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Been watching the sport for over forty years and for the most part have championed NH over Flat but I can’t remember seeing so many days of utter dross. Day after day just a succession of mostly poor quality animals plodding round on desperate ground.
Decent novice hurdles/chases/bumpers on a card are now pretty much a thing of the past and with trainers dodging each other prior to the Festivals the cupboard is often bare when it comes to quality races. Instead we get handicap after handicap (many with small fields) with such a lack progressive horses that the punter is basically guessing as to which horse got of bed the right side in the morning. Race planning might be achieving their goal of making things next to impossible for punters but at the same time they are actually wrecking the sport.
Yes, Cheltenham will probably be as good as ever but it shouldn’t paper over the cracks as to what has been a dreadful season.
Good post sir
you are spot on in your assessment , the truth is , heavy ground should be avoided at all costs …but the show and the dilution goes on
It does tend to get weary for the supporter
still it beats the dross on the sand …please Gill dont beat me up
Well put Stilvi
What as happened to all the novice chases gone.
Utter dross today and tomorrow.
As you say everyone gears up for the Festivals but it is ruining day to day racing. It is not just NH
Wait till the summer starts and it is full of class 6 handicaps with some horses rated not much higher that Evostick
Still the bookies will be happy and the mugs will still go in and lose.
Good post sir
you are spot on in your assessment , the truth is , heavy ground should be avoided at all costs …but the show and the dilution goes on
It does tend to get weary for the supporter
still it beats the dross on the sand …please Gill dont beat me up
It does beat the sand! But only just…….
Isn’t it always like this just before Cheltenham? Mind you, I don’t remember such small fields. You’re lucky if you get more runners than you can count on one hand, and those that do run have to be carried over the line by their jocks.
Saturdays are ok though…..
I love all grades of racing, but even the snobs must have picked up on a few smart performances and popular horses running in the last couple of days. For the time of year, I’d say it has been well above average fare with no ‘Jumpers’ Bumpers’ in sight.
Today, the very smart Puffin Billy got his career and perhaps also his life back on track with a confidence-boosting win at Leicester. Credit to him for buckling down after all he has been through.
Cult hero and horse-mountain Gentle George also notched a popular success at Leicester. Well-known Grand National veteran Palypso De Creek produced a stirring performance in the hunter chase. Other notable or well-known runners from yesterday were Duke Of Navan, Kumbeshwar and Keys, who probably bumped into a very smart prospect in the high-class import Slowfoot.
Half of today’s jumps races were won by favourites and the biggest priced SP of a winner at Ayr yesterday was 7/2, so it’s hardly a minefield for punters out there.
Another thread that has the potential of being a Miseries Convention!
Potentially decent card at Kelso on Saturday if you fancy a jaunt up to the Borders. Good entry for the Grade 2 novice hurdle and the Listed Chase.
My passion for NH racing started about 25 years ago at the beginning of the 90’s. At that time there was a proper summer break and trainers weren’t afraid to take on proper opposition. Just think of races with Viking Flagship, Travado, Deep Sensation, Wonder Man, Egypt Mill Prince and so on. None of them was wrapped in cotton wool. They ran against each other prior to Cheltenham on numerous times. I remember the Flagship running off 12-00 in the Victor Chandler some 20 years ago. Nowadays Hurricane Fly beats Jezki twice The New One stays out of the way of Faugheen and no one else dares to enter a proper horse against the Champion Hurdle favourite. It all comes down to just one meeting: The Festival.
Lord Windermere twice a Festival winner once again being prepared for just one race. Remember Looks Like Trouble who won the same races back to back at the Festival in 1999 and 2000. Noel Chance managed to get quite a number of wins prior to the RSA and also prior to the GC. No hanging or schooling around in Grade 1 races!!!!Also what happened to races like the John Bull Chase at Wincanton or the Tommy Whittle and the other one at Haydock??? Downgraded to poor handicaps or even taken out of the programme.
I miss course specialists like Bradbury Star or Dublin Flyer and I also miss proper novices chases with 10 runners or more including hurdlers rated 150+. Well maybe I’m getting older and missing something, but if you give this weeks racing a miss until Saturday, then you haven’t missed too much. Same seems to apply to the 5-6 weeks prior to Cheltenham.By far the biggest change to NH racing in my lifetime – and I’ve been watching it for the same sort of time as Stilvi – came in the early 1990’s.
The crash of the Lloyds insurance market, when thousands of Lloyds ‘names’ found themselves faced with huge cash demands after many years of apparently safe and regular returns for minimal capital investment, wiped out a large percentage of the small to medium owners.
The sort of people that either kept a couple of mares and bred their own jumpers, or who bought a couple of stores each year and kept them on their own land until they were ready to go into training. Those horses were trained by the likes of Nick Gaselee, David Gandolfo, Oliver Sherwood, Charlie Brooks, Kim Bailey – all had top class horses in the early to mid 90’s.
Sherwood was hit hardest as his father was a Lloyds broker, hence many of his owners had that connection, including the biggest name of the lot, Christopher Heath.
I don’t think the NH game has ever really recovered from that crash, although there have been periods when the influx of horses from Ireland at realistic prices produced better fields. Now the Irish have big owners of their own and the cost of buying even ordinary horses from Ireland (or France) has reached a level that excludes the average owner.
