mare-owners can make informed decisions when choosing which stallions to use.

The problem is, though, that if the BHA do this, they will be doing it alone, ie Horse Racing Ireland and France-Galop won't be doing it too.  Which would be a massive disincentive to people putting their expensive colts into training in Great Britain, when they haven't got to worry about this potential compulsory devaluation of their stock if they have them trained in France or Ireland.  In practice the rule will be unenforceable.  And what would be a suitable punishment for failure to declare?  Warning off?  A warning?  A fine of £100?  A fine of £1,000,000?  Maybe a fine of twice the total prize money of the race in which the horse is running (on the basis that declaration is made if/when the horse has had a wind operation since its previous race) might be the answer in the extremely unlikely event of someone having failed to declare the operation and (and this is the unlikely part, particularly when the trainer is overseas-based and the operation was done abroad) being found out to have done so.

For a French- or Irish-based trainer, the answer would be either to ignore rule on the very rare occasions when you bring one such horse to Britain, knowing that you would have virtually no chance of being found out, and that, even if you are found out, the punishment would very likely be nothing worse than a slap on the wrist by comparison to the fortune which you would have saved your patron by preventing the world from finding out that his multi-million-euro stud prospect had a wind problem.  Or, if you are taking it seriously, just give him a prep run in France or Ireland before bringing him to England for his main target.

Obviously a GB-based trainer could do so too, but overall this rule would definitely be a massive disincentive for the major investors having their good colts trained in Great Britain, rather than France or Ireland.  Or even a disincentive for them racing them here.  And that would be bad for British racing.  I am in favour of wind operations being made reportable, but even I see that that is a major drawback.  One of British racing's strengths is that, while financially we are in the old Fourth Division, we are still able to play in the Premiership (as regards the proportion of the world's best horses who are trained here and the quality of our best races) because of a combination of our heritage and the fact that is our policy to maintain a far higher disparity in value than is the international norm between the best races and the run-of-the-mill stuff.

Our Premier League status is invaluable, and the BHA's duty is to safeguard it.  Therefore it is only right that we think long and hard before bringing in legislation which (assuming that a similar rule is not brought in in France or Ireland) would almost inevitably lead to a reduction in the percentage of the world's best horses who are trained here and a reduction in quality of our best races.  Food for thought.  But, of course, my tendency always to go off at a tangent means that this isn't the end of my musings on the topic.  Let's look at it from the other end.

Why are horses who have had wind operations (or operations to remove bone chips, or otherwise strengthen their legs, or whatever) even allowed to race in Group One races, bearing in mind that it is only recently that geldings have been allowed to run in such contests and still are only allowed to run in a subset of such contests?  Why are they allowed to race in any races, come to that, bearing in mind that horses who have been treated with anabolic steroids aren't allowed to run in any race?  The idea of barring geldings from the best races (until the '80s they couldn't run in any Group One race in Europe, and even now can't run in the Classics or the Arc) was because gelding a horse artificially improves him, artificially enhances his performance, and the best races are supposed to find out who is the best horse as nature intended, rather than the best horse once man's technology has tinkered around to make him better than he was born to be.

Similarly with anabolic steroids (which I wouldn't use in a month of Sundays, I should hasten to add, lest there be any misunderstanding) which we are all agreed have no place in our (or any other) sport because they can artificially enhance the performance of a competitor.  But there is no anabolic steroid which can artificially enhance the performance of a horse to the extent that a wind operation can sometimes do to a horse who is born with a breathing mechanism which doesn't function properly.  I don't think that it's good enough just to brush this dilemma under the carpet, to say that anabolic steroids are performance-enhancing but wind operations aren't; to say that geldings can't run in the Classics because they have had a performance-enhancing operation but there's no problem about running horses who have had wind operations (or operations to remove chips from their joints, or whatever) in these races.

I don't know what the answer is.  But these are things which we need to think about.  We doubly need to think about them now because, by a bizarre coincidence (and I didn't know that this rule was about to be introduced) while writing this chapter I have received an email (twice) from the BHA telling me that the reporting-of-wind-operations rule has been introduced. To quote Leonard Cohen, "Please understand, I never had a secret charm to get me to the heart of this, or any other, matter.".  To quote Johnny Nash, "There more questions than answers; and the more I find out, the less I know".  But we do at least need to think about these things.