THE NOSTALGISTS AND THE VAMPIRE AT HEREFORD'S WAKE

“2012 promises to be an exciting year at Hereford”, the Come Racing page of its website still enthuses.  Ouch.  Words committed to XML or Dreamweaver or somesuch in good faith, presumably around this time last year when all still appeared well enough with Hereford Racecourse (outwardly, at least), now jar with a dull clang of hopeless, superannuated optimism. 

Three days on from Sunday’s poignant final act of Rules racing worship for the foreseeable future, that website might just as well be making giddy predictions as to the previous night’s Lottery numbers.  At around 3.47pm on December 16^th, the venue whose interests it represents changed from racecourse present to racecourse past in the blink of any eye.

I was there.  I wasn’t originally meant to be there, but my commitment to Alnwick’s Point-to-Point fixture fell through when the Northumberland sward obligingly failed to prove absorbent enough to pass an inspection the afternoon before.  I imagined that the Hereford car park, notionally all turf, was pulling off a pretty passable impersonation of Alnwick, being a black shade of green before racing and surely the chosen playground of nobody and no-one but Flanders and Swann’s hippopotami after.  The groundstaff at Alnwick have until the January 20^th meeting of the West Percy to return the racing surface to a useable condition.  Those to have been kept on to continue to do similar at Hereford have, regrettably, rather more time available to do likewise to the car park.

Other people were there.  2,600, in fact, although for the purposes of Levy Board attendance statistics (source: http://aes.hblb.org.uk/index.php/attendances/summaries) only the 1,100 of us that paid to get in will count as attendees.  A few returns for the first two and a half weeks of December are still awaited, but at the time of writing that latter figure is bigger than that for all bar one Flat fixture so far (the December 1^st night meeting at fellow Arena Racing Company venue Wolverhampton, eventually called off three races in before the risk of Polytrack-induced concussion became genuine), yet smaller than for every jumps fixture in the same period apart from a Kempton “jumpers’ bumper” afternoon and a Leicester card which few thought would beat a temporary cold snap.

1,100 isn’t actually a big total in the context of Hereford’s 2012 attendance figures for recorded-as-paying customers.  Seven of the eight meetings to survive the weather between April and November drew more, albeit none topped the total of 3,062 relieved of £14 or more at the turnstile for arguably the course’s final surviving cash cow fixture on a late June Sunday afternoon. 

Further delving into Hereford’s performance data reveals that October 21^st 2007 was the last time it attracted more than 4,000 combined paying public, Annual Members and complimentary badgeholders to a single meeting.  It’s also the only time the course has done that since 5,920 such punters attended the last-ever running of the much-missed Grand National Day fixture in 2005 (previous years had attracted 6,488, 5,898 and 3,249, in answer to the next question you were going to ask), the transfer of which to Chepstow - where using the same criteria attendances have never yet hit the 5,000 mark in seven years of trying - is frequently cited as the point where ARC's lack of confidence in Hereford switched from merely presumed to writ large.

Couched solely in terms of getting proverbial cheeks on plywood, however, Hereford is not by any means a uniquely poor performer for the ARC Group.  It may not even the worst.  Sedgefield has yet to attract more than 2,000 paying customers to a single meeting in 2012 and has not breached the 3,200 mark for any meeting other than that on Boxing Day since May 2005; Worcester likewise hasn’t pulled more than 3,400 for any fixture not on Derby Day since September 2006; and the May 2004 renewal of the United Hunts evening is the only Folkestone jumps fixture since 1994 to have enticed over 3,000 paying public, Members and badgeholders. 

Something’s keeping the likes of Worcester (the course that refuses to sink) and Sedgefield (surely as Teflon-coated as the town’s ubiquitous former MP, having shrugged off two mooted closure threats in the 1960s/1970s and the specific ire of an array of characters from Animal Aid to Clement Freud) out of the line of fire for at least the time being, one that neither Hereford nor Folkestone could avoid any longer. 

