Small is OK; long is good

We're into the season of small fields (and inevitably so, bearing in mind that there is a huge amount of racing at present and the turf tracks are invariably either fairly firm or very firm).  (We seem no longer to use the word 'hard', which would surely have been a more correct description of conditions at Bath the other day than the 'firm' which was used, bearing in mind that common sense said that it had to be hard and that ATR reported that Silvestre De Sousa, who presumably rode on some very firm tracks in Brazil in his youth, gave the opinion that it was the firmest track he had ever ridden on).  Should we be concerned about the current spate of small fields?

I don't see that we need to be.  We're in this slightly unsatisfactory situation of the levy generated by each race being a percentage of the bookmakers' profit on the race, rather a (significantly smaller, obviously) percentage of the turnover.  (Were we using the other system, of course, one's view on small fields might well be different).  It is far from guaranteed that a bookmaker's profit will increase with the size of the field: in fact, a race with a very small field could make a positive contribution to the levy while a supposedly more ideal contest could, depending on which horse wins it, make a negative contribution to the levy.

If we reach the stage where fields are so consistently small that people lose interest in betting on horse-racing, then we would have a problem.  As things are, though - ie with a short period during the height of the summer when the fields in general are small - I don't think that there's too much cause for concern.  I read yesterday an opinion from a trainer that yesterday's turf card at Lingfield should have been transferred to the AW, but I don't think that that would be a good idea at all: doing so would, presumably, have increased the field-sizes, but in general I would have thought that too much AW racing is a greater threat to racing's public appeal than too many races with small fields.

Similarly, I don't think that we can play the small-field card to justify the trend towards squeezing staying races out of the programme.  When the tracks are very firm, in general one might be more cautious with stayers than sprinters; certainly, I'm feeling rather uneasy about the idea of running Hope Is High at Bath in the near future (which is what I would like to do) whereas if she (a sound horse) were a sprinter I wouldn't be having any misgivings at all.  It's a fair generalisation that the longer the race, the more strain it puts on the horse; just as the more extreme the ground (either hard or heavy) the more strain it puts on the horse.

But I'd take the same view as with the AW: going down the road of making races beyond a mile a rarity would be a greater threat to racing's popularity than having quite a few small-field races during the height of the summer.  Which makes it harder to justify the fact that so many cards at present aren't fulfilling the very sensible obligation to contain at least two races beyond a mile whose distances add up to at least a mile and a half.  Looking through the lists, there are many meetings who deserve praise for doing so at a time when, clearly, they would have more runners if they were putting on a less balanced programme.  Bath (where Tuesday's card contained a mile-and-a-half handicap and a mile-and-five handicap) particularly springs to mind, and I commend it for that. 

But at Yarmouth yesterday the longest race was seven furlongs.  We noted that Newmarket's July Cup card contained only one race beyond a mile.  Well, I now see that its next meeting - ie tomorrow night, when Parek (Sussex Girl) will run - also contains only one race beyond a mile.  (This happens to be Parek's race - and it might be food for thought that only one of the six shorter races has attracted more declarations than the nine who are set to line up in it, despite it being restricted to fillies and mares, a restriction which obviously might keep the field-size lower than it might have been had colts and geldings also been eligible).

At Chelmsford next Tuesday there will only be one race beyond a mile (whereas Bath, to its great credit, will put on a card the next day containing handicaps over ten, twelve and fourteen furlongs).  Catterick next Wednesday will have only one race beyond seven furlongs.  Two days later Thirsk will stage a programme on which the longest race is seven furlongs.  Does this really matter?  I suppose not -  but it would matter if the trend were to continue.  Which it might well do bearing in mind that in a handful of years we have gone from having the rule so particularly observed that it nearly prevented a racecourse's major development (whether it was a development for the positive or the negative I shall leave for you to work out) to it being broken so frequently than nobody seems to notice or care.

The architects of the setting-aside of the rule would probably maintain that they are merely reacting to the changing demographic of the horse population (ie that more and more people are breeding and owning short-distance runners) but I would say that they are as much encouraging this trend as reacting to it.  And I would definitely regard encouraging the trend as being a bad thing.  Whatever - let's just hope that Parek (pictured here, on Monday with Jana) can win the longest race on the card at Newmarket tomorrow evening.  (I'm not particularly expecting to do that, incidentally, but I wouldn't totally rule it out.  As always, I'll hope for the best but expect nothing).