THE SANATOGEN AND SAGA BRIGADE DESCENDS UPON SOMERSET - BUT WHITHER THE HUNTERS?

Having respectfully disagreed with the Racing Post Weekender’s Carl Evans in a previous post on the merits of granting any rider in the 2001 point-to-point season the title of “champion”, I will gladly redress the balance to an extent on this occasion, by thanking him for bringing to readers' knowledge the return to greater prominence of a certain genre of race.

The (re-)emergence of unusual or long-forgotten race types is a constant source of fascination to me, adding as they do their own curious little footnotes to a racing programme increasingly groaning under the weight of workaday mid to low-ranking handicaps under both codes. To that end I always look forward to the cross-country races at Cheltenham, and the race restricted to grey horses at Newmarket; I still lament the fact the genuine 3m4f marathon hurdle died when jumps racing at Nottingham did; I was intrigued to see Aintree following Newton Abbot’s lead last May by running a handicap hunters’ chase; and I am hoping that the reappearance of claiming chases – the next one is scheduled for Musselburgh this Sunday – to Britain after a protracted absence proves not to be a fleeting, one-season experiment.

It wasn’t any of these that Mr Evans reported on in the Weekender just before Christmas, but rather on the introduction to the calendar of four veterans’ chases, the first one of which takes place at Wincanton this afternoon. This 2m5f race will be followed by a 3m contest at Doncaster on February 20th, a 3m2f one at Newbury on March 1st and a 3m Ascot race on April 11th. All of them are 0-145 handicaps restricted to horses aged 10 or older.

These races do not represent either the first ever attempt at framing races for veterans, of course, or even the first running of any such race for many years, as Cartmel has staged the 10yo-and-older 0-130 Burlington Slate Grand Veterans’ National for each of the last eight Whit Saturdays (barring the 2001 renewal, lost to foot and mouth). This dizzying spectacle, taking in nearly four complete circuits of the idiosyncratic Lakeland venue, has quickly caught the imagination of the local racegoing public there. At the same time, by dint of never yet failing to produce a competitive contest with eight or more runners, it has advertised to the wider racing world that such races are of some worth as betting media, as long as they are pitched at the right level at the right time of year.

This last point was the one which has historically not been got right with veterans’ chases, and which had to be one of the major contributory factors to their total disappearance from the calendar for three years before Cartmel’s enterprising move. There were 19 veterans’ chases run between 1988 and 1997, comprising nine run at Warwick in May, five at Wincanton in late March and another five at Haydock in December. These races between them mustered only 98 runners, an average per race only just above five, and never once did more than eight line up together.

The Warwick and Wincanton races being run as non-handicap contests with no ratings ceilings during comparative lulls in the season (the latter always took place the week after Cheltenham) often led to them featuring one in-form or genuinely classy act easily dispatching a small field of lesser opponents. In four consecutive runnings of the Warwick event from 1991, Huntworth, Skipping Tim and Docklands Express (twice) recorded odds-on wins over just four rivals each – hardly the most appealing betting propositions either in theory beforehand or in practice. Haydock, meanwhile, did run its races as handicaps (latterly as 0-140 contests), but heavy ground - and few places get heavy like Haydock does, of course - saw the last two runnings of its Boston Pit Veterans’ Handicap Chase cut up to just four runners apiece, and time was called on the race at that point.

The Wincanton race today has already achieved something none of those previous 19 races managed, namely attracting 11 starters (from an original entry of 22) of whom over half are rated within a stone of the 145 ratings ceiling; and much of that has to go down to the race being run as a contest for realistically-rated animals at a time of the season when many of them are still very much in circulation. In short, on Official Ratings at least, it has more strength in depth than any other veterans’ chase run in Britain within the last 20 years, if not longer, and I would not be surprised if the Doncaster or Newbury equivalents in the next few weeks prove even stronger in that regard.

One of the main reasons for that assertion is that the Wincanton race is the only one which falls outside of the period of the season during which hunters’ chases are run. In essence, anything that ran today would automatically be ineligible for those amateur races, today’s contest falling as it does two days before the hunters’ season starts. Thereafter, however, there is nothing to stop any suitably aged and rated horse that has already been plying its trade in point-to-points this winter from being aimed squarely at the remaining veterans’ chases ahead of hunters’ races.

This was certainly one concern that Carl Evans raised in his veterans’ chase article in the Weekender, and whilst the number of horses being campaigned in such a way is unlikely to run into dozens and dozens, his is definitely a fair concern. The fact that only professionally licensed trainers could pull off the feat (i.e. Steve Flook couldn’t run a pointer of his in a veterans’ handicap, but Paul Nicholls could one of his) will certainly do little to impress those already sitting firmly in the camp against such trainers participating in points or hunters at all, particularly if any sense is derived that these amateur races are being used as an instrument by licensed trainers to get their charges match-fit ahead of these bigger, more lucrative 0-145 handicap assignments that only they may undertake.

All that said, the drain of Nicholls and O’Neill horses from points / hunters to veterans’ races won’t be absolute, as the likes of Le Passing and East Tycoon are still too young to take part in the last-named even if Thisthatandtother, Innox, etc. are not. Plus, of course, we were all given to understand that the purpose of licensed trainers’ horses running in the amateur sphere was that they had become too highly handicapped under Rules, so a complete reneging on that statement by their attempting to farm all the veterans’ races with pointing / hunting animals would surely rate a huge publicity own-goal.

For many reasons, then, the line-up for the remaining 10yo and up races this term will be a source of real interest, far beyond the actuality of how many horses take part. I can’t wait.