Yet at the same time the recurring mantra from ARC has been one of the now closed courses' financial non-viability; but in the case of Hereford in particular, how so?  It isn’t conspicuously cheap as Rules racecourses go, so it can’t be due to outdoing itself where accumulating gate money is concerned.  The course only has as many fences to maintain as Worcester (nine), two fewer than either Chepstow or Doncaster, and consists of a shorter circuit than all of these three, so the husbandry costs ought not be unusually high for an ARC jumps track. 

Race sponsorship revenue is unlikely to be at fault, either, given the sourcing of commercial companies, betting firms (also the suppliers of the media rights monies which continue to seep into the coffers) and families of the dearly departed who were collectively prepared to stump up for each and every one of the 107 contests to beat the elements and take place at Hereford in 2012 (at an average of 10.07 runners per race at the final declaration stage, incidentally).

So what does that leave – too few businesses availing themselves of the conference facilities trumpeted on the website but less so, if at all, on the signage outside the course?  Too little raised, perhaps, from food and drink takings on raceday without the assistance of the ghastly beer rucksacks (omnipresent at certain other ARC Group courses) to bolster turnover?

Maybe Greg Wood of the Guardian is nearest the truth in asserting that this week’s brace of fallen racecourses is less likely to be non-viable in the true sense of running at a loss, but rather has been simply ticking along at the sort of gently rising rate of profit which was all well and good in the recent past but – as the Reuben Brothers’ expectations of their portfolio’s revenue-generating potential heightens - all of a sudden isn’t.  Being a slow-burning, steady little earner no longer cuts the mustard.

One man who might conceivably have been pressed for answers on this matter on Sunday afternoon, and in general on his degree of complicity (real or imagined) in the decision to call time on Hereford and Folkestone, was ARC Group chairman Lord Michael Howard of Lympne, scoring points for audacity if nothing else in making an appearance.

A man, of course, quite prepared to fail to answer a direct question 14 times if once isn’t enough, Howard escaped any sort of impromptu Paxmanesque grilling this afternoon on Hereford or any other, non-racing matter.  What a shame: expanding on his £17,000 expenses claim for gardeners, or his assertion on Radio 4 in August that enforcing the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act hadn’t made him any less down wid da kidz, innit bruv, would have whiled away a few minutes before the selling hurdle just as nicely as racing talk.

Instead, the man with something of the night about him was on this day at least permitted to move among his pippurl – sorry, people, unchallenged, perhaps safe in the knowledge that the extra security drafted in to prevent last-day trophy-hunters making off with the winning post or other mementos could have stepped in at any point.

Am altogether less contentious presence trackside was racing historian Chris Pitt, whose otherwise absolutely peerless survey of the 20^th century’s defunct racecourses A Long Time Gone now predates the closure of four British and Irish Rules venues even in its updated 2006 incarnation (several chapters of which were supplied by Stewart Nash, chairman of the West Berkshire Racing Club and also present today).

Brought along especially for the occasion, Pitt produced an original copy of the racecard from the course’s “evening” meeting of May 1^st, 1975; a fixture which finished at 8pm, as may have been expected, but which started 1.30pm, as most certainly wouldn’t.  As much of a window on a time when the framing of races didn’t err towards an endless succession of Dirk Vennix-appeasing handicaps as anything else, no fewer than 12 of the (count them) 14 races were non-handicaps – seven 4yo 2m novice hurdles (two divisions split again several times over), one 3m hunter chase and four divisions of a 2m4f novice chase. 

Never mind the BHA’s recent engineering of novice chases to force bigger fields and greater participation – this card instantly recalled a time when the connections of 61 animals were still prepared to enter their horse in the same novice chase at scale without any coercion whatsoever. 

Pity that day’s duty commentator Graham Goode, required to call 219 horses without recourse to a monitor or – as is permitted nowadays when an overnight entry tops 125 runners – a second commentator to spread the burden.  Impeccably delivered as it was today, David Fitzgerald’s task from the commentary box wouldn’t have been half as exhausting.

