Fergal O’Brien’s Twitter feed – @OBMRacing – reliably finds a lighter side amid the gloom and it was fast away from the traps again on Saturday afternoon, as racing Twitter reacted to the news that Constitution Hill had been scratched from his comeback race at Ascot. “Is Constitution Hill going to break Twitter,” it asked, “before Elon does?”
Nicky Henderson’s decision to scratch last season’s brilliant Supreme Novice Hurdle winner a couple of hours before the Coral Hurdle provoked a predictably sour reception from many fans on social media. Accusations of undue caution, an obsession with the Festival in March above all else and more general claims that “the game has gone” were flying around like leaves on a stiff autumn breeze.
Nor was it just the armchair fans and racegoers who felt a need to vent.
“It’s frustrating for all the racing fans who obviously enjoy watching those good horses running,” Paul Nicholls, the champion trainer, told ITV Racing. “People can make their own minds up whether they run or not and some people don’t like running.
“I get it 100% and it frustrates me just watching the declarations and entries with so few runners. Sometimes you have to take the wraps off these horses otherwise they’ll end up in stables and you don’t win races in the stables. Everyone is different, and everyone is entitled to their own opinions.”
Constitution Hill was just one among more than a dozen non-runners at Ascot on Saturday, when the going was officially good, good-to-soft in places, which reduced a seven-race card to six and a walkover, with fields of three, five, two, four and seven runners in the five events over obstacles.
Edwardstone, last year’s Arkle Trophy winner, and L’Homme Presse, also a Grade One novice chase winner at the Festival, were also scratched from intended comebacks by their respective trainers, Alan King and Venetia Williams. Edwardstone was taken out for the second week running due to unsuitably fast ground, so it was a little unfair on Henderson that he should find himself in the eye of the storm.
Henderson himself, meanwhile, was in no doubt on Sunday that he had made the right call on Constitution Hill. “It was good-to-firm, it’s as simple as that,” he told the Racing Post. “Lots of people walked the course, lots of trainers and jockeys, and they came to the same decision. Then there were others, sat at home or miles away, saying how the ground was perfect and that we should be running. How would they know?”
Previous “will-he-won’t-he” sagas involving such Henderson-trained stars as Altior and Shishkin may have coloured some opinions, but it does still seem a little far-fetched to suggest that he was actively looking for reasons to scratch Constitution Hill. His first responsibility – and racing’s too, for that matter – is to the horses, and there were plenty of trainers who were not prepared to run on Ascot’s ground on Saturday.
As a whole, the card was an embarrassment, but the principal blame lies with a very dry summer, which has left many jumps tracks – including Newbury, which stages the Coral Gold Cup meeting this weekend – racing on good ground.
The major concern for racing is not whether trainers are saving their horses for the Festival, but the extent to which the current, apparently unseasonal, conditions are no longer unseasonal at all. Or, to put it another way, the extent to which the old assurance that you would always find soft ground somewhere in the winter months is becoming a thing of the past.
Hereford 12.50 Caldwell Diamond 1.20 Cornicello 1.50 Eros 2.20 Beau Balko 2.50 Pass Me By (nb) 3.20 Bonnie Bresil (nap) 3.50 Classic King
Wetherby 1.05 Parliament Hill 1.35 Spartan Army 2.10 Tango Boy 2.40 Magic Wave 3.10 Knickerbockerglory 3.40 Our Laura B
Climate science does not predict increasingly dry or warm weather for the decades ahead. It predicts more extreme weather, which implies in turn that jumping ground in November could be generally good one year and heavy – or unraceable – the next.
When set against the devastating global consequences of a failure to deal with climate change, a few more walkovers or abandonments at Ascot or Newbury are a triviality.
Lingfield