The more inconsequential a topic, the more attention it receives. Is that statement true? It can be. Certainly readers of British tabloids could justifiably attest to its veracity (were they to do what the tabloid editors would prefer that they didn't do, ie think about things rationally). Sometimes I even think that after listening to or watching the news on the BBC. Within the racing world we have just been provided with Exhibit A in defence of the proposition, ie the Fitzdares Racing Futures List. Utterly fatuous and inconsequential (not to mention wrong) but it has managed somehow to become a supposedly serious and high-profile 'news' story.
You don't need to think too closely about the Fitzdares Racing Futures List to work out that the '35 under 35' are not the 35 'most influential young people in racing'. The inclusion of trainers' sons who are currently working as assistants to their fathers (particularly while omitting Bart Cummings' 29-year-old grandson James, who is Godolphin's Australian trainer) is ludicrous. They aren't influential at all yet, although in the fullness of time they may well be. But trying to compile a list of influential people on the basis of who will be influential in the future is very silly. Nick Rust, to name but one, is one of the most influential men in British racing, but when he was 30 he wouldn't have been on the radar had such a list been circulating at the time.
Adolf Hitler provides a classic example of the impossibility of trying to predict at an early age who will end up the most influential. Having been born in 1889, he turned 30 in 1919 and in retrospect (bearing in mind that that was the year that he joined the DAP and thus set the wheels in motion for the devastation which was to follow) he was clearly then well on the way to becoming the most influential person in Germany. Arguably the world, in fact, if one ranks a person's influence on the number of deaths for which he is responsible (which is probably justifiable, as having power of life or death could be seen as the ultimate sign of influence). Although I suppose that we would probably have to rank him second behind Stalin, whose death toll of his own citizens would probably still have been closer to eight figures than seven even if the Second World War hadn't taken place.
Anyway, Adolf Hitler, in retrospect, was clearly on his way to becoming extremely influential by the age of 30. Just as Fitzdares clearly believe that many of the people on the list are on their way to becoming very influential (while erroneously describing them as being very influential now). But, surely, one of the many lessons which history when viewed through the lens which Hitler provides is that it is impossible to tell who will become influential. It is not just that Hitler wouldn't have found a place on a list of the 35 most influential young people in Germany in 1919; he probably wouldn't have found a place on the list even if it been stretched to 35,000 or 350,000. Or even 3,500,000.
So what's this list all about? It is just self-serving nonsense? Or is it worthwhile, part of a brilliant and cunning plan carefully formulated for the greater good? You might be surprised to learn that I'm inclining towards the latter explanation. The thing is that I've gone through the list thoroughly and I think that I've found the tell-tale clue. It's like Watergate: the clue is always there, even if you have to look at things closely and a bit differently to find it. Just as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein happened to notice that and then paused to question why the Committee to Re-Elect the President was paying for a top lawyer to represent the unknowns who been caught breaking into the Watergate building. They happened to focus on that seemingly inconsequential detail, and thus they went on to unlock the whole sorry story.
For me, the presence of the Duke of Sussex on the list is the give-away. One might just think that this is a pointless attempt by Goodwood in particular and racing in general to suck up to the Royal Family, but I believe that one would be wrong. I think that this is potentially a stroke of genius. One cloud permanently looming over the horizon for all of us who love the Sport of Kings is the question of what will happen to the Royal Studs when the Queen passes away. Hopefully that won't happen for a few years yet, but sadly she is no less immortal than the rest of us.
What will happen then? Prince Charles, funnily enough, had a runner at Goodwood on Saturday. And he is a former amateur steeplechase rider. But does he have his mother's passion for breeding and racing high-class Flat horses? It's hard to believe that he does. Do any of her descendants? Well, the Duke of Sussex may do, if things worked out well. I believe that he showed some interest in racing a few years ago, even if there has been scant evidence of any attachment more recently. And certainly not nearly enough evidence to justify him being on a list of the most influential young people
in racing, notwithstanding that, as a grandson of the Queen, he clearly is a very influential person.
However, the potential may be there. And what better way to unlock and nurture that potential than by placing him on a list of racing's young elite alongside some other glamorous young people and inviting him and the Duchess of the county in which Goodwood lies and in which the Duke of Richmond and both Lord March and the Hon. William Gordon-Lennox (who by a happy coincidence are also on the list) are among the most prominent peers, to a dinner during Goodwood (which I imagine is what has happened, bearing in mind that "a dinner on Wednesday evening at Cowdray House, in West Sussex, launched the list")?
If this audacious plan were to work, then it would be terrific. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex would end up as bewitched by the sport's magic as we are, and the future of the Royal Studs and of racing's royal patronage, and of all the incalculable benefits which the sport thus accrues, would be secured for the next several decades. That would be supremely good news for us all. (And 'us all' includes the Duke and Duchess, because they would have discovered the lifelong joys that becoming bewitched by the Sport of Kings can bring).
If that happens, the seeming nonsense of the Fitzdares Racing Futures List won't have been nonsense after all, but a master-stroke of genius. And if the plan doesn't work? Well, there won't have been much harm done, other than the slight unease which we all feel (and, I guess, that includes many of the people on the list) at this elitist nonsense (including the awkwardness of the wolf of indiversity being presented to us in the sheep's clothing of so-called 'diversity') being paraded in racing's name.
So, is list the product of idiocy or genius? It's that fine line again, the razor-thin divide between Triumph and Disaster, because the answer depends on how things end up. Only time will tell. As Harry Chapin sang at the end of 'Sequel', "I guess that's the sequel to our story / Of the journey 'tween Heaven and Hell / You spend half the time thinking of what might have been / And half thinking 'Just as well' / I guess only time will tell". It's like what we say so often about jockeying, about those split-second decisions and narrow margins upon which fate rests. You win the race by a head and you're a genius; you lose by a nose and you're a fool and/or a crook. We still haven't had it put any better than by A. B. 'Banjo' Patterson in the final lines of 'Riders in the Stand':-
'The rule holds good in everything in life's uncertain fight;
You'll find the winner can't go wrong, the loser can't go right.
You ride a slashing race, and lose - by one and all you're banned!
Ride like a bag of flour, and win - they'll cheer you in the Stand."
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