No ARC jumps venue can, of course, welcome as many as 219 horses on any given day any more – limiting final declarations according to the number of racecourse stables on site guarantees that.  Potentially around 1,000 runners per season will take their chances in the fixtures moved from Hereford to other ARC courses from here on, however, placing an additional burden on surfaces in some instances arguably already pressed into action more often than they can necessarily withstand.

Herein lies one further madness of ARC’s decision.  In addition to producing a safe surface for some pre-existing non-Rules activities, such as Arabian Racing Organisation racedays (of which there were two in 2012), Hereford – perfectly honest racing surface, and all - is to be kept sufficiently well maintained in 2013 to be able to step into the breach as a locum National Hunt venue if meetings elsewhere within the Group are abandoned with enough notice. 

Yet during the same year, the drainage and irrigation issues at Uttoxeter which have already required a decade’s worth of spare time to work on (even The Fast Show's Ted and Ralph didn't need that long...) will almost certainly once again impinge upon racing at the Staffordshire track.  Those are issues which, whilst never prompting an abandonment, do require frequent recourse to dolling off of racing lines and omissions of jumps (steeplechase fences in particular).

In light of which, and with the strictures regarding the production of decent summer jumping ground already well understood at Hereford following several years of June and August fixtures, it seems like a tricked missed not to have moved all of Uttoxeter’s summer and autumn meetings 93 miles southwest just for one year – long enough, at last, to complete the necessary excavations once and for all, whilst simultaneously keeping Hereford’s name officially on the fixture list against a backdrop of ARC and the course’s aspiring future owners (two consortia in particular) continuing to talk turkey.

“We guarantee a day at the races with us will get your hearts pounding and leave you wanting to come back for more!”, the Come Racing page of the website additionally gushed, and at the time of writing this gushes still.  Granted a little more foresight, the opportunity to sate that desire back at Hereford next summer would have been very possible.  Barring unforeseen disasters elsewhere within the ARC Group, however, it must now be odds against.

POINT-TO-POINT 2012-2013: SEEKING DIVINE INTAVENTION AND TWO CONSTABLES

BLACK FOREST CLUB

Black Forest Lodge (RH 8F, 19J)

Sun, 2 Dec 2012 (Good to soft)

There were certainly still signs of what had gone before - a closure still in place on the road that circumnavigates the back of the nearby Powderham estate, for one.  All in all, however, the Black Forest Lodge of this week was a far drier proposition than that of just seven days ago, for all that this delayed start to the Devon & Cornwall Area season was played out in wet, gloomy conditions for the greater part.

Not that Black Forest Lodge had failed by much to beat the weather a week earlier, of course.  Only the overwhelming of a solitary drain on the final bend into the home turn stood between the course and its usual, programmed resumption of duties, and this area had dried out well enough in the meantime as to be indistinguishable going-wise from anywhere else on the circuit - no patchy, mixed ground here.

Gloom takes on all forms, though, and sadly on this occasion that wasn't limited to the  non-weather variety.  Word reached your writer during the course of the afternoon that both Stewart Pike (of Proud Sun and Sidbury Hill fame) and Ashley Farrant had quit the training ranks of Pointing close-season, and also that the Western Daily Press had brought its hitherto very satisfactory near-weekly coverage of the sport to an abrupt halt.  One has to hope the latter isn't symptomatic of a wider national trend, but as local press budgets for copy run ever shallower, the likelihood of other scenarios playing out elsewhere in Britain can't be ruled out.

On the face of it the gloom could have extended to the faces of the meeting executive.   Attendance of punters, usually pretty decent at this contest, was as depleted as may be expected for a rescheduled  fixture; whilst the initial entry of horses necessarily had to stand at its paltry 51 (comprising 50 individual horses), down almost 60% on the corresponding fixture's 128 entrants of a year earlier and too few for the usual proliferation of divisions of the five programmed races to arise.  

Those connections who had entered to race had every intention of racing, though, and a turnout of 40 runners on the day amounted to a hugely impressive runners-to-participation conversion rate of around 80%.  Few other meetings will achieve similar all season, and almost certainly no rescheduled ones.

