A THREAD ABOUT CARTMEL
(“What took you so long to get round to it?”)

Regular visitors to a certain quartet of internet racing fora will have known, without needing to ask, where I was most likely to have spent at least one day of the Bank Holiday weekend just past. And once again, they would have been absolutely right.

I have never yet managed to attend all six days of racing at the magical Lakeland venue of Cartmel in a given year, nor am I likely to any time soon. Financial constraints prevented this in the past, and the not unwelcome freelance racing engagement or two elsewhere during the Bank Holidays do so nowadays (a Hammersmith studio one day this year, a jaunty but rain-sodden point-to-point in Bonvilston, South Wales, one day last). If all else fails, though, I will make sure I’m a permanent fixture at the course one day in the dim and distant future by instructing my next of kin to have my ashes scattered over it.

I am, truly, madly, deeply, that big a fan of Cartmel, and my only real regret about the place is that it took 26 years before I finally managed to get there for the first time, back in August 2001. I’ve not missed a year since, and my return two days ago took my number of visits into the teens.

No enduring love affair is blind, though, and it often surprises people to find me happy to spend time candidly discussing Cartmel’s shortcomings on the aforementioned fora around the time of each meeting, rather than simply maintain that these don’t exist.

Of course, there is often little dissuading anybody who has already decided, some without ever having attended, that Cartmel is merely an overpriced, inaccessible gaff at which plating-class animals occasionally appear from behind a funfair to the indifference of a racing-illiterate crowd left entirely at the mercy of the elements. That’s their loss, especially as some of the points they raise deserve looking at in a little more detail than these detractors have been prepared to afford them.

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Cartmel is an expensive course to visit for what you actually get in terms of facilities. Given the increases to the admission price for the paddock / grandstand from £12 in 2002 to £18 in 2006 (the latter figure the same as for the better-endowed equivalent at Cheltenham), it would serve me no purpose to try to argue otherwise. However, Cartmel is refreshingly candid about to what use income from the above-average entry fee is put.

Over the past few years racecourse chairman Lord Cavendish has frequently and admirably explained in both the Cartmel racecards and the wider media that the money is required first and foremost for the "fighting chest" with which the course can bid, and bid successfully, to retain its coveted Bank Holiday fixtures. It may well have surprised many of those that bought a racecard at last August’s meeting to learn that the first ever Bank Holiday meeting at Cartmel, from which maps and contents had been reproduced inside the card, took place as recently as September 1st 1969, so synonymous has the Lakeland track become with racing on Whitsun and August Bank Holidays since then. Now nearly 40 years on, and in a prevailing environment of competitive and hostile bids for many of the calendar’s most lucrative racedays, few other courses can be so dependent as Cartmel on so few days' worth of racing, the days they take place on, and the money they bring in.

Continuity is a valuable asset here, and for as long as the sizeable holiday crowds continue to flood in on these most bankable of racing dates (Monday accommodated over 20,000 racegoers, or I’m a Dutchman), so improvements to the assorted facets of the racing experience can be furthered. Having replaced the stands and commentary box and added a restaurant in recent years, in 2007 it was the turn of the race programme and prize fund to reap the benefits, albeit to a lesser extent.

The number of Class 3 contests run at Cartmel annually increased from one to three last year, though Richard Ford’s attack on the prizemoney for the hunters’ chase he won on Monday, which has actually lessened in value since he first won the corresponding race in 1987, serves as a reminder that there is still quite some way to go to bolster the entire programme.

Whilst many of the races still offer ordinary or worse prizemoney, then, the patronage of those races remains high enough to keep punters happy, even in an era where BHA-imposed runners-to-stabling-capacity limits prevent more than a maximum of 75 runners from taking their chances on any given Cartmel card. Races of 16 runners or more are appreciably rarer than previously, but framing of field limits by the course executive where deemed necessary has ensured that only 12 out of 95 races run since May 27th 2006, the first day of that year’s Whit meeting, have featured fewer than eight runners – the July meeting last year, for example, was neatly divided into five 11-runner and two 10-runner contests quite deliberately.

Further, regardless of the small number of meetings at Cartmel each year, and of the changes to the shapes and sizes of fields, trends of benefit to the punter have emerged over time and continue to do so.

For example, the wins of Cashari and Chabrimal Minster at this year’s Whit meeting took the aforementioned Richard Ford’s track record to nine wins from 37 runners (a 25% strike-rate to all intents and purposes) in the last five years. Cashari’s win at 16-1 bolstered the Cheshire handler's level stakes profit to 16.25 points, which detracts from the fact that blind-backing him at the course had not been an especially lucrative strategy hitherto. However, the remaining eight winners were drawn from just 15 Ford horses to be sent off at odds of 6-1 or shorter, and the combined profit of this smaller pool of runners totals 21.25 points.

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For all that investment continues at the course, as described earlier, some of the remaining shortcomings of the raceday experience at Cartmel are likely to remain insuperable. The most obvious of those is the viewing, and there seems something slightly perverse about the fact that it is only possible to see as much from the grandstands as one can (in particular the top end of the course behind them) because of their lack of any rooves or back walls.

