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The point about novices in NH racing is an interesting one. Kevin Blake has said something similar in his ATR column. However, 7 of the 28 races at the 4 day Cheltenham Festival are confined to novices. To abolish the category would render a 4 day (still less 5 day) festival dead in the water. Which means there is absolute zero chance of it happening.
Re Cheltenham, and other current graded novice chases, you could still run those races with conditions that limit them to horses that hadn’t won a hurdle or chase prior to the running of the same race the previous year.
Although personally I’d go with the French approach of running races limited to a specific age, which of course we do with the Triumph Hurdle. So the Supreme Hurdle would be limited to five year olds, which would allow the Triumph Hurdle winner to run, along with any other horse that won as a juvenile.
The French run Grade 1 championship races for 3-y-olds, and the winners of those races are still eligible for the 4-y-olds championships the following year. Then as 5-y-olds, they move into all aged company.
Kevin Blake’s thoughts on the matter on novice chases:
Thanks for that link CAS, I hadn’t seen that piece. I’d thoroughly agree with his take on bumpers, quite the most pointless class of race currently staged.
It’s just a trainers delight, horse runs in bumpers for a year, trainer says ‘Ah but wait until you see him jump a hurdle’. Horse runs in novice hurdles for a year, trainer says ‘Ah but chasing will be his game’. Meanwhile, the training fees roll in!
As for the Championship bumpers, imagine the Olympics putting on 400 metre flat races for U-21 athletes that will be in the 400 metre hurdles next time.
Thanks for addressing my points, Alan – lots of food for thought there, as usual.
I sometimes dream of a utopia where someone intelligent with a lifelong in-depth grasp of the game like yourself is CEO of the BHA – and not a Westminster networker careerist executive – but then I invariably wake up to that which is.
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I very much doubt that I’d have had any more success, faced with the conflcting collections of alphabet soup that make up the supposed leaders of our sport.
It’s heresy I know, but perhaps things were better when the people in charge had names that began Lord, Duke, Earl, Colonel or Major.
Not Peter, Paul or Julie …….
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