RACE ONE: 2m4f 4-5yo OPEN MAIDEN

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The day's shortest race also proved to be that won mot emphatically, as THE WEALERDEALER put well behind him last season's mishaps - from falling and staying down for a while with a Trebudannon contest virtually won, to junking two other probable victories through errant late behaviour - with some ease.  Notably travelling best of anything when sent to within a length of the leader four out, it required no great effort from National Mens' Champion Will Biddick to get the Vinnine Roe gelding to the head of affairs with two to jump, and less till to keep him there.  

Some more evidence that Keith Cumings' charge is completely over his more wayward tendencies (in the hope that they were just a manifestation of immaturity) would be appreciated, especially having come under no sort of pressure whatsoever here.  If he is, he should have a fair bit to offer the game on this showing.

BALLYTHOMAS offered zero in one Irish Point and a Newton Abbot bumper previously, but ran well above market expectations here, for all that he'd just been headed by the better-travelling winner when crashing through two out.  Quite well put in his place ultimately, a bit more will be needed before he rates a winning proposition.

Longer term, VOLIO VINCENTE may actually prove to be one of the two most gifted runners in this line-up (along with the winner), but a number of stuttering leaps and a wider course taken than by most gave him scant opportunity to prove as much.  Already a 1l second over the full trip in Ireland, a return to 3m looks an urgent requirement, too.

This 29l fourth represents a personal best for PASTERNAK JACK in seven starts between the flags, but it's not the form of a winner in waiting.

DRIFTWOOD PRIDE, representing last season's winning connections, shaped with conspicuous promise in a Flete Park short Maiden last April, but this fading effort constituted something of a step backwards.  The only four-year-old in the line-up, it's to be hoped that this string-looking type is still on the weak side, rather than his absence since that debut perhaps telling a tale.  He's worth according the benefit of the doubt for the now.

BEINN AD TIGER, representing the Fred Hutsby yard which has enjoyed its share of early-season strikes at this corresponding fixture, finally secure the lead five out but turned to water immediately after being headed a fence later.  On the face of it this pulling up on racecourse debut leaves him with something to prove, though in mitigation maybe the cumulative effect of several sketchy early leaps simply caught up with him.

RACE TWO: BLACK FOREST CLUB NOVICE RIDERS

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A pretty well-run affair early on always looked in the offing despite the small field, with Oakfield Legend's intentions long since clear in chases and Points and Hazeldene's most common strategy under Rules persevered with on this debut between the flags.

It looked a good pace to decline, therefore, and first-time rider Charlie Hammon did just that aboard TIMESHIFT, remaining content to spot the leaders around 15l embarking on the final circuit but sent to within a couple of the pacesetters soon after the last of the uphill fences (five out).  It looked a case of "how far" once heading Oakfield Legend after three out, but Hammond wasn't needlessly aggressive in a winning cause and the eventual margin of three and a half lengths flatters the runner-up.

The Don Constable-owned eight-year-old is quite likely better than this grade but can put in some inexplicably poor performances inamongst his better efforts (as evidenced by a 2011-12 form return of P1P2P, the last pulling-up of which came in a match on his Open-class debut at Eyton-on-Severn), tempering confidence in this being the season in which he could finally run up a lasting sequence of wins.

One-time Grand Military Gold Cup hero OAKFIELD LEGEND can be softened up obligingly if taken on for the lead, though the fact that at least one of his Rules victories was gained despite the initial attentions of a fellow pace influence means things aren't entirely as simple as taking him on if there's another front-runner in opposition.  Either way, there wasn't too much about this effort to suggest his powers have especially dimmed close-season, and Conor Flint can have some fun with him mopping up more Novice Rider events nearer home when there's enough in his favour.

HAZELDENE hadn't been sent over this far since March 2008 in an extensive Rules career first for the Charltons (who bred him) and latterly Tim Vaughan.  Then, as now, his front-running tendencies were stuck with despite the trip, though the effects of the duel with Oakfield Legend do for the time being fudge the issue as to whether he can last 3m from the front end nowadays.  More evidence is needed, though on another matter his partner Charlie Deutsch does look fairly accomplished for his years (and proved as much again in landing a Folkestone amateur riders' hurdle two days after this).

