Roy Rocket is alive and well

Tuesday really was a wonderfully enjoyable day.  Roy's victory at Brighton the previous Tuesday had been a very special occasion, and this time was equally joyful.  More so even, possibly, not least because the race was a thriller: he had to dig really deep to get there as the shorter trip didn't play to his strengths, and it was only close to home that one could see that he was going to win.  He and John Egan are a wonderful partnership, and what is really lovely is that the skill with which John rides him is matched by the love and enthusiasm which he displays for him.

So that was wonderful, Roy registering his eighth Brighton win on a perfect summer's day in a wonderful atmosphere in which pretty much everyone on the racecourse seemed to be sharing the joy.  Racing, whatever the grade, doesn't get much better than that.  Once again, At The Races did us more than proud, really helping to make the occasion special, and it was a wonderful post-script to see Roy's photograph on the front page of the Racing Post and on the racing page of the Sun next day.  It's terrific how popular he has become, and lovely that the media are promoting him so enthusiastically.

We might go back to Brighton next week for a third consecutive Tuesday.  From a handicapping point of view, this time (unlike the last time, when backing up made perfect sense) it wouldn't be ideal as he would be running off higher than what his rating will be by then.  But he seems to have come out of the race very well, and he's clearly at the very top of his game; a mile and a half on fast ground at Brighton is spot-on for him, and there aren't that many opportunities to have that exact scenario; there won't be another race for him for a month (when he'll go to the Brighton Festival on either the 9th or the 10th of August); and there are only eight entries in the race so it could be a tiny field.  So I imagine that we'll go - but we can firm up that decision anon.

That entry for Roy on Tuesday is our next entry.  We have one other entry next week: Hope Is High at Yarmouth.  Again I think that she could well run, but again that is not yet written in stone.  We have 14 horses in training at present, but less than half of them are anywhere near ready to race; so we aren't having many runners at present, and I'm not having to spend too much time perusing the calendar.  But what brief inspections I have been making of the programme book have highlighted two rather unsatisfactory trends.

Firstly, handicaps for four-year-olds and upwards seem very rare nowadays.  That is regrettable, and not a good thing at all.  It used to be that from September onwards the older horses would run out of opportunities to compete against themselves without racing against their younger, less exposed three-year-old rivals, who generally dominate three-year-olds-and-upwards handicaps simply by virtue of being in general less exposed and thus better handicapped (over and above the receipt of a generous weight-for-age allowance).  It wouldn't be an unusual situation to see a three-year-olds-and-upwards handicap having, say, 12 runners, of which four might be aged three and eight aged four or above; and to have the three-year-olds dominate the betting beforehand and fill the first three places.

One of my gripes with the racing programme is the fact that so many races are restricted to horses aged no more than three, compared to very few restricted to older horses aged four or more; that the element of built-in obsolescence which this creates in horses encourages people to treat horses like disposable commodities - ie to race them for a couple of years and then replace them, rather than race them for as long as they are suitable for racing - and that this is not a good thing for the sport or the horses.

This widespread deletion of handicaps for four-year-olds and upwards is not a good thing at all.  It is hard enough as it is to justify encouraging people to adopt a patient and sympathetic approach to their racing and to keep their horses in training rather than operate on a policy of getting as much out of them as quickly as possible.  This change to the profile of the racing programme just makes it harder.  Another retrograde step which I have noticed is that it is becoming ever more common for racecourses to break the rule which tries to keep a distance-balance to our programme.

The plans to turn Newcastle into a floodlit AW course were nearly undone by the rule which said (I think that this is right) that each programme has to have two races beyond a mile whose aggregate distance is at least two and a half miles.  This is a very good thing because it helps to ensure that Britain doesn't go down the way of the New World in making races beyond 1800m a rarity.  So much was made of the sanctity of this rule when Newcastle's plans were being mooted - and now, just a handful of years later, it seems to be being honoured more in the breach than the observance.

It might be that it has been written out of the rule-book.  This keeps happening to good rules.  When Sussex Girl ran in an apprentices' race at Yarmouth last month, I was taken aback when I got down to the start (I always go down there when she runs to lead her into the stalls as she is a bit tricky and she knows me and I know her) to find that three of the eight runners had gone to post early.  There used to be a very good rule that one couldn't receive permission to send a horse to post early for an apprentice race, on the correct basis that a horse who is so unruly that he needs to go to post early is not a suitable ride for an apprentice.

This oddity at Yarmouth has made me presume that that rule has been surreptiously removed from the book.  And maybe the very good one to give a solid distance-balance to our racing has been removed too.  But how about this, from the very few meetings which I have been examining recently?  At Yarmouth on 18th July (where and when I hope that Solitary Sister will run) the longest race will be seven furlongs.  Next Tuesday, Roy's race will be the only one beyond a mile at Brighton.  I don't want to pick on those two courses, but the point I am making is that I'm only entering horses at three meetings in the next two weeks - and only one of those three abides by this worthwhile rule.

It isn't that these two courses are the only ones, but they're the only meetings I have looked at in the next fortnight.  Over the past couple of years Kempton has caught my eye as being a serial offender, while Newmarket isn't as good at abiding by the rule as it ought to be.  (Witness the fact that there is only one race beyond a mile on July Cup Day).  (I've just looked at Kempton's programme and seen that only four of the six Kempton meetings scheduled between now and the end of August abide by the rule - and I must emphasise that Kempton puts on plenty of middle-distance or staying races, only it consistently breaks the rule by putting on, say, four on one card and then only one, or even none, on the next).  Does this matter?  Probably not, unless one believes that long-distance races are king (as I do, but I'm probably in a small minority).  Or unless one believes that rules should be observed, obeyed and enforced (which I don't, unless, like this one, they are good rules).