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I had no idea the stakes in the core of Bechers were so high. It’s a wonder there were not more fatalities.
With the modifications made to the fences the only times it becomes the test of old is when you get soft ground but then that is the case for any race run up to and over 4m (think of some of the legless finishes there have been in Midlands National/Eider Chase and the Welsh National).
It is still a spectacle of a race but it is not and never will be the supreme test it once was – you could argue that by taking the drop out of Beechers you have removed its teeth but it still needs to be jumped and I think a lot of trouble comes because riders are already racing each other and still tend to be quite grouped together in the middle of the fence due to the course bearing left upon landing.
For me removing the guts from the fences whilst done for safety/perception reasons encourages riders/horses to approach them at a much faster rate than is safe (whereas back in the day the riders gave them more respect and approaching them would be getting their mounts back on their hocks as they knew they couldn’t take liberties because they took some jumping) – a lot of the falls now are simply because the horses are carrying far too much speed into the fence which gives them a much smaller margin for error and results in them not being able to get their landing gear down quick enough to compensate.
With the revisions in how the race is now handicapped to encourage the better class horses to run that automatically means that more horses are in with a chance of winning whereas back in the day, a large number of horses realistically were only there to get round and pretty much were out the back giving the more fancied horses more room to operate/pick their own route over the fences.
At the end of the day as cliched as the saying is, jumping is still the name of the game regardless of how much the fences are changed you only have to look at archive footage of the race in Red Rum’s day to see just how much easier the game now is….the days of the race being the ultimate jumping test have now been consigned to the history books.
We have been extremely fortunate in the last few runnings of the race to have avoided being on the front pages for all the old wrong reasons but let us not kid ourselves, if lady luck decides to have a holiday on that particular Saturday or exit stage left for a future running of the race; I dread to think of where we will have to go next to make it even safer…..would there be any interest in a 4m 2f flat race?
What are the “cores” of regulation park fences?
There are none. It is all black birch, the density of the packing varies – hence ‘soft’ fences at some tracks.
Mildmay fences much softer these days. In mid-90s a 15-stone person could have walked across a fence from wing to wing almost as quickly as could have been done on a wall.
Thanks for the photo of the stakes Joe. Never seen that before.I`d like to think the lady in the brook is about 4 foot 11 but still a bit of a shock. You have to admire limited jumpers like Maori Venture for just getting round in those days.
The course topography may dictate how it is but I just don’t think Becher`s is essential to an exciting race anymore. Early fences are catching out horses I would assume to be good jumpers such as First Lieutenat, the Ballabriggs year does not seem typical.
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