Many of Cartmel’s detractors claim the hulking great fairground in the course’s larger infield area hides the bottom end of the course. In truth, however, the video screen employed by the course would still be required even if these entertainments were banned from the course forthwith. Although not even close to being the worst course in Britain for viewing (not whilst the exasperating Peper Harrow point-to-point course continues to operate), Cartmel is deceptively undulating, with the bottom section especially low-lying. Extensive deforestation and earthmoving would rectify matters rather quicker than decluttering the centre of the course, not that any is being planned.

In any event, the fair serves a vital purpose in keeping that element of the youth in the crowd totally disinterested in the racing – and there are plenty of these - distracted enough not to be causing trouble closer to the action. Increasingly that is a virtue not to be sniffed at!

Finally, the myth of the course’s perceived inaccessibility needs debunking. For all that one does not simply turn off a dual carriageway and straight through the course’s front gates, the flow of traffic in and out of the venue is far smoother than many other racetracks where that is actually the case.

The established and perfectly-executed filtering of traffic along the many country lanes to the track is most effectively performed by local officials and police who know the drill to the letter. Consequently in all my visits to Cartmel to date, I've never yet needed more than 25 minutes to get to the track from the M6 (some 8-10 miles away), and never needed more than 40 to get back to the M6 afterwards.

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In spite of what I hope has read as spirited a riposte as I intended it to, I still wouldn't presume to be able to convince every last sceptic of the magic of Cartmel, much less try to. However, I know where I'll be again either this August Bank Holiday, or at the very latest next Whistun - piling the cool-bag full of Richard Woodall Cumberland sausages and locally brewed damson ale; threading my way through the forest of barbecues to the bookies' pitches by the run-in; and joining the thick end of 20,000 other punters (and Iain Mackenzie in the box, chances are) in cheering home the winner of a 2m1.5f novices' handicap chase (0-95, Class 5, first prize of little real worldly significance) come rain or shine. If anyone cares to join me, they'd be most welcome.

WORCESTER - IMPERFECT, AND MEANLY-ENDOWED, BUT HOW SUMMER NEEDS IT

After all the flood-induced trials and tribulations at the course in the last 12 months, it was great to see Worcester racecourse fully functional again a week last Sunday, the seven-race card including the first steeplechases at the track this year following two all-hurdle affairs previously.

With neither a cloud in the sky nor a semblance of a puddle on the racing surface, only a Biblical plague of frogs or similar was going to stop this hitherto ill-starred venue proceeding with a meeting as intended on this occasion.

The Pitchcroft course does have its critics, myself and fellow Betfair Radio pundit David Cleary among them - Sportsman readers may remember both of us having taken turns to give the place a bit of a kicking in our respective columns at least once each. Its physical situation, hard up between the city centre streets and the River Severn, inhibits significant outward development of the course’s facilities, and many of those facilities are modest to say the least. Further, judged against some of the other jumps courses in operation during the spring and summer, the prizemoney on offer is regularly dismal – last Sunday’s feature 0-135 handicap chase offered a first prize kitty of £5,850, all of £3,300 less than the equivalent for a 0-130 handicap chase at Aintree on Friday night and just the same as for a class 3 early season novices’ hurdle at Fakenham two nights earlier.

However, to steal a line from the 18th century poet William Cowper, “Worcester, with all thy faults, I love thee still”. Its long straights, sweeping bends and two rows of wide fences ensure that Worcester remains as fair a test of a horse as you will find during the summer season. Indeed, once Hexham and Towcester draw stumps on their respective seasons in mid-June, it becomes the only track in operation over the following three months that can realistically be labeled as anything other than “sharp”.

Simply put, Worcester offers vital variety to the summer jumping calendar and a sole refuge for the longer-striding animal. It would actually rate a more logical place for a proper marathon chase to me than Uttoxeter, home of the Summer National since its inception in 2000; and the resurrection of the course’s King John Chase, a 3m5f handicap run at a March meeting at Pitchcroft until around 20 years ago, as a big-money contest around July or August would certainly meet with my approval.

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Back to the here and now, however, and despite not being rewarded especially handsomely for his efforts in terms of pounds, shillings and pence, the 9yo Kilrogan threw his hat into the ring as a possible aspirant for the “Plate” races – the Galway Plate and Market Rasen’s Summer Plate – with a gutsy display in the aforementioned Worcester feature. Out in front for long enough on a course (ironically, given what we’ve discussed so far) rather more galloping than he prefers, he dug deep close home under Timmy Murphy to record a fourth victory under Rules.

It is exactly a year since he took a maiden hunters’ chase at Folkestone’s all-amateur meeting on his British debut for then handler Bob Lancaster, and he has progressed nicely since then granted good or quicker going and a minimum of 2m4f to travel. A raise for this win is likely to elevate his current mark of 120 to one off which he should be able to sneak into the Summer Plate with an attractively small weight (the bottom one in last year’s maximum-field renewal ran off 126), and Market Rasen will suit his prominent racing style better than Worcester. Along with Border Castle, he is a grand advertisement for the skills of the still relatively new trainer Andrew Haynes.

Not that we are guaranteed even to see the Summer Plate winner any time before the event itself, of course, with many recent renewals having gone to horses making their seasonal reappearance. However, the Summer Plate and Summer Hurdle trials will continue at a steady trickle until the start of July now - next stop a 0-135 hurdle at Stratford on Friday and a class 2 handicap chase at the same venue 24 hours later.