‘The Grand National is a great race,’ one of Britain’s most respected racecourse chiefs told me over lunch the other day, ‘but in 2013 we’ll all be watching it from behind the sofa.’ Aintree’s showpiece remains racing’s biggest attraction, the one event that brings in the non-racing world to have a bet. Eleven million watch it in Britain alone. But because of the media focus, especially on any animal deaths that occur in it, he was arguing, the Grand National is also racing’s biggest potential public-relations disaster, as when the Gold Cup winner Synchronised and According to Pete died in last year’s race.
Within days there was dramatic supporting evidence for his opinion. John Smith’s, the Heineken-owned ale company that has sponsored the richest jumps race in the calendar for eight years, announced that it will pull out after the 2013 renewal. The company did not link its decision publicly with horse welfare issues and some suggest its decision was affected by the likelihood of a smaller TV audience for next year’s race (since Channel 4 is taking over the TV coverage from a BBC that has lost interest in the sport and doesn’t have the cojones to cover it). Either way, more changes have now been made to the race and most racing administrators see the John Smith’s pull-out as a significant victory for the animal-rights activists who would like to see an end to jump-racing altogether.
I don’t believe the switch to Channel 4 will trim the numbers watching racing on TV as much as some fear. Clare Balding and Nick Luck, who head the new Channel 4 team, are Gold Cup quality, polished communicators with deep knowledge of the sport. That said, any Channel 4 racing team which decided that Alastair Down and Mike Cattermole were surplus to requirements — and waited until the eve of the new team’s announcement to tell them — will need to work hard to win my viewing loyalty. Youth-mad broadcasting executives never seem to appreciate the difference between the necessary professional skills and the added ingredient some have in their ability to put across their own passion for a subject or sport. If Alastair and Mike were not being paid to broadcast racing with the panache they do, they would still be queuing at the turnstiles to pay their way into the course as spectators. You would not be sure of that with some others.
Along with the pull-out announcements, racing’s overall image hasn’t been helped lately by the suspension of Frankie Dettori, the one jockey instantly recognised by non-racing people, after he failed a drugs test when riding in France. Sadly, too, jump-racing has lost its most charismatic four-legged performer with the retirement of Kauto Star, whose stellar career has been colourfully chronicled in a fine new horsography Kauto Star: A Steeplechasing Legend, published at £20 by the Racing Post.
Having myself penned two of the half-dozen horse-racing volumes on the bookstore shelves this Christmas (Clive Brittain: The Smiling Pioneer, Racing Post, £20, and The 100 Top Racehorses of All Time, Corinthian, £16.99), I am prejudiced over other recommendations, but I would urge anyone who wants to understand both the ecstasy and the agony of the trade to use a book token on champion jockey Richard Hughes’s painfully honest autobiography, chronicling his journey into and out of alcoholism.
Amid the gloom is there anything to cheer up racing folk in the cold weeks to come? There is, and not just the accustomed artistry of Ruby Walsh and the grit of A.P. McCoy in the saddle. This season there is an enthralling contest over who will finish as top trainer, a position determined by the level of stakes won. For seven years past, the title has gone to Paul Nicholls, the Somerset-based trainer of Kauto Star and Denman, of Master Minded and Big Buck’s. Last year it seemed that Lambourn’s Nicky Henderson, who scored a record seven victories at the Cheltenham Festival where he has trained more winners than any man alive, might pip him and win back the title he last held in 1985–86. But then Nicholls won his first Grand National with the grey Neptune Collonges, a 33–1 shot, and the National’s hefty pot clinched it for him.
With Kauto Star, Denman and Master Minded now retired and the Henderson yard full of feisty young prospects like Darlan and Bob’s Worth, not to mention the former Gold Cup winner Long Run, the bookmakers made Nicky the odds-on favourite. Only for Paul to demonstrate in the most emphatic way that he was in no mood for baton-passing. His Kauto Stone was sent to win a big race in Ireland, his new young star Silviniaco Conti beat Long Run in the Betfair Chase at Haydock and Al Ferof won the Paddy Power Gold Cup. When Henderson hit back by taking the Hennessy with Bob’s Worth, with Nicholls’s Tidal Bay in second, it was game on and it should go all the way to the line.
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