Saturday, August 29, 2020

Trying to get it right


The plan had been for us to be going to Goodwood today.  Kryptos should have run there, which would have been our second runner of the week, The Simple Truth having run (moderately, continuing to be his own worse enemy by being too headstrong) at Yarmouth on Tuesday.  However, while Kryptos has very good form on soft ground, he ran very poorly on very soft ground at Haydock, so after the recent torrential rain it was an easy decision to make him a non-runner this morning and re-route him to Sandown on Monday, when the ground shouldn't be much softer than good to soft (which is what it was at Goodwood at 10.00 on Thursday morning when we declared).


Today's GoingStick reading (5.1) is the lowest ever recorded at Goodwood.  (Admittedly the GoingStick was only brought into use ahead of the 2011 season, and admittedly it would have been at least as low yesterday had the reading been taken during the afternoon when the racing was taking place, rather than prior to 7.10 in the morning, when it was 5.2).  Every race yesterday was run in excess of a second per furlong slower than standard, with a mile handicap run in 1:49.72 (13.52 seconds slower than standard) and the two-mile handicap run in 3:56.55 (34.46 seconds slower than standard).


Between the trip to Yarmouth and then today's aborted trip to Sandown I did something which I don't do often: I left Newmarket for a reason other than to go to the races.  I went down to Devon to complete the process of sorting out my late father's possessions, which actually didn't require my doing much at all as it had nearly all been done on previous occasions.  Furthermore, my brother had been down there the previous week and had done most of what little remained.  So that was easy, and I consequently treated myself to two very special things, a drive over Dartmoor and a drive over Exmoor.  Hence the photographs which illustrate this chapter.


As regards the wider racing world, I see that we have our usual quota of odd stories.  Across the pond I note that the enquiry into Justify's failed dope test after his Santa Anita Derby win (which took place on 7th April 2018) might be starting soon.  We have observed that these things can take time (witness the enquiry into Walk In The Sun's reportedly positive test after his win at Lingfield on 27th February 2018 still not having taken place) and in this case it's fortunate that it did: had it been concluded swiftly, Justify might not have been able to run in the Kentucky Derby (because of not having earned enough to be high enough up the order of preference) and then we wouldn't have had a Triple Crown winner that year.  A very happy coincidence that the Californian authorities dragged their feet on this one.


The British story of the week has less chance of re-writing the history books.  (What I mean by the Californian case possibly re-writing the history books is that it would be debatable whether Justify would retain his status as the only Triple Crown winner to retire unbeaten if he were to be disqualified from the Santa Anita Derby.  Obviously he will remain a Triple Crown winner come what may.  In one sense, if disqualified from the Santa Anita Derby, he would lose his unbeaten status as he would have run in a race, ie the Santa Anita Derby, without winning it.  In the other sense, though, he would still be unbeaten as, although physically he ran in the race, in practice he will turn out to have been deemed not have taken part.  There is an important distinction between being disqualified and being demoted, a distinction which too many people seem not to appreciate).


The British case in the news has been the two-week period which Ben Curtis is going to have to spend on the side-lines because of having wandered into the owners' area at the races yesterday.  I have every sympathy with him because he clearly did nothing to increase the likelihood of COVID-19 being transmitted (apparently he only wandered in there briefly at a time when there was no one in the area, so came close to nobody), because what amounts to a two-week suspension is a very harsh punishment for a victim-less crime, and because such a transgression is very easy to commit.


I've wandered into the owners' areas at least twice since racing resumed.  And I'm only going to the races once or twice a week.  It's very easy to do it unknowingly.  In both cases, I had no idea that I was going into the owners' area.  (I say that I have wandered into the area 'at least twice'; I say 'at least' because, for all I know, there could have been further occasions when I've done so unknowingly and haven't even realised it afterwards).  In both cases, there was nothing to say that I was going into the owners' area.  In both cases, there was no one else in there.  Ben Curtis' transgression sounds as if it was similarly inconsequential.


On one time (at Haydock) I only walked through the owners' area because, having walked through the parade ring and out the other side to collect my packed lunch from a room near where the weighing room used to be, I felt that I probably shouldn't walk back through the parade ring with a bag of food in my hand.  So I asked a nearby gateman where I should walk to get back to the stableyard, and he directed me to walk along one side of the parade ring, which I did.  There was no one in the area and no signs, but later in the afternoon I noticed a couple of owners standing in it watching their horse in the parade ring, and realised that I probably oughtn't to have been there.


The other occasion was at Yarmouth when I had quite an annoying afternoon.  The horsebox park is not big enough at Yarmouth so one is sometimes instructed to park one's box in the middle of the course, which is always an unwelcome inconvenience.  The first time I had to do this subsequent to the new arrangements having been introduced, it turned out to be a debacle as, once across there, I ran into a gateman telling me that I wasn't allowed to be there as I had the wrong coloured wrist-band to be there because the owners are put in the centre of the course.


That set the tone for an afternoon of repeatedly being told that I was in the wrong place, the irony being that the one time that I wasn't told that I was in the wrong place was when I actually was in the wrong place, ie when I walked through what I subsequently worked out was the owners' enclosure in the middle of the course.  I had no idea that I was doing anything wrong at the time, nor that it was the owners' enclosure: there was no one in the enclosure, and there was neither attendant nor sign to let one know what it was.  The other strange thing is that owners have to walk across the course to get from this enclosure to their area of parade-ring rail - and that makes no sense as the course is clearly a participants' zone.  If it's the case that it's only a participants' zone when there are participants in it, then surely the same applies to owners' zones, which would mean that Ben Curtis did not transgress yesterday as there was reportedly no one in the area into which he wandered?


So, yes, I have every sympathy with Ben Curtis.  And I don't swallow the line that he had to be disciplined to keep the government happy and show them that the regulations are being enforced and abided by.  That's nonsense.  Had whichever official who spotted him merely fetched him out and said, "For God's sake, Ben, you can't go there. That's where the owners go.  Thank God there were no owners there at the time and you didn't go near anyone.  Don't go in there again", then everyone, particularly the government, would be happy.  By (nonsensically) making a public issue of it, all that has been achieved is that we've told the government, which otherwise would have assumed that everything was being done right, that the regulations aren't being abided by.  Madness.

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