SWAP YOU SUN, SEA AND SAND FOR STRATFORD

“We’re all going on a summer holiday”… except we no longer are, if the “we” in question happen to be some of the country’s leading National Hunt riders.

With the programming of six new Tuesday twilight fixtures by the British Horseracing Authority from September 3^rd onwards came successful bids from six tracks, and in the case of Stratford an additional fixture (the richest of the sextet, with a £39,000 prize fund) which plugs a seven-week gap between its core summer season and pair of late-October events.

That such a gap exists at all “makes no sense whatsoever for a summer jumping course”, according to managing director Stephen Lambert, up until now unable to secure a replacement for the BHA leasehold meeting Stratford held on the third Tuesday of September from 2008 to 2010, but not since, following that fixture’s discontinuation.

Lambert will therefore doubtlessly be delighted that, by whichever route, this corresponding raceday is back on the Stratford portfolio.  As well he may be.  The racecourse's executive is well within its right to secure an extra meeting for its venue – one of the six original members of the summer jumping programme founded in 1995 – in what is still the summer season, if the branding of the "Prelude" day at Market Rasen two weeks later as summer jumping’s denouement is held as gospel.

So wherein lies the rub, especially given September’s longstanding and disproportionate paucity of meetings compared to every single other month in the National Hunt calendar? 

Well, it turns out that the only “rub” many riders had planned for that week was of Factor 30 lotion into torsos in rather warmer climes than Luddington Road, CV37 9SE.

Brickbats, then, in the direction of the BHA for permitting a small jumps track in the Midlands to provoke the cancellation of many escapes to the sun, or the packing of buckets and spades back in the garden shed?  Not at all - it’s probably got very little to reproach itself over on this occasion.  The actual BHA-designated holiday-time for our riders - short enough or too short as it may be - is taking place right now, as this very article is written.

First, some background context.  Half-remembered complaints from some of the saddle’s leading practitioners over the September break lead your writer to a search back through Racing Post articles of yesteryear, and sure enough, a piece from September 9^th 2010 unearthed some of them in full.

Leading the argument for a dedicated break in the jumps programme back then, Richard Johnson insisted that, “it should be at a time which suits everyone; lads with children would like it when the kids are on holiday in August, not when they are back in school”.

Back then such break as existed wasn't programmed at a time which suits everyone, but now it is.  In defending Stratford’s application, BHA media manager Robin Mounsey inferred that the continued break in September still exists only by dint of no other jumps courses having encroached upon it by now.  More tellingly still, though, Mounsey reminded us all that the actual designated summer break for National Hunt riders in 2013 runs in August, as indeed it had also done in 2012.  For this season, that means from the 5^th to the 12^th inclusive.

And that August hiatus, lest it be forgotten, was contrived entirely with riders in mind.  Riders such as Graham Lee, still a jumps man at the time of the Post article cited above, and hence also at the time of his assertion that, “It is no use at all to me having a break in September when the children are back at school”.

Whether a week is long enough is a moot point; Johnson had suggested back in 2010 that two to three weeks would be appreciated, and Lee himself six (a period he'd surely now be less likely to secure at this time of year given his current duties as a Flat rider?).  Regardless, the August break is there to be used by riders; it was framed especially for them to do so; and to bemoan the (sanctioned) filling in of the previous break that it was intended to replace does smack a little of gainsaying the BHA's best intentions.

Aidan Coleman was certainly one rider planning to use the time off away from the racetrack, according to the Post of Wednesday of this week, but insisted to the paper that now he cannot. 

“Cannot” – now that’s a strong word in this context.  Does that hint that the relationship between so many jumps riders and their principle employers is so delicate as to be placed in jeopardy by the rider missing one hastily arranged fixture to go on holiday – a holiday that would likely refresh and recharge the rider concerned and help them better serve their patrons upon their return? 

That’s a genuine question in search of a genuine answer, as your writer doesn't know; though on the face of it the likelihood that Coleman’s major provider of rides, Venetia Williams, would ask her stable jockey and star asset to seek alternative employment elsewhere on the back of his forgoing just one afternoon’s work at Stratford in a habitually quiet month of the year for her (just 17 runners have been sent out by the Kings Caple handler across the last four Septembers since 2009) doesn’t seem all that strong.

It’s a question which can remain unanswered if one workaround is implemented.  If the pro riders still want this September break in addition to the August one, but don’t want to miss races in which they’re eligible to ride, then plenty points towards Stratford framing the twilight card as one of races open to amateur and conditional riders only.

It’s hardly as if Stratford is averse to loading a fixture with events for the sport’s emerging or unpaid pilots, as those present on Stratford Foxhunter evening (with its four hunter chases) will attest to.  A reintroduction of the heat of the Fegentri gentleman amateur riders world series which it used to stage at a July fixture (in the guise of a 2m handicap hurdle) could tie down a further slot on the card; ditto the addition of a second conditionals and amateurs bumper to complement that which is already run at the height of summer.

A final thought, and one touched on in passing by Professional Jockeys Association chief executive Paul Struthers in the same Post piece this week: it wouldn’t surprise if all this talk of factoring in “holidays” for jumps jockeys has rather bemused those based steadfastly in the north of England and in Scotland, many of whom would love a summer fixture list possessed of such congestion in the first place. 

From the start of July until the final Tuesday of August, Cartmel and Perth alone offer riders opportunities over the sticks north of the M62; and whilst the quantity of meetings at both has risen slightly in recent years, those still cannot prevent blank periods for National Hunt in “The North” from June 24^th to July 2^nd, July 5^th to 13^th, and August 1^st to 16^th. 

All periods of time, you’ll note, at least the equal and in one case twice the length of the official break for jumps riders.