Nick Lawton didn't stay on board CELEBRITY CALL very long when taking on Saint Romble in a match for their Members at Holnicote last May, and this time his luck finally ran out after a couple of earlier hairy moments four from home this time.

ALL THYNE GREATS' completion was at least an improvement on 2011-12's two efforts, but this wasn't the performance of a winner in waiting.

DOLLYDO, a 7l Ffos Las second to Rumbury Grey - though value for a wider margin defeat - when last seen in March, was already coming under a ride when falling with terminal consequences seven out.

 

RACE THREE: RESTRICTED

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This didn't look an especially deep race beforehand and winning rider Ian Chanin had expected as much, and his reasoning that the taking of entries for two Restricteds on the same day would lead to small take-ups in that grade of race at both Cottenham and here proved well-founded.  "You don't pass up on a six-runner Restricted", he explained afterwards.

That logic still had to be backed up by a win for his father Robert's MOLLAND GAYLE to be worth anything to him, however, and winning had been a habit the mare had found elusive until her thirteenth Pointing start right at the end of last season.  A follow-up to that Bratton Down score was gained here, though, and possibly with a degree more in hand than the final margin implies given a few errors on the way round had to be shrugged off.

Neither the course orientation nor the ground was thought to suit her either, suggesting a little more could yet be eked out of her going back anticlockwise; though this less-favoured right-hand track may have to be put up with again first of all, given a tilt at her Members race at the Silverton fixture back here next month is under consideration.

SANTIAGO SUN hadn't proven entirely fluent in breaking his Maiden in Irish Point at the fifth attempt last February, and on this first run since then the errors just started to creep in again when they were least required.  Both fences 10 and 11 got in his way somewhat, and when the latter - as two out - did so again a circuit later his task became insuperable.  More will be needed in any halfway decent Devon & Cornwall Area Restricted in the immediate term for him to open his account in this country.

BIG TIME BEN, a season's first ride for Gina Andrews despite the action close to home a week earlier, improved a touch on his 26l defeat in this race last year, but his efforts late in a race aren't always the strongest and he again rather faded from the picture from two out here.

TACHBURY is another for whom an escape from Restricted class couldn't be successfully fashioned last term, and this fourth place finish offered little immediate hope of better.

OUR JOE and BURIED GOLD were given ample chance to participate in the race, but each proved less inclined to consider it with each successive attempt at forming a line.  The latter, punted in to 3/1 from a widely available 8/1, had previous in mucking about at the start from last term; whilst the former, a profiteer from others' late mishaps when landing a Irish Maiden, got himself terribly worked up beforehand.

RACE FOUR: MIXED OPEN

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A race which has provided the winner of one of that season's four "Classic" races in 2010-11 and 2011-12, this year's renewal was denuded somewhat by the absence of likely major players Picaroon and Checkerboard.

That simplified the task which lay before DIVINE INTAVENTION in his bid to win the race for a second straight year, but it didn't render it a complete formality, especially with the ground straying further from his optimum with every drop of rain which fell.  Nevertheless, the lead had been secured with just under a circuit to go, and apart from getting a touch tight into seven out the jumping was crisp and accurate (doubtless a relief for all parties, given he fell twice, including once when loose, in the Stratford Foxhunters when last seen).

A winner on his seasonal reappearance three seasons running now, but never before a Pointing winner on good to soft, Fran Moller and Hugh and Guy Wilson's stable star has no grand plans laid out for him, though a defence of his Coronation Cup at Larkhill this midwinter would seem as viable a target as any.

PRINCEFUL's best form during a fitful career for first Venetian and then Evan Williams had latterly been recorded in 2m3f-2m5f chases on ground as easy as today's or preferably worse.  Stamina had to be proven stepped up to 3m for the first time and he looked like he passed that particular test, given his still gaining on the winner up the run-in.  He can be approached with a little more confidence in this sphere now.

