Lydia Hislop column: What do we want from jump racing?

“We’re trying to win races,” said an exasperated Nicky Henderson, when asked on Racing TV to explain his reasons for withdrawing Altior from the Grade 1 Tingle Creek Chase earlier this month.

But this is not an article about Altior or his trainer. This is an article about what we want from Jump racing in Britain and Ireland.

First, define “we”. There’s the crux of it. Trainers and owners of elite Jump horses want to win races and, happily for them, they have a better chance of doing exactly that because there are currently far more graded races on both sides of the Irish Sea than there were 20 years ago.

Furthermore, those elite horses are collected in a smaller number of ‘super’ stables than was previously the case, meaning those trainers can micro-manage their charges’ reputations to a far greater degree than before. This careful segregation of team members has contributed to the best horses, collectively speaking, running less often than was previously the case.

The journalist and broadcaster Kevin Blake has recently written a series of stimulating, data-driven blogs on these subjects on the At The Races website.

I would urge you to read those – taking particular note of the statistics they contain – if you require substantiation for the way I’ve characterised the existing landscape of Anglo-Irish Jump racing. I don’t propose reprising his work here.

Instead, I want to talk about the wider reasons why the sport finds itself in this situation, why it will find it difficult to engage reverse and why it still should try.

I should state at this point that I’m primarily focussing on the evolution of British Jump racing, but I will return to how it dovetails with Ireland at the end. To do that, I must resume defining “we”. What do “we” want from Jump racing?

Other players with skin in this game are racecourses. If “we” includes premier tracks, they want to host top-class races, so they can attract large attendances, mainstream TV exposure, lucrative sponsors and various spin-off deals. The more of this they muster, balanced against the prize money they lay on (which is partly funded by the race-entry fees charged to racehorse owners), the better their balance sheets.

The expansion of the Cheltenham Festival in 2005, from three to four days, is perhaps the most salient example of this. This ambition was announced three years in advance – I even stumbled on a news story I wrote about it when racing correspondent for London’s Evening Standard.

“We are conscious that we’re turning people away,” Cheltenham’s managing director, Edward Gillespie said back then. “If we can spread our fixed costs over another day’s revenue while continuing to improve our facilities, we’ve got to look at the idea of a fourth day pretty seriously.”

Applying the age-old adage, Gillespie then shrewdly posed a question to which he already knew the answer: “What we need to find out, in the meantime, is whether our customers and the industry want a fourth day.”

With finely honed political instincts, he added: “At a time when other racecourses are discussing building all-weather tracks, we are cementing our commitment to hairy old jumpers. We want to encourage investment in National Hunt racehorse breeding and ownership, without which our business would implode.”

So, the expansion of the Festival was driven by the commercial opportunity presented by its oversubscribed popularity as a spectator sport. The “we” in this dynamic included fans – more fans than were able to get tickets for a sell-out event.

But it also appealed to the wider Racing industry, who quickly recognised this proposal would increase its net income and trickle down those economic benefits to a subset of the sport – Jumping – that is, generally speaking, more costly for all parties to maintain and far less likely to generate a substantial return.

Thus in 2005, a fourth day was added at Cheltenham with two of the new races introduced at Grade 2 level. They were both promoted to Grade 1 three years later and, since then, further introductions and promotions have created two additional Grade 1s and, from 2021, three extra Grade 2s.

(Point of order: I’m not arguing all change is negative – Cheltenham’s NH Chase, for example, suits the modern Festival far better for being a Grade 2 and its new Mares’ Chase, though risking drawing runners from the Champion Chase and Ryanair, is part of a much-needed initiative to ensure that mares are more valued and valuable.)

But Cheltenham is not alone in upgrading. Aintree has remained a three-day affair but now boasts 11 Grade 1s, whereas prior to 2005 there were only four. The other seven races existed (one at Ascot) but were staged at Grade 2 level.

From 1998, Punchestown began expanding, too, from three to (eventually) five days and from eight* Grade 1s to the existing 12. (*Seven Grade 1 conditions races plus a two-mile limited handicap, now the Champion Chase. The meaning of graded status has evolved since then.)

So, within the last quarter of a century (when you include Fairyhouse at Easter and Sandown in April) the number of Grade 1 races within this single seven - or eight-week span at the end of every season has almost doubled from 23 to 40. There are a clutch of new Grade 2s, too.

The implication is clear: this is the basket in which to place all of your eggs. To increase your chance of winning at graded level, prioritise the second half of the season when there are more opportunities to avoid inconveniently talented rivals.

Far from drawing disparate strands of form together as a satisfying denouement to a season’s narrative, these races are therefore the equivalent of watching the season finale in a never-ending franchise. The hooks are intended to draw you back in again and again… but after a while, do they? Do they? For most of “us”, the answer is still yes.

Yet it is now possible for two contemporaneous stars with overlapping career trajectories to avoid each other not just from October to February, but from start to end of their careers. Take Shishkin and Envoi Allen – two novice-chasing bubbles yet to be burst. In the old days, they’d probably have at least met at the Cheltenham Festival as novices, probably in the Arkle. Or else Envoi Allen would have been impelled to explore three miles in the RSA Chase – something new, at least.