Overall the pressures of a smaller pool of owners capable of paying the entry fee (i.e the horse purchase price), the after effects of the financial crash of 2008 onwards, the ill advised fiddling with the NH program and the growth of Festival fever (Aintree and Punchestown as well as Cheltenham) combine to produce the current state of play.
There hasn’t been any prolonged bad weather this winter and most big races have been run as scheduled so there has been plenty of opportunity in the programme to run and avoid other horses, The New One has won a fortune this year in egg and spoon races as an example.
It is dispiriting seeing so many low number runners and same again tomorrow , each way betting will be dying a death at this rate and things like placepots aren’t the same either.
Someone needs to take a knife to a lot of the races now and cut a lot of the conditions races out so that there is none of the run and hide races and take the focus away from Cheltenham too.
I was thinking tonight back to the early 2000s and the campaigning of Best Mate. I am sure other horses before then were campaigned in a similar fashion but the successful, and high profile, manner in which that horse had his campaign mapped solely around Cheltenham seemed to mark a turning point. That success seemed to encourage others to become wary of over-facing their stars with too many races and/or heavy ground. No idea if there is any evidence for my supposition.
I’m pretty sure it did happen after Best Mate. The strange thing about it being that Hen did used to point out that the horse didn’t take a lot of racing, which became apparent after his tragic death. So trainers are following the same path with horses that may be robust enough to take in more races throughout the season.
Exactly Moe – I’m not saying Knight was wrong, just that everyone then seemed to go ‘hmmmmm’
I’ve owned racehorses for 30 years. Just one scenario: 1994 a horse I bought for 2k won a Chepstow NH Bumper he won 1600. Jump forward 20 years, I paid 25k for an Irish store who won a Chepstow NH Bumper he won 1300. The training fees for horse former horse was about 10k per year and around 20k for the latter. Many of the owners I have met over the years are drastically reducing their input into racing/pulled out. The racing offered now is starting to reflect the owners situation. You will only invest as an owner if the sport reflects that investment, and owners constantly being informed that they are ‘only in it as a hobby’ it seems they are not in it as a hobby. The type of owners ( Graham Roach as a good example) that are good for the NH game are quickly reducing.
I was thinking tonight back to the early 2000s and the campaigning of Best Mate. I am sure other horses before then were campaigned in a similar fashion but the successful, and high profile, manner in which that horse had his campaign mapped solely around Cheltenham seemed to mark a turning point. That success seemed to encourage others to become wary of over-facing their stars with too many races and/or heavy ground. No idea if there is any evidence for my supposition.
The stats would support you David. I have looked at the average amount of times the winners of the 3 main Championship races ran before Cheltenham.
Gold Cup – Pre-Best Mate – 4, Post – 2.8
Champion Hurdle – Pre – 4.5, Post 3
World Hurdle – Pre 4.1, Post 2.5To be fair, with the Gold Cup, the numbers only started reducing significantly in the last 5 or 6 years. Before that Kicking King, War of Attrition and Kauto all ran at least 4 times which I think is fair enough.
In the Champion only Jezki has run 4 times since Katchit in 2008 and in the WH you have to go back to 2006 when My Way De Solzen ran 5 times. Back in the 90’s it wasn’t uncommon to have horses run 5,6 or even 7 times before Cheltenham. Dear old Flakey Dove ran 8 times before winning his Champion! I should also point out that virtually none of the modern winners have run post December.
I love ALL racing but I much prefer the flat these days. Every month there is at least one festival to look forward to. With the jumps it is all about March. That can’t be right.
"this perfect mix of poetry and destruction, this glory of rhythm, power and majesty: the undisputed champion of the world!!!"
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Love it David and Joni, interesting stuff considering I didn’t watch racing back then so had no idea when the whole ‘protect them for cheltenham’ thing became the norm.
Thanks Ben. I should say that my stats only go back as far as the RP website allows – 1989.
"this perfect mix of poetry and destruction, this glory of rhythm, power and majesty: the undisputed champion of the world!!!"
The stats fit with what we’ve all noticed, but I think there are two other reasons why horses don’t run so often prior to Cheltenham.
The first is the reduction in opportunities to run top class horses. The loss of conditions chases at Wincanton mentioned earlier in this thread is typical and there are also far fewer handicaps open to the highest rated horses. I think it was Mike (Betlarge) who wrote in another thread about the likes of Badsworth Boy running in gaff track handicaps under 12st 7lbs as a prep race for Cheltenham. I can remember seeing Silver Buck at Hereford also with 12-7 against rivals all carying 10st and that would have been very close to the Gold Cup.
The second and probably more significant is that there are now many more valuable options after Cheltenham. Twenty years ago, after the Gold Cup there was really only the National and the Whitbread and absolutely no top class level weight chases. The Aintree meeting has grown massively in status and prize money since then. And Punchestown likewise, twenty years ago it was mostly about bumpers and cross country races and British runners were very rare.
Now there are Grade 1 races at every distance after Cheltenham with six figure prize funds, so arriving in March with a fresh horse makes complete sense.
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