A MIGHTY SAD END... BUT NOTHING MORE SINISTER

Outside of – or maybe for some people even alongside - great champions, there are two particular kinds of racehorse that seem to draw a greater emotional response from racegoers than any other.

One of these is the grey horse, the closer to white the better; an instantly recognisable, spectral sight juxtaposed against the predominately green (or sand) coloured backdrop of the racecourse, every flicker of facial feature far more visible to the naked eye compared to those of his brown, black and bay counterparts.

The other is the veteran horse; a reassuring sight, returning year after year to add a degree of continuity to a dizzying, congested and for the greater part transient racing world, refusing to bend to age and rewarding his loving connections’ faith and patience in keeping him race-worthy into his dotage.

Given his possession of both these attributes of near-white skin and veteran status, therefore, it was inevitable that when the 13 year-old hurdler and chaser Mighty Fine started recording a succession of career-best performances in running up a sequence of victories this summer, he captured the imagination of many and added a dash of colour (in more senses than one) to the undeniably quieter portion of the jumps season. Just as inevitably, then, his fatal heart attack on the way back to the stables following a hard-fought victory at Perth last month went anything other than unnoticed.

Cries of unfair treatment of Mighty Fine rang out across certain of the online racing forums almost immediately, mostly directed at trainer Paul Blockley, who was sending out the gelding for the fifth time in nine weeks since his eyebrow-raising claiming of him from a Sedgefield selling hurdle at the start of June. It was barbaric, or at the very least desperately ill-advised, many suggested, to wait until the thirteenth year of the horse’s life to put him through his heaviest ever campaign (12 races this year up to and including the Perth outing), and to turn him out just 10 days after a second on sapping ground in a competitive 2m6f Market Rasen handicap hurdle.

The facts of Mighty Fine’s campaigning prior to his demise are not in dispute, and it was without question a very, very sad end for a horse who literally ran his heart out on the night, but I would still stop a long way short of castigating Blockley or of suggesting that that campaigning in any way hastened his charge’s demise.

The point to make about pretty much all of Mighty Fine's other six 2007 wins is that they had been attained with consummate ease (an aggregate of 72l, in actual fact) against opponents - and in races - ranging from ordinary to dreadful. Indeed, the Perth victory was the only one of his wins this year recorded in a race greater than Class 4 status (with selling hurdles accounting for half of the other six), and the only one he had to fight for to any particular extent.

I would suggest that such "contests" as preceded Perth would have taken very little out of him. I stand by that assertion even though this habitual front-runner attempted to record pillar to post victories on every occasion.

Discussing the science of front-running with my good friend and former boss at the Sportsman Simon Rowlands earlier this week, we both voiced our disapproval of many course commentators’ referring to attempts to make all as “doing it the hard way”. Assuming a front-runner must automatically be running himself into the ground each time is inaccurate and in all honesty a bit insulting to many horses – look no further than the succession of wins gained via "conservative front-running" by Ellerslie Tom last summer for a strong counter-argument against such an assumption.

Mighty Fine’s final campaign of 12 races did indeed make 2007 his busiest ever calendar year, as already stated, but this has to be looked at in the wider context of his racing life as a whole, which had started in bumpers nearly nine years earlier. An overall total of 47 races for a 13yo is anything but an exhaustive, exhausting career, and due in part to him having had at least one lengthy spell on the sidelines with a cracked foot during the earlier years of his tenure with Evelyn Slack and Diane Sayer. In real terms, he probably gave every outward sign of being as fit and well this summer as a more evenly-campaigned horse four or five years his junior.

Racing jumps horses with conspicuous frequency is an emotive issue (all the more so the older they get), as it is presumed that the horses in question are not getting the requisite amount of time to recover from exertions which, even at their shortest (1m4f, say, for a junior bumper and 2m for a hurdle or chase race), constitute greater physical tests than the majority of assignments on the Flat.

But not all horses are alike, of course. The mere fact that Mighty Fine was in his best form ever at 13, and carried 11st 9lb to victory in his final race in a time equal to the Racing Post standard for 3m chases at Perth, proves that much alone. Another 13yo, Barry Potts' Dream Castle, made all to land the claiming hurdle at the same venue the following afternoon; whilst campaigned with less frequency than Mighty Fine in 2007, his profile as an injury-plagued (broken down four times) but still thoroughly enthusiastic animal in the best form of his life otherwise bears remarkable similarities.

Moreover, Paul Blockley belongs to that tranche of jumps trainers, along with the likes of Michael Chapman and Milton Harris, who know precisely which of their charges are best able not just to cope with, but to flourish under, a busy and prolonged racing schedule. Such a schedule did not do Blockley’s Is It Me any harm last summer, and it was certainly not to the detriment of Chapman’s sadly-missed Ei Ei, either – this was a horse, remember, that was killed by a final flight fall when a distance clear in a race, rather than by the schedule which had seen him turn out 60 times in under three years for Chapman immediately before that.

Ultimately I suspect this incident will serve only to reinforce already trenchant views for and against running horses over jumps, whether they are as old as Mighty Fine and / or raced with the frequency he was latterly. It should be clear on which side of the fence I come down - Mighty Fine's demise is a terrible shame, and a sadly conspicuous one for those who witnessed it at closer order at Perth last month, but the questioning of Paul Blockley's handling of him is some way wide of the mark in my opinion, and nothing that is going to bring the loveable old grey back. Here’s wishing all our equine heroes, of all ages, colours, abilities and shapes, safe passage through the rest of the season.