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Yes Jeremy another sickening case at this venue. We don’t know what caused this injury but the one thing we can be certain about is the horrendous statistics for fatalities at this gaff track. The undulations, tight bends, adverse camber, poorly aligned fences, uneven going, low grade of horses, are all in the frame.
Jump racing as we know it has changed a lot over the last 40 years I have been following it but I think even more surgery is required. There are always risks when asking horses to jump at racing speed but the industry must take steps to minimise these. Jump racing may well become a sanitised version of what we currently have but that is the price we have to pay.
Jeremy, what is the racing surface like there, does it get rough through the course not recovering from the hammering it gets through the winter months?
I can picture rough ground drying out and becoming quite nasty.
It’s been four years since I last visited the place in person, but certainly during 2006, when I think I watched pretty much every race for professional or personal interests, the reports back to the press and media during the summer in particular were frequently of the course returning rough, choppy ground.
A really wet period that winter (some people may remember Drombeag and Sarah’s Quay among the winners at a meeting where there was barely a blade of grass to be seen among the mire) certainly didn’t help matters.
I think the executive is slowly beginning to realise that Sedgefield isn’t ideally suited to summer jumping, for all that it having offered it for many years now has met a need for fast ground-loving Northern horses. A glance through fixtures lists past and present reveals that 2008 will be the first year since 1997 that the course has not put on a meeting in either July or August or both. I think that’s quite deliberate.
Jeremy
(graysonscolumn)Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
IIRC the incessant racing at Fontwell and Uttoxeter has caused going/ground problems on occasions.
Fontwell’s problems were caused by a mix of greed and bad luck with the weather. They acquired three or four more fixtures through bidding ahead of the 2006 season, but trying to absorb those into their existing season proved too tough a test on the racing surface, not least once the heavy rain of that winter had turned the course into a morass on at least one occasion.
Uttoxeter is probably a more difficult case to assess. The suspect drainage, plus the fact that the clay base on which the course (especially the chase course) is built lies fairly close to the surface, can both conspire to produce some very patchy ground even after the course has been rested and tended to.
They haven’t raced at Uttoxeter during the month of August for many years. Even so, and in spite of a fair summer, when I went to the first two meetings after the summer break in 2004, there were false patches, dolled-off bits and omitted obstacles galore on both occasions. It’s not a more dangerous place to race around for any of that, don’t get me wrong, but in all honesty the course could actually do with being dug up and put completely right one year in the not-too-distant future.
Jeremy
(graysonscolumn)Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
I think the executive is slowly beginning to realise that Sedgefield isn’t ideally suited to summer jumping, for all that it having offered it for many years now has met a need for fast ground-loving Northern horses. A glance through fixtures lists past and present reveals that 2008 will be the first year since 1997 that the course has not put on a meeting in either July or August or both. I think that’s quite deliberate.
Judging on trainers’ and jockeys’ reports back on Tuesday, when the course held its first meeting since June, it appears that the aforementioned change of policy has given rise to an excellent racing surface (albeit one almost certainly helped with regards to grass growth by the very wet August).
It’s probably a bit too early to declare the move an unreserved success just yet, though (let’s see how the course holds up to a few more meetings), and I’ve not checked as yet whether the course added to its unfortunate attrition rate on Tuesday either.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
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