Now, Shiskin can run in the Arkle and Envoi Allen in the 2m4f Marsh, with Shishkin moving on to Aintree and Envoi Allen to Punchestown and then Shishkin returning to Cheltenham in 2022 for the Champion or Ryanair Chases and Envoi Allen for the Ryanair or Gold Cup. Repeat to fade. All at Grade 1 level every time.

The statistics tell you that the medium-to-long-term effect of this dynamic, writ large, results in a proliferation of horses rated in the 140+ bracket (seemingly by dint of running in these newly anointed graded races) but a reduction in horses rated 170+.

The reason for the latter is that good horses need to be pushed by other good horses so that humans can use mathematics to translate those performances into high ratings. If those good horses meet each other less frequently, the result is fewer horses who can genuinely be considered top-class.

Those races may be called Grade 1s – and doubtless meet the required parameter, a point to which I’ll return – but, unless we have unwittingly witnessed a miracle in thoroughbred evolution, logic tells you their strength in depth cannot compare to that of the far fewer graded races that existed prior to this mass dilution.

Yet how many people truly recognise this? We have established that it is not in the interest of owners, trainers or racecourses to worry about it. (Or, at least, not yet.) The proliferation in graded opportunities theoretically means that more owners have a chance of getting placed or better in these races – their horses are no longer perpetual also-rans in a strictly limited number of top-class events.

In actuality, of course, the rise of the super-trainer and the ruthless efficiency of Jumps pin-hooking operations, utilising point-to-points as hothouses, have merely served to refine the quality of elite owners’ strings. The opposite of democratisation has taken place because only a rarefied section of society can afford to purchase these pre-identified stars with little hope of recouping their costs via prize money.

So, there are two forces pulling in different directions, stretching our graded races too thinly: on the one hand, there are far more of them and, on the other, those horses good enough to contest them are owned and trained by a smaller band of people.

Yet I still routinely field tweets from racing fans yearning for a 2m4f Grade 1 hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival, so that some favourite horse who’s not absolutely ideally suited by two or three miles can experience glory there rather than at Aintree a few weeks later or (admittedly at Grade 2 level) at Ascot in November, January’s Relkeel or Fontwell’s National Spirit in February.

So, again let me take you back to what “we” want from Jump racing? The Cheltenham, Aintree and Punchestown Festivals routinely sell out regardless of the unspoken truth that their races are less, not more, competitive than formerly... but greater in number. Never mind the quality, feel the width.

At the time of the Cheltenham expansion proposal, Gillespie said: “We do not want to dilute the essence of this event. Every single race is a blockbuster.” Many – most – still believe this to be true. Perhaps therefore, on some level, it is? Trainers routinely talk of keeping their best horses apart until Cheltenham, or going straight there, so there remains some level of satisfaction when certain hitherto unbeaten horses clash in March, even if others are dodged.

However, Dan Skelton has recently spoken out about the pressure exerted on training operations by this Cheltenham-or-bust attitude and it does come at the expense of so many races from October onwards. Again, though, it’s hard to gauge how much of an issue this is – not at all, probably, for the public at large but perhaps not even among some racing fans.

When I’ve raised the subject of uncompetitive Jumping fare, either via my journalistic work or on social-media channels, I have encountered a mixed response. For some, it seems to be enough to see top-class horses, infrequently though that might be, beating up inferior opposition. They spring to the “defence” of horse or trainer, like unrequited lovers, if any hint of scrutiny is threatened. Some argue that it is more satisfying to see a horse perform when all or most circumstances are in its favour rather than to find out what might happen when they might not be.

What I perceive to be the modern fetishisation of an unbeaten record might be another factor in how certain horses are campaigned. It’s come to seem as though defeat besmirches a career rather than – bar for the most exceptional Frankel-like cases – the opposite, that is signifying timorous campaigning and/or a period of shallow competition.

I can’t differentiate between chicken and egg here. Does the promotion of uber-events, like the Festivals, engender an assumption among owners and fans that elite success means only ever winning – and winning there? Or is it convenient for super-trainers, who wish to maximise their business (and their jockeys, who wish to maximise their winners), to cultivate this expectation, thereby facilitating keeping stablemates apart and multiple owners happier for longer?

“You can’t have the absolute beau-ideal circumstances for a horse every time it runs, can you?” I suggested to Henderson, when moving on from Altior to discuss the campaigning of a galloper like Santini in the first half of the Jumps season. “But you’re trying to!” he responded. “We’re trying to win races. I’m not trying to get them ready for anything. I’m trying to win races with them.”

Why, indeed, would you run in a race you don’t think you can win? But Henderson’s opponents are routinely willing or, rather, compelled to do this. They don’t have the luxury of a choice.

Of course, this is partly also a differing trainer-disposition thing. Paul Nicholls or Colin Tizzard or Nigel Twiston-Davies would be more inclined to roll the dice. But with the partial exception of Nicholls, who’s resurgent, Tizzard and Twiston-Davies don’t have Henderson’s first-world problems. Henderson’s business is pivoted around Grade 1s and, more specifically, Cheltenham.

