Lost content

It's been a disappointing week.  And a busy one too, but I'll put finger to keyboard briefly before I turn in for some much-needed sleep.  Runners three days out of four makes for a punishing schedule, but good results keep you going.  We didn't get them (although we didn't get bad results either) and the one blank day wasn't a blank day after all as I went down to Findon to collect a horse, a journey which I thought would be a pleasure (as I'd take the opportunity to have a walk on the Downs while I was there, checking out a great racing village which I'd never previously visited) but turned out to be a nightmare as the M25 was shut and I ended up making made my first (and I hope last) trip through the Blackwall Tunnel (at about 1 mph).

I set off at 1.30 and had been expecting to be home soon after 7.00.  As it happened, I still hadn't reached Findon by that time, and got home around 11.00.  But traffic's traffic - you just live with it, and (on occasions like this) you count your lucky stars that you're not caught up in that type of debacle on a day when you're going to the races, which would mean that you'd be having a non-runner (instead of either a winner or a disappointment, and of course you wouldn't know which it would have been).

In this week, we wouldn't have missed any winners had we not run the horses.  I thought that Sussex Girl would have a good chance on Sunday, but she didn't run to her best.  She finished fifth, beaten 3.5 lengths, so that wasn't the end of the world, but she can be difficult and she was difficult on this occasion, too fired up before and during the race, and not finishing it off as well as one would have liked.  It wasn't the end of the world, but it was a disappointment.  Roy wasn't a disappointment at Epsom on Monday as the likelihood was that he would find one or two a bit good for him, and his run - fourth on ground considerably softer than ideal - was very good.  He never lets us down, bless him, and it was yet another occasion to be proud of him and to enjoy the day.

Yesterday was very disappointing, though.  I'm afraid that we're still paying the price of Hope Is High's excellent season last year.  I was very happy indeed with her, and it was and is hard to accept that she can go to the races in perfect condition for an ideal race on ideal ground and still not be placed.  The problem is that we're still at the mark of her last win last season.  She came here at the start of 2016 rated 40, and won one race that year off a mark of 47.  Last year she won four times, off 52, 59, 65 and 72.  She's now been beaten eight times in 2018 and is still rated 72, and it is a struggle for her.

The problem is that her win off 72 was in a race with extremely restrictive conditions (horses had to have run in a staying race at Bath during the summer) and her hard-fought win that day made her look better than she is.  She wouldn't have won a normal handicap that day off 72, and she's finding it hard to win a normal handicap now.  The first five home that day have subsequently run 35 times between them, for zero wins.  The first six have collectively run 44 times, for one win.  The first seven have collectively run 48 times, for one win.  So starting this year rated 77 was always going to make things hard.

She's now run eight times this year and has come down to 72, but as I've been sending her to the races in good condition and only running her in suitable races (and as she's twice finished second, once in a four-runner race, once beaten seven lengths by a heavily-eased winner) she's only been dropping very slowly.  Still, she's in very good condition, and I think that she probably could win off 72 if she had absolutely everything in her favour, so hopefully her time will come again.  But, even knowing that and even having had a very pleasant afternoon with a lovely horse at a lovely racecourse, it was still long way to go at the end of a busy and tiring four-day period to end up feeling that you're banging your head against the wall.

What else has been happening?  Well, I've really enjoyed reading Bill O'Gorman's new book.  It is called 'A Land of Lost Content' with the subheading 'Some History of Racing'.  It is not a long book, but it contains a huge amount of interesting historical racing information, expressed with Bill's trademark wry humour.  And there's plenty of topical stuff in too.  We had the Town Plate last Saturday, so this was the perfect week to be reading the book because Bill naturally touches upon our most historic race during the book.

It is great that the Town Plate is still run, but it's always struck me that its organisers are very blase about their decision to overlook the most important stipulation in its original conditions, when it would be perfectly feasible to abide by this instruction.  Granted that it wouldn't be acceptable to run the race in heats nowadays, and granted that we can't use the full extent of the original Round Course as that would mean crossing the A14 twice.  But it would be perfectly feasible to stick to its most specific condition: "Plate is to be rid for yearly, the second Thursday in October, forever".  'Forever' actually turned out to mean 300 or so years, but in recent decades we have gone to the Sunday of the weekend between the Cambridgeshire and Cesarewitch Meetings, to the Saturday of the August Bank Holiday weekend, to the July Meeting (in 2016 and '17) and now back to the Saturday of the August Bank Holiday weekend.

Anyway, this always makes me feel slightly uncomfortable - and I was delighted (but not surprised) to find that Bill holds the same view: "Ignoring such a specific condition makes nonsense of the occasion's historic authenticity and is another small nail in the coffin of the Sport of Kings ... Racing is much changed since Stuart times and its administrators come and go with increasing regularity.  Yet only a tiny minority of them have any real feeling for a racehorse, for racing's original intent to improve the Thoroughbred or, as the weekend Town Plate shows, for the history and tradition of the Turf."

Another point which struck a chord with me is the extent to which the bloodstock world has been turned into the stock exchange even by people who can afford not to do so.  Of course racing's professionals have to earn a living and sometimes have to sacrifice the sporting ideal in favour of profit - but surely its patrons shouldn't also be doing so?  Nowadays, however, it seems that everyone wants to consider himself a 'trader', even if he can afford not to be; and to boast about being a 'trader', when you really wouldn't have thought that it's anything to boast about.  What's wrong with being an owner/breeder, in the great tradition of the likes of Lord Derby, Lord Rosebery and Lord Howard de Walden?

Anyway, again I find that I am not the only one who watches what is going on around him, and scratches his head in both bemusement and sadness.  Bill provides a fascinating overview of the history of the development of the Thoroughbred, going much farther back than the era of the three so-called 'Founding Fathers', ie the Byerley Turk, the Darley Arabian and the Godolphin Barb (now often erroneously referred to as the Godolping Arabian).  Here is Bill's summation of how and why the breed has developed:- "The Thoroughbred today represents the culmination of several hundred years at the whim of the English aristocracy, about two hundred more or less driven by genuine competition, and now followed by several decades at the mercy of venture capitalists.".  Couldn't have put it better myself!