Jump racing needs proper fixtures and fitting end
A quiz question to kick off with. Which horse won the last race of the 2008/09 jumps season? Come on now, no conferring, and I will have to hurry you.
What was that? Those who smugly answered Hennessy can go to the bottom of the class. Those who came up with the name of Titus Andronicus receive full marks. You are true devotees of the sport and obviously all possess anoraks that zip right up to your chins.
Yes, Titus Andronicus won the Racing UK Standard National Hunt Flat Race at Market Rasen which was the final race of the season – almost 90 minutes after Hennessy had won the Bet365 Gold Cup at Sandown Park last April, which is supposed to be the race which brings the curtain down on the jumps season.
After 12 months of blood, sweat and probably a few tears the latest, thrilling instalment of National Hunt racing concludes on Saturday. The day will be a time to honour Paul Nicholls, the still reigning champion trainer, and Tony McCoy, whom no-one has been able to rein in as he collects his 15th jockeys’ title.
Nicholls will be at Sandown Park to collect his award – McCoy will be on duty at Punchestown -however the dying embers of the season will again flicker on 185 miles north of Esher. The Sandown fixture was previously billed as the Finale meeting. It has been a mixed card ever since the inception of the race, under its founding-sponsor Whitbread, in 1957 and in 2001 the Sandown executive came to the rescue of the sport by staging additional high-value jumps races to compensate for the loss of the Cheltenham Festival due to the outbreak of foot and mouth disease.
The success of that initiative prompted Sandown to maintain that increased number of jumps races on the two-day card to the point where it has now become the fitting denouement to the season. However, the fixture list still decrees that matters are not resolved until the bumper in Lincolnshire.
This might be little more than an exercise in technicalities but five years ago the battle (which was of the no-holds barred variety) between Nicholls and Martin Pipe for the trainers’ title was so close that, if results had been slightly different at Sandown, it could have all come down to the penultimate race at Market Rasen.
None of this is meant as a criticism of Market Rasen. It is one of several rural jumps courses that have worked hard in recent years to improve its profile, especially since their executive has switched their focus to summer jumping. However, this fixture, in its current slot achieves little for the overall good of the sport.
The hope would have been that when the decision to end the season at this point in the year was taken, for the 1999/00 season, jump racing would have the opportunity to make the most of any potential drama that either title may have to offer in the final days. McCoy’s hegemony of the rider’s title may make that seem fanciful but Richard Dunwoody and Adrian Maguire duelled for the jockeys’ title through the last month of the 1993/94 season. It came down to the last fixture on the final day, ironically an evening meeting at Market Rasen, and Dunwoody triumphed by 197-194. The trouble was that it came in the first week in June, the day that Balanchine won the Oaks and jump racing had already been placed in cold storage by much of the media.
Racing For Change are planning to unveil their plans to save jump racing with a premier season. This initiative, according to early leaks, is aiming for a climax to the season on the last day of the Cheltenham Festival. If true this is probably the most brilliant idea since the chap in the front rank of the Light Brigade took one look at the Russian cannon and hollered “charge”.
If the point of the initiative is to bring more of the uncommitted into racing why end the season three weeks before the one race that connects more of the unconnected in the country than any other race in the calendar, the Grand National? Even to end the season on that day means that the moment will be lost in the all-consuming media interest in the National itself.
If jump racing, and the game as a whole, is to make the most of its opportunities to promote itself to a wider audience it has to be aiming to shoot for the stars – not its collective foot.
The first move would be that of the Market Rasen fixture. It is hard to believe that it attracts one extra patron on the off chance that there could be a title-deciding race held there. The next move would be to find a better beginning to the following season. As it stands at present the 2010/11 season kicks off 24 hours later at Ludlow and Wetherby.
An option would be to wait for the televised mixed meeting at Haydock Park on May 8th, which has the Swinton Hurdle as it centrepiece. Even if there is a move to split jump racing into two seasons that meeting would provide a proper kick-start to the summer season that could end with the Charlie Hall meeting at Wetherby in late October.
That would allow a two-week break before the Open meeting at Cheltenham in November and provide proper fixtures and a fitting end.
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