Willie Mullins is the same. That’s why they’ve trained comfortably more Festival winners than anybody else. Accordingly, we’re condemned to see Al Boum Photo just once prior to Cheltenham each season – at Tramore on New Year’s Day. This is explained away as his trainer fearing to deviate from a winning formula because the Gold Cup had previously eluded him for 20 years.

It’s the Best Mate school of Gold Cup preparation – appropriately, given it’s his trio of Gold Cups that Al Boum Photo will be bidding to equal in 2021. But even Henrietta Knight ran Best Mate twice before New Year’s Eve.

Perhaps trainers need to communicate more openly about the wear-and-tear considerations of managing an elite equine athlete, so that the engaged racing fan can understand this issue more fully and holds a better grasp on the profile of individual horses? Because this is surely a factor in their campaigning, too. Although, given the propensity for anti-racing campaigners to use such details to whip up (no pun intended) a reflexive chorus of uncomprehending disapproval, you can understand why they don’t.

So, the problem remains that some races, kitemarked via their graded status as the best this sport can offer, are uncompetitive one-sided affairs.

Take the Grade 1 Clarence House Chase, staged at Ascot in January. Eight of the last ten winners started as favourite, five of which were odds-on and four of those won by five to 16 lengths, such was their dominance. As a Grade 1, it has only twice provided full each-way betting terms and has failed to muster more than five runners for the last five years.

This race is the poster-boy for this argument because until 2006 it was run as a handicap and produced reputation-defining renewals, such as Well Chief winning in 2005 off a mark of 176, Azertyuiop failing by a neck to concede 19lbs to Isio the previous year and the great Desert Orchid giving Panto Prince 22lbs and a beating in 1989.

Depending on your vintage, such epic contests might well have inspired a lifelong interest in this sport. Yet 15 years later, we’re according this race higher status and the same mainstream TV exposure for a 1/10 shot to beat up an inferior rival at level weights by seven lengths. These slots are racing’s shop window. Are we – that word again – doing the best we can with them? Are we firing the imagination of those who enjoy elite sport?

For a sport badly in need of money, it is a stone-cold fact that five-runner races with a comfortably odds-on favourite are a drag on turnover. To be clear: I am not saying scrap all small-field races, as some would advocate. Certain races that consistently attract few runners often play a critical developmental role – Newbury’s winter novice chases are a prime example. However, shouldn’t certain other races be made to work a bit harder for our sport’s wider benefit?

I mentioned earlier that, in order to retain their graded status, races have to meet certain ratings parameters at each stratum. Over jumps, it’s the average rating of the first four home over a rolling three-year period. Yet if a 1/16 Buveur D’Air can beat a total of two rivals, one sent off at 100/1, in Sandown’s 2018 Contenders Hurdle without placing its Listed status in jeopardy, is the quality-control system rigorous enough?

Leopardstown hosts the Irish Champion Hurdle that same month, so is it a good use of Britain’s money to stage a one-sided clash out of fear that a good horse might otherwise have a racecourse gallop instead? No, would be my answer. Some of “us” would say yes.

Another danger is that racecourses will deem the solution to the best horses running infrequently prior to March as a spur to stage more ‘Festivals’ during this period because that makes sense to them on a financial level – implying more upgrades to existing races or collecting those races closer together in the calendar. This is the last thing we need. Well, some of us think so, anyway.

Blake has argued for the opposite: “a ruthless reduction in the number of Grade 1 races and a conversion of all Grade 2 and Grade 3 races into handicaps” in the Anglo-Irish programme. More recently, he has suggested that the programme book should be restructured to funnel novice chasers into taking on the generation above within their first season over fences.

I would advocate an open-minded, wide-ranging review of the existing structure. Instinctively, I don’t agree that graded conditions events should be removed below Grade 1 level and replaced universally with limited handicaps nor that novices should be universally fast-tracked. There is nothing to prevent a novice chaser from competing in an open Grade 1 as things stand – as Thistlecrack and Coneygree have successfully proved – but not all horses develop at the same pace and not all careers run smoothly. The programme should be varied enough to cater for this.

The fast-tracking concept requires more holistic consideration. What impact would this have on the duration of a horse’s career? How must the system also change to cater for those horses who, very quickly, don’t make this grade? How would the industry manage this responsibility?

Welfare, in terms of career-management opportunities and the impact of weight-carrying but also more holistically, would need to be a constant touchstone during this conversation – requiring science and data, mind, not the brandishing of the w-word to ward off unwelcome debate.

And, finally, such a review could not be carried out by Britain or Ireland alone. An attempt was made by the British in the late 1990s for closer Pattern co-operation but it came to nothing, even though the two horse populations are too closely intermingled sensibly to make unilateral decisions, as they currently do.

A symbiotic approach for the long-term greater good of the sport would also require give and take on both sides of the Irish Sea. Put bluntly: to make our purported best racing more consistently compelling, elite connections would have to give up some of their sure-fire pay-days and certain racecourses would need to forego or tweak some of their supposed top races.

But first, the industry would need to decide that change is needed. Or that the conversation should rightfully at least be had. I don’t think we agree on that.