One-time Grade 1 juvenile hurdle winner FAASEL has forgotten more than the rest of us will ever know in the seven and a half years since that victory at the highest level, and his fortunes are invariably dependent nowadays on whether he decides to put it all in.  For the time being at least, Pointing appears to amuse enough for him to put in a shift of work, and it was the sharpness of today's test that prevented a closer finish - hardly surprising for a horse who was a close second over the near-3m6f of the bet365 Gold Cup 19 months ago and needed Doncaster's similarly galloping line to record a 3m victory off 137 only this year.  

On loan to Ken, John and Michael Heard for a season from David Pipe, the logical Pointing target for him this term is the Eggsford four-miler, held at the Heards' own venue of Upcott Cross every spring.

PADDY THE OSCAR's last Pointing outing in December 2010 saw him take an Irish geldings' Maiden for seven-year-olds, and this stiffer company did look a little taxing for him, notwithstanding a win in a Thurles beginners' chase in the interim.  Deeper ground may help level the playing field at bit for him, though, having done so in Ireland.

BALLABROOK wouldn't be the classiest ex-Donald McCain charge in circulation right now, and an initial foray into hunter chasing last April was hardly an unqualified success.  It's a shame his race here ended three out, though, as the jumping had otherwise held together much better than is often the case up to that point.  There's hope yet.

FINDLAY'S FIND was another who jumped better all in all than can sometimes be the case, with a blunder just before halfway the only noticeable mistake.  Travelling-wise, however, the distress signals were out some way from home on the second favourite, and Nick Williams wisely gave up the unequal struggle with three to take.  On the face of it this was a disappointing performance from the 2010-11 Leading Horse, but it must be remembered that this was an uncharacteristically early start to the season for him having never been seen out before February in any of his previous Pointing campaigns.  Subsequent outings ought to confirm whether this run was in actual fact needed.

RACE FIVE: 3m OPEN MAIDEN

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A good day for owner Don Constable and trainer Zoe Hammond became a great one as their British debutant JOE THE TRUCKER, an ex-Irish half-brother to Yorkshire Pointing stalwart Optimistic Harry, ran out victor in the finale despite little about this assignment appearing to suit.

A winning time 18 seconds slower than any other event over the full trip told no lie about the slovenly early fractions, and the winner's getting in too tight to the final fence was surely the result of having to attempt something of a sprint finish from two out - absolutely not by design.  It's true to say that superior cornering at the final bend under Tom David aided his cause, but at the same time the best horse win and justice prevailed.  In common with many Constable-owned first-time winners, Joe The Trucker is now up for sale.

BILLY CONGO, not unbacked beforehand, enjoyed spinning off the bends (including in the lead from halfway) for most of the race, but his was a notably wide course round the turn between four and three out and even more markedly so on the final turn for home.  Those aberrations, allied to a pitch left and mistake two out, suggests it was a lack of a cool head late on and/or under pressure which did for the gelding, rather than any shortcoming of his rider; and in fairness to the five-year-old this would have been the first time in 14 Rules and Point races (all previously in Ireland) that he would still have been this meaningfully involved late on in a race.  Assuming he learns something from it, a small Maiden may yet be within his compass.

QUOTATION MARK fared best of those waited with in a race to which that strategy proved not to be that well suited.  More prominent tactics than this have regularly fallen short previously, though, and no matter what is tried this Posidonas gelding continues to prove incredibly hard to win with (0-22 all told, including 0-16 in British Points).

DEGENERATE was asked to set just a plodding early pace by Josh Guerriero, the rider perhaps mindful of a stamina profile which had enabled his partner to run second in a Newton Abbot bumper previously but failed to get him home over even just 2m4f at Great Trethew on his final 2011-12 start.  In the event horse and rider were hoisted by their own petards, finding others better able to cope with the sprint for home.  Representing Sharon Westwood here, maybe a move to daughter Jess's now Rules-licensed operation to contest 2m hurdles would make more sense.

