The turf | 14 February 2019

The pre-war Fabians Sidney and Beatrice Webb apparently had a pre-marriage agreement. It wasn’t like today’s Hollywood prenups, designed to protect the assets of high earners when lascivious eyes roll on elsewhere. They simply agreed that Sidney would make the big decisions and Beatrice the small ones. Beatrice, however, had it sorted: she was to pronounce which was a big decision and which a small one.

Lately the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) has been getting a lot of small decisions wrong. First it issued a ruling that in future all racehorses should be shod on their hind feet as well as their forefeet. The motive was worthy — to minimise the chances of horses slipping up and harming both themselves and their riders — but many trainers objected, particularly those who fear that when a horse suffers an overreach, with the hind hooves hitting the front legs, the injury is likely to be far worse when hind shoes are fitted. They objected and the ruling was suspended. The BHA had overreached itself: the appropriate footwear for a horse should be decided by its trainer.

Then there was the nonsense at Uttoxeter when the jumper Burrenbridge Hotel ‘planted’ himself on the way to the start. To encourage his horse to join the others his trainer Henry Oliver approached the gelding and waved his hands at him vigorously. The local stewards fined Oliver £140 for ‘misconduct’ and the BHA compounded the idiocy by issuing a statement supporting the stewards and declaring: ‘We set a lot of store in our sport behind the fact that we do not force horses to race…’. Horses, like humans, have their moods: if we left it to them to decide whether or not to race they might opt out because they’ve had a bad hair day, haven’t fancied their feeding cubes that morning or felt stroppy because their favourite lass wasn’t leading them around the parade ring.