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If you look at the quality (not quantity) of the 1.30 at Kempton tomorrow , why is there not a review of the race programme that allows younger chasing recruits to gather experience before being “chucked in” to handicapping ?.
I cou;d never understand why the old system of novice chases with penalties for each win was abandoned.
To return to the Kempton race , it is certainly intruiging , but why should 4 potentially quality recruits be “forced” to meet each other so early in their careers ?why should 4 potentially quality recruits be “forced” to meet each other so early in their careers ?
It didn’t do these two any harm
https://www.racingpost.com/results/28/kempton/2016-11-21/662053Meanwhile in Ireland:
https://www.racingpost.com/racecards/198/thurles/2024-11-28/882722/
And it’s not a new thing either – this from 24 years ago:
https://www.racingpost.com/results/14/exeter/2000-10-17/291237
4 potentially quality recruits to chasing meeting early in their careers sounds like a good race that I’m interested in watching – more of this please
Surely , the issue is that we want to ensure that good horses meet each other competitively when experienced.
Who wants to see young , imexperieced horses on the floor , or worse , before they have been given suitable expertise.
I sometimes ask myself whether the animal rights brigade have the upper hand in this debate ?
That is not a malicious / facetious point.
Any views welcome , but tin hat on !I don’t mind seeing good horses take each other on in novice chases, but have reservations about how novice races are bypassed by many inexperienced horses.
Presumably the point of novice races is to give inexperienced horses some racing experience in a slightly less pressurised environment. If they are deemed a worthwhile part of the sport’s structure, it seems wrong to me that horses are allowed to circumvent them and go straight into open company. If nothing else, it opens the sport up to criticism and defeats the purpose of what novice races are for.
I would like to see the rules changed to disallow this e.g. first three runs must be in novice company perhaps. Preventing this from happening would also help to keep novice fields a healthier size.
There is a counter argument here. Why should owners and trainers of lower grade horses be expected to have charges bumble round at the back for three chases before getting into handicaps where they at least have some sort of a shout?
Where I use the term “novice races”, that would include novice handicaps.
None of these systems is perfect of course, but I believe confining novices to novice races to begin with has more pros than cons in balance.
Thanks Rob , I accept your point entirely.
However , my own view , is that this is totally what goes on all the time on the flat to obtain a favourable handicap rating. Certain trainers (who we all know) exploit it (wrong trip etc.).
In the case of jumping though (in my view) it is surely more important to give all horses , whether lower grade or not , at least a chance to get some experience over fences , before over stretching them ?I’ve never been convinced by the argument that novice chasers need to run against other novices to gain experience. Experience of what? The fences are the same size in novice and open races, the number of fences in the race is the same, the races are run at the same pace and almost all of them are already used to racing having run over hurdles.
I can accept that you don’t want a horse making his chase debut in the Paddy Power Gold Cup or the Hennessy, but that’s already prevented by the three runs rule that applies to class 1 and class 2 handicap chases. Remember The Young Master being kicked out after winning the Badger Beer on his third start over fences.
So is there really any difference between a ten runner novice handicap chase and a ten runner open 0-120 handicap chase?
I agree, surely if anything they’re better off surrounded by horses that know what they’re doing, or are at least known quantities that jockeys can avoid rather than a bunch of other youngsters who are more likely to balloon, fall, jump out to one side or other and generally be a greater risk of getting in the way.
AP, GAG – So do you see any point in retaining novice races at all?
My point is partly one of perception. While the sport has novice races as a prominent part of its structure, it gives the wrong impression and invites criticism if inexperienced horses can bypass them.
I would prefer to move to the French system, which gets away from the idea of a novice with that term being related to fixed dates in the calendar.
In France, you can have your first run over hurdles or fences in a newcomers race, then two more runs in races limited to horses that haven’t had three runs. But this is all optional and whereas we divide races as ‘maiden, novice, open’ separation in France is done by age group.
The three main categories over there are ‘claimer, conditions, handicap’ with the last named of those much less dominant than here. So there are 4yo claiming chases, 4yo conditions chases, 4yo handicap chases, and above that the pattern of Listed and Graded races, again limited to 4yos.
The conditions races are based on amount of prize money won and/or races won in the same class. So a conditions chase might be limited to horses that have never won a prize of 10,000 euros over fences, and haven’t won a race in this class for the last year. Then there would small penalties based on prize money, including place money, won in the last six months or year.
These races are ideal for what we’d call 110 – 130 rated novices, giving them the chance to race against similar horses, same age, same lack of success. Those rated lower go into the claimers, where the program offers a range of claiming price options.
Of course all this would require a massive sea change to the UK jumping program and is, I suspect, way more than any of the alphabet groups that run racing here would even consider. But it works – they don’t get small fields in France anything like as much as we do and they don’t get meetings with two or three odds on favourites either. The races are competitive, but the system offers trainers a wider choice of options than we have here. And they don’t spend their career fretting about handicap marks!
Just to add, the horse that convinced me that our existing system of novice qualification being tied to dates, came in 2014.
The horse was an Irish trained, McManus owned one, called Carlingford Lough. He made his chase debut in September 2012, but didn’t manage a win until he scored in the valuable Galway Plate in July 2013, which was his 9th race over fences.
But despite that win, he was still qualified to run in the RSA Novice Chase at the 2014 Cheltenham Festival, which was his 14th race over fences. How on earth does that qualify him as a ‘novice’. He flopped at Cheltenham, but went on to win the 3M Grade 1 novice chase at PUnchestown, his 15th chase.
If that didn’t get anybody to think about changing the system, it’s hard to imagine what might prompt a rethink.
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