OLD SHYAN, 10l second in a Stratford handicap chase off 82 when last seen in July (2m4f, good), had forged a regressive profile in a brief Irish Pointing campaign this time last year with 3m seemingly proving increasingly beyond him.  This sharply fading effort didn't offer sufficient immediate hope of better returned to this discipline.

An unseat from GLEANN RI three out, albeit one heavily influenced by the fall of SALUT L'AS, took Joe Ponting's record for the day to an unenviable UFU from three rides.

I AIN'T GOT NOTHIN' BUT LINGFIELD, EIGHT DAYS A WEEK

The loss of any fixtures scheduled to take place on the sainted sands of Kempton, Lingfield, Southwell or Wolverhampton usually elicits one of two responses from those less kindly disposed towards this particular mode of racing, and each of those responses is about as regrettable as the other.

“It’s supposed to be all-weather racing!  Racing for all weathers! It’s failed!”, goes one. It hasn’t failed, of course: as time has worn on, the realisation that even a carefully tended Polytrack or Fibresand surface cannot successfully resist certain sets of circumstances has led to the monikers “artificial surface racing” and “synthetics racing” rightfully creeping into the lexicon of the broader racing media with just a little more regularity.

Time was that Lingfield didn’t even refer to its fare at this time of year in its publicity material as “all-weather”, but rather as the yet less misleading “Winter Flat”. It may still.

A Southwell course inundated by flood water, as it was back in summer 2007 and is again to the tune of nine inches at the time of writing this, palpably isn’t an “all-weather” track. It’s fatuous of the venue’s detractors to call it such, and then gloat when the Fibresand racing line there inevitably fails to reveal hitherto unrealised King Canute qualities.**

[** A history buff interjects - Southwell did reveal hitherto unrealised King Canute qualities, didn't it, if the King's intention was to prove the limitations of kingship by failing to stave off the incoming tide?  Tut tut...]

“Who cares, it’s a meeting nobody wants and a type of racing nobody wants”, goes the other triumphalist line. That’s an opinion which carries especially little water so soon after two consecutive years in which cold snaps ran amok with turf fixtures for far more than the odd occasional day, and in which the synthetics fixture programme did virtually survive intact to ensure the racing show stayed on the road in some capacity during the worst wintery excesses of both of those years.

More recently still, artificial surface racing has demonstrably been what appreciable numbers of Flat connections have wanted, despite the core period of the National Hunt equivalent being in full cry simultaneously. Only last Wednesday (November 28th), all three Polytrack venues were able to host eight-race cards on the same day, amassing 239 runners between them at an average of a microdot less than 10 per race.

Those returns hardly suggest a mode of racing heading towards a major winter decline participation-wise. Indeed, one has to go back as far as Wolverhampton on Tuesday, October 9th for the last meeting on Polytrack or Fibresand which wasn’t extended, through divisions at the 48-hour stage, to a maximum of eight races.

Winter Flat horses there are still many of, then, but the events of the past fortnight or so have contrived to halve the number of courses at which they can ply their trade.

Southwell's location on a flood plain of the River Trent proved its downfall for the second time in five and a half calendar years when receiving a drenching over the weekend of November 24th-25th, and the projected date for the resumption of action there has already inched into February. If horses can seethe, then La Estrella, setter of a new British record for the longest unbeaten run at any one track when obliging for the thirteenth time at the Nottinghamshire venue barely three weeks earlier, is almost certainly seething right now.

At least the clamours of 2007 to use the flood damage as reason enough to jettison Fibresand and convert Southwell to yet another Polytrack venue don't seem to be quite as prevalent this time round.  For many reasons, from betting angles for ardent Southwell form students to upholding the variety of British Horse Racing the product, good thing too.

Southwell couldn’t do much about the floods, and contrary to belief, Wolverhampton probably didn't have as much scope to address its own current problem as might be imagined. The low temperature-induced balling of the Polytrack at Dunstall Park, which by turns was accumulating around horses' hooves in a dangerous manner and also giving rise to some truly diabolical kickback during Friday evening's (eventually completed) fixture, was all the more evident on the following night, to the extent that neither man nor beast could stand it any longer and an abandonment was effected three races in.

