Read an extract from Racehorses of 1976, which highlights that debates around watering and field sizes are not a modern phenomenon.
The hottest and driest summer on record kept many horses off the course in 1976 but thanks mainly to the artificial watering systems that are now general on our important racecourses racing survived the drought very well.
In August a number of jumping fixtures and Chepstow's Bank Holiday flat meeting had to be cancelled because of the iron-hard ground. Epsom was also affected and its August Bank Holiday fixture was transferred to Kempton. However, most of the meetings attracted a reasonable number of runners. Twenty-one runners for six races at Lingfield in July was the lowest turnout: later there were only twenty-four runners for a six-race card at Pontefract, twenty-five for one at Folkestone and twenty-eight for others at Brighton and Redcar. But these were the only flat meetings at which there were fewer than thirty runners.
Compare the situation with that before artificial watering was used. Let's take a look back at 1934 and 1935, two seasons taken at random. In 1934 on firm going Hamilton attracted seventeen runners for one card of six races, nineteen for another and twenty-six for another. Liverpool, Worcester, Edinburgh and Nottingham all drew fewer than thirty runners in a day, as did Pontefract and Epsom and that does not exhaust the examples of pitifully small fields. It was the same picture in 1935. Redcar, Wolverhampton, Haydock, Folkestone, Chepstow, Worcester, Lanark, Hamilton and Ayr all attracted fewer than thirty runners on one day, and probably there were several others. So much for the myth that in the days before artificial watering horses were turned out whatever the going!
Going back even further we can find evidence that the trainers of fifty or sixty years ago were just as averse to running their horses on firm going as are their counterparts today, George Lambton, writing of the mighty Diadem, said: ‘That year the going at Ascot was terribly hard, and I had some doubts about running her.’
The desirability of watering racecourses is still argued about today although many more racecourses have been equipped with watering systems in the past ten years or so. The most often-used argument against artificial watering is that in the long run it leads to a 'softening' of the breed. However, if our horses are indeed getting soft we can think of other, much more plausible explanations for it. In France watering has been the order of the day for a very long time and yet we didn't hear the pessimists who denigrated our English racehorses in 1976 be moaning the softness of the French thoroughbred!
A better argument is that the 'complete' racehorse should be capable of racing on any sort of going, that inability to act on hard ground is therefore a shortcoming in a racehorse and, hence, ability to act on a hard surface a desirable attribute. If this is agreed it may justifiably be held that watering is wrong, at least in in principle. It is also argued that watering is unfair to the owners of those horses that are best on firm or hard going; our climate usually provides ample opportunities each season for the mudlarks so why tamper with nature when it provides a surface favourable to the top-of-the-ground performer?
However, those who favour watering point out that very few horses are really at home on the extremes of going. They argue where there are conflicting interests it is surely reasonable to be guided by the principle of giving benefit to the greatest number. And if one is guided by that principle one must accept watering as desirable.
But, whatever the pros and cons of artificial watering, surely the crux of the matter is that the majority of owners and trainers are loathe to race horses on ground so hard that they risk injury by galloping on it. We have seen how, in the past, this attitude led to pitifully small fields when the going was firm or hard.
Artificial watering when conditions are dry definitely helps to raise the size of fields to a level where they offer enough entertainment to maintain the interest of the public. And we have stressed before that racing cannot afford to be so blind as to ignore the requirements of the public, particularly the betting public. If it did it would die.
