A CASE STUDY IN POST-RACE ANALYSIS ("Hardest game in the world, son, thirty years man and boy...." etc.)

When confronted with any challenging of his calling skills, the late racecourse commentator Raleigh Gilbert's stock response was always simply "thank you for listening". In a similar vein, I suspect most of us who have performed post-race analysis or comments in running for horse races and had them committed to print or electronic newspapers would simply shrug "thank you for reading" in the face of any racehorse owners or trainers alleging a harsh treatment of their charge. "You can libel and slander horses", we were constantly reminded at the Sportsman, "just never people".

It's almost disappointing, therefore, that despite my best efforts to be as brutally, unflinchingly honest in my raining on the metaphorical strawberries of bad race winner after bad race winner, only once was any member of the racing fraternity galvanised into contacting the Sportsman in high dudgeon.... and when they did, they did so the morning after the paper had been wound up and we were already vacating the premises. A pity: I would have liked the opportunity to embark on a totally civil, but unerringly frank, succession of correspondences with the party in question.

The bone of contention was a review I did of a very low grade handicap chase (a seller in all but name) in the North of England earlier this autumn. The horse in question won it off a BHB mark in the low 70s on its second start over fences and tenth in all, beating a fairly ragged assortment by five lengths. The Racing Post's review of the race had painted the effort in a most favourable light, whereas I had marked the winner, and all other horses in the race I'd cared to mention explicitly, as "Negatives", much to connections' chagrin.

Since learning of that response I have watched the race again around a dozen times, and happily concede to the owners on one point, namely that the horse was probably travelling more akin to the Press Association's Comments In Running ("stayed on") than my assertion that he wasn't holding on by an awful lot. I don't suppose I'd be the first person ever of whom the stiff finish at the course in question has made a fool.

Thereafter we diverge somewhat in our expectations of what a piece of post-analysis should constitute. An explicit statement on the quality of the gelding's jumping was anticipated, and none was forthcoming from me. The gelding, a front-runner by nature, had seen off any other attentions at a very early stage, and we basically learned little about his jumping other than it was as functional as one would have expected given there was nothing around to pressurise him or that jumping thereafter.

Moreover, with one likely fellow trailblazer withdrawn at the start and another unusually reverted to hold-up tactics, this was a far easier time of it up front than he'd have had any right to expect before the race.

None of the post-race analysis performed by the Sportsman racing staff comprised a summary trashing of the race just gone for the sake of it, nor was any of it conducted without at least some prior knowledge of the main protagonists in each race. One of the great assets of having such a small, versatile team was that we'd regularly adopt a "cradle to grave" approach to a meeting, having performed the pre-race analysis and betting forecast on it one day, and then post-analysing it the next.

To that end I couldn't see enough about our gelding here in his previous form or his breeding profile that could logically suggest this would be the first of a string of wins.

Had I thought that his low BHB mark entering the race was indicative of a horse ill-suited to hurdling (he'd never finished within a single-digit number of lengths of the winner on any start over timber), and that he'd find significant improvement - and prove exceptionally well handicapped accordingly - with his attentions turned to fences, then that would have been made most explicit in my post-analysis. Instead, it was noted that his dam was of negligible account in bumpers and over jumps, and that none of her other foals to have raced under Rules has proved anything other than very poor - indeed, only one of them had ever completed races, and even then has never finished within 17l of the winner in any start.

All in all, the evidence to suggest that this would be the horse's "one day", beyond which he would struggle to win again, was judged to be compelling enough to inform the comments that ultimately went to print.

It must be borne in mind that the remit to which Sportsman post-race analysts were expected to adhere to was always probably a bit more critical than that of the Racing Post's, as our entire raison d'etre was to identify what would be a winning proposition next time and what would not - comments of the nature of "did it nicely", "should go on from this", etc. were actively discouraged, and over the course of the paper's life at least a third (and probably more) of all the winners of races were marked as Negatives in the respective post-race analyses.

This is no criticism of the Post, simply an assertion that we looked at things a little differently to it.

Notwithstanding any of the above, I must reiterate that one of the main joys of following this sport is to be proven wrong, and the connections of the horse - who hasn't turned out since his win - should rest assured that I WILL BE DELIGHTED TO BE PROVEN WRONG ON ALL COUNTS IF HE GOES IN AGAIN SOMETIME.

Nothing of my work for the Sportsman as a whole, or indeed this posting, should be taken as giving a kicking to low-grade jumps racing and its protagonists - far from it; I was the paper's principal champion of such meetings, was employed to cover as many of them as possible, and solely attend either these or point-to-points professionally and recreationally.

However, what I can't and won't do, and couldn't and wouldn't in this instance, is to call geese swans until such time as they prove to be the latter - racing fans deserve undiluted, unflinching honesty from those appointed to write on the sport on their behalf.

Thank you for reading.