The projected resumption of racing at Wolverhampton is December 14th. That's 13 days on from the abandonment, of which at least seven will have been required to apply the binder coating to the Polytrack which will weatherproof it adequately, and several more to relay the course as necessary. That's time which Britain's busiest racecourse doesn't ordinarily have at this time of year - its sole gaps in the entire 2012 calendar of 13 days or more ran from May 21st to June 7th, and from July 16th to 30th.  Needless to say, any effect of cold weather on the surface was hardly likely to come to the fore around those times of year.

Arena’s options for reallocating those lost fixtures won't have been particularly plentiful, assuming offering them for sale to Jockey Club Racecourses and Kempton Park was never under consideration. Transferal to a turf Flat venue is of course a non-starter at this time of year, and conversion of the given fixtures to National Hunt a denial of opportunities to the still-sizeable pool of winter Flat horses currently in active service. Besides which, Arena would surely recognise the mixed signals (verging on bitter irony) of converting a Flat fixture to jumps and then awarding it to Folkestone as an extra fixture mere weeks before calling time on the Kent venue, i.e. is this a course they would like to keep on, or not?

Reactivating Great Leighs was another suggested solution which has gained traction in some areas of cyberspace, and the fondness in those and other quarters for this long-mothballed track is not to be scoffed at out of hand. Always the fairest, least sharp of the five synthetics venues (would one go as far as to suggest galloping in nature? Certainly comparatively so...), the honesty of the Polytrack surface there rarely, if ever, was a matter of any doubt; and the fact it has been used on and off for schooling by Newmarket trainers since losing its racing license suggests that what degradation may have occurred to it in the last four years or thereabouts has not been significant enough to render it even remotely dangerous.

The fixtures and fittings, virtually untouched by paying customer since January 2009 and sure to have deteriorated to some extent (however limited) in the interim, may be a different matter, but a workaround to that would have been to run replacement meetings at Great Leighs without any paying customers - just races put on for the benefit of the horses, their connections, and the off-course punting populace at large.  There's almost an argument to suggest that this is what they already were - it is not as if the fixtures would all have attracted high-thousand attendances in their original incarnation.

That's all as maybe, however. The solution to a tricky and unanticipated problem has been to commit Lingfield to eight consecutive days of Polytrack racing, from today (December 5th) through to the 12th. Unsurprisingly, a run of this many consecutive days’ racing at one British venue is without precedent in any of the 20 years since the advent of Sunday racing has made made such a succession feasible.

That the same racing line will have to be used over and over again during those eight days is nothing that would be countenanced on a turf course out of simple fears over the deterioration over time of the racing surface. Even the nearest natural-surface equivalents to Lingfield’s imminent marathon, the week-long Galway and Listowel Festivals, share the burden between the Flat and jumps courses for their respective durations, and have the scope to move to fresh ground as necessary.

Other than maybe an adjustment of the inside rail, Lingfield’s Polytrack circuit offers no such versatility. In any event, it’s hard to see a reduction of the safety limit per race to, say, 10 runners to facilitate even a temporary or phased cordoning off of the inner line sitting all that well with a trainer populace still eager to find opportunities for its winter Flat charges, or with a bookmaking fraternity keen to see the course’s usual maximum field size of 12 or 14 (depending on the distance) hit as often as possible.

The hope, then, simply has to be that through whatever raking, harrowing or other remedial work takes place in between fixtures, the Polytrack proves durable enough to withstand a sustained onslaught of hooves the likes of which it has never yet experienced.

In Lingfield’s favour at least is that the current surface is anything other than a tired one. Relaid during a two-month period of inactivity, Polytrack racing only resumed at the Surrey venue as recently as Wednesday, October 17th, and in total has taken place there on only 10 occasions between then and the start of this eight-day event.

Simply put, if the surface is ever going to be able to withstand this sort of workload, it is now.