WHEN IS A CHAMPIONSHIP NOT A CHAMPIONSHIP - A STUDY, 1967 to 2001

As one of thousands of confirmed hunters’ chase and point-to-point enthusiasts, the Racing Post Weekender is a permanent fixture in my weekly shopping basket between December and June. Whilst the results listed in the pull-out on the amateur sport are available in varying formats elsewhere, the rump of the editorial content is not; and both the human interest stories behind certain runners and riders, plus those of rules and programme changes, are given the fine toothcomb treatment by me each week.

One article from last week’s Weekender served as a reminder that the one thing that all racing writers, pundits and enthusiasts have in common is that they each have their own hobby-horse subject or subjects, which are then maintained and defended with a zeal arguably disproportionate to all else.

In the case of one or two of my colleagues on Betfair Radio, the subject guaranteed to elicit the strongest reaction is the provision to the media of timely and accurate changes to a racecourse’s conditions (e.g. the moving in or out of running rails). My equivalents would be the introduction of hurdle races over a genuine marathon trip, i.e. beyond the current longest of 3m3.5f, and a recognised championship – with prizes - for permit-holders as an acknowledgement of their longstanding historical significance to and continued support of the sport of National Hunt racing. For Carl Evans, the Racing Post’s hunters’ chase and point-to-point expert and writer of the informative and engaging "Pointing Diary" in the Weekender each week, the recording of the 2001 pointing season appears to be a perennial bugbear.

That season was, of course, blighted by the return to the British Isles of foot and mouth disease and an instant cessation of all racing in mid-February. Whilst Rules action returned to those courses suitably detached from the movement of potentially affected livestock shortly after (e.g. Musselburgh, Haydock, Huntingdon and the London courses), the intrinsically rural, and in many cases farm-based point-to-point tracks, never really had any live prospect of a resumption; and so it came to pass that the pointing season ended abruptly after the Brocklesby Park and Parham meetings on February 24th, the seventh weekend of the season, with only 218 races out of a likely programme of around 1400 having taken place.

Mr Evans’ contention is that the severely truncated nature of pointing in 2001 should prevent that season from being regarded as one in which any riders, horses, etc. are classed as “champions”, even for historical purposes. Weatherbys in general, and Mackenzie and Harris’ Hunter Chasers and Point-to-Pointers annual in particular, is cited as perpetuating the idea that what racing did take place that year was sufficient to constitute a proper season; and that the recording of Polly Gundry as champion woman with six wins, and of messrs Dunsdon, Gordon and Jefford as the men’s joint champions with five apiece, is entirely acceptable.

Whilst broadly sympathetic to Mr Evans’ opinion, and whilst acknowledging, as he did, that a number of pointing regions were unable to host a single meeting on account of first the weather and then foot and mouth, I have little hesitation in agreeing with Weatherby’s judgment on this occasion.

2001 was not the first year in many people’s living memory to be broadsided by an epidemic of the disease, of course. November 28th 1967 saw a Ministry of Agriculture-driven ban imposed on all horse racing, one which held across the entire country for two months and in some areas until early the following summer. There were no point-to-point fixtures scheduled for the first few weeks of that imposition anyway, but losses thereafter there certainly were, albeit admittedly not on the same scale as over 30 years later.

A glance at the roll-call of previous champions in the Annual reveals one present and correct for both gentlemen’s and ladies’ championships in 1968, and therein lies the point – the precedent already exists for a championship to be counted as a championship, however foreshortened or truncated by circumstances beyond anyone’s control.

The nature of that interruption to the season ought not make any difference, either. A glance further up the table reveals that the 1963 season was still regarded as valid enough to warrant the declaration of Major Guy Cunard and Sally Rimell as the winners of their respective championships, despite that year’s savage winter more or less wiping out all action until part-way into March.

The aforementioned fact that some areas of the country saw no pointing action whatsoever in 2001, to the detriment of most of the riders and certainly all of the horses and trainers based in these areas, is not disputed. That, however, is just the way it is. The composition and geography of certain places will always leave them more at risk of having their racing way of life compromised than others, be that by susceptibility to epidemics or extremes of weather.

A not insubstantial chunk of the summer jumping programme was lost to the terrible floods last year, both of these events being based largely in the Midlands; but it would set an unwise precedent to suggest that the inability of a large number of the Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire trainers to train or send out runners during that period rendered the championship too loaded against them to count as credible.

In short, were there ample precedent of shortened point-to-point championships not being counted as championships, then I would have no hesitation in agreeing with Carl Evans on this occasion, but whilst it may exist I am yet to see it.


(As an aside, I would also counter the assertion made in the same article that, “no-one claims Esha Ness won the void 1993 Grand National”. On the contrary.

Those that did complete the course did so having raced in earnest throughout, right down to fighting out a finish, from which Esha Ness emerged victorious in a time 12.6 seconds faster than the Racing Post standard fo the course and distance. The paper’s comments in running for him, “held up in touch, headway to join leaders last, shaken up to lead flat, stayed on well, finished first”, don’t really read like those of a horse only going through the motions rather than racing for real, either.

As such, and notwithstanding the depleted field following the multiple pullings-up after the first circuit (which still left 19 going out for a second time, far more than in the undisputedly legitimate 2001 renewal), the race still stands on its own merits as an indication that Esha Ness, Cahervillahow, On The Other Hand, etc. genuinely stayed a marathon trip, however much they did or did not run over similar thereafter).