A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME WOULD STILL BE A CHAMPION... BUT OF WHAT?

I am no more in the habit of taking the Racing Post's Alastair Down to task over articles than I am any other of the industry's foremost writers and columnists, especially as my fields of expertise would not be as all-encompassing as many of theirs. However, I found myself adopting a contrary position to Mr Down on a couple of occasions at the end of May, albeit, I suppose, over relatively small matters in the global scheme of things.

The first of these concerned an otherwise very fair and - if it isn't too inappropriate a term to use, given the course's 2007 misfortunes - watertight piece on Worcester (published May 25th), a racecourse which has been the subject of more regular discussion than most on these pages. Mr Down's suggestion that hunters' chases don't feature at the Pitchcroft venue was true to a point, but I felt compelled to don my hunters' chase anorak in writing to the Post and confirming that the intention was to run one such event at the April 23rd meeting of this year.

This would have been the first since the last edition of a hitherto long-running novices' hunters' chase on April 24th, 1999. In the event, this resumption had to be delayed by another year, as the steeplechase course was deemed still not quite fit for purpose.

The second of these occasions was partially related to the first, concerning as it did Mr Down's reaction to the outcome of the amateur riders' jumps title - I say partially rather than wholly, as the chief protagonists in the title race had gained many victories outwith hunters' chases as well as in them.

The reaction was one of dismay that Rose Davidson had been accorded the title of champion woman amateur rider, rather than of the outright champion amateur, despite having ridden more victories than every male counterpart between early June 2007 and the end of May 2008 - 21, compared to the 20 of nearest pursuer Nick Scholfield. Mr Down's opening salvo of, "When is the jockey who has ridden the most winners not a champion? When they are a woman, according to the Amateur Jockeys' Association", leaves little to the imagination.

On an immediate, gut level, I found it hard to disagree with him. He and I would both, I suspect, regard ourselves as equalists, if not necessarily out-and-out feminists. Strictures of time currently prevent me from checking his previous utterances on the matter of, for example, more female presenters and pundits meritocratically added to both the specialist television channels and Channel 4, Carrie Ford's participation in the Grand National, and so on; an old-school sexist in the John McCririck mould, however, I trust he is almost certainly not.

Having thought a little harder and longer, though, I wondered whether this response was at least partly predicated on the belief that the champion woman amateur was referred to as “outright champion” rather than just “champion woman” the last time she rode the most winners in an amateur riders’ season. Further, I also wondered whether there was any belief on Mr Down's part that the amateur ranks cultivate an expectation that a woman with the most wins would be crowned as anything other than just "champion woman".

The answer to the first of those queries is a straight "no". Rose Davidson's achievements made her the first female amateur ever to ride the most Rules jumps winners in a year, so no precedent exists there which opponents of the decision can cite. Pre-emptively, perhaps, Sarah Oliver of the Amateur Jockeys' Association (AJA) reaffirmed in the Post on the morning of Saturday, May 24th (the last day of the season) that the men and women's titles are very much regarded as separate titles. This appears consistent with previous statements from her and the AJA on jockey awards - "It's good for Tom [O'Brien] and excellent for Rose", is how the paper quoted her summary of 2005-6's respective, separate title winners.

In light of this, she was if anything probably a little too generous when suggesting of this year's events that, "Any confusion probably stems from the fact that the winner of the gentlemen's title usually rides about 18 winners, while the winner of the ladies' title rides seven or eight, and the person with the most gets described as champion". Less charitable proponents of the AJA's stance may suggest that any confusion had and still has actually only stemmed from there being no greater familiarity with the Association's long-held position on the matter.

As regards the second query raised, the notion that the amateur riders' jumps championship should comprise one mixed-sex contest under Rules lays contrary to the practice maintained in point-to-points, a sphere of racing in which essentially all of the main protagonists concerned here were still very much active participants right to the end of May (and beyond, in all bar Scholfield's case).

The champion female point-to-point rider has ended the season between the flags on the same or a higher tally of wins than her male counterpart five times since the riders' titles were established after World War II - Polly Curling managed the feat in three successive seasons from 1993 to 1995 alone, comfortably outscoring Alastair Crow (twice) and Nibby Bloom. Yet on none of these occasions has the woman in question been regarded as anything other than the champion of her sex. There just isn't an expectation there to be so, and as such it seems odd to presume that there may be one among - broadly speaking - the same pool of women for the equivalent Rules title.

Does that damn the amateur ranks as backward in their attitude towards their female achievers? Quite the opposite. Point-to-pointing is a medium of the sport in which, as mentioned previously, champion female riders have been identified as such for over 60 years now (and champion female novice riders as well, albeit only more recently), and in which equality of opportunity has been so long established (with hardly any meetings hosting a Men's Open but no Ladies' equivalent any more) that instances of several victories for female riders at any given meeting raises no eyebrows at all.

The silence on the matter of the AJA's amateur Rules champions from nearly all of the tough, phlegmatic women who populate pointing should be taken not as a meek acceptance of the status quo, therefore, but rather as an acknowledgement that there are almost certainly more important things with which they concern themselves.

It is only right of me to mention that just about the only dissenting voice to be heard from the female amateur ranks over the whole affair has been that of Rose Davidson herself, who described "not actually being called champion" (which isn't semantically accurate - she still is being called champion, as we've discussed) as something "a bit silly" and "sexist", but even so appears not to be so exercised by the decision to argue the case for a combined title any further than that.

Opinion will inevitably continue to differ as to whether it is silly and sexist, or anachronistic, or just an extension of the way amateur riders' achievements are quantified at a lower level of racing than Rules racing; but what it certainly isn't is a device dreamed up relatively late in the day just to spite Rose or any other high-achieving female amateur, and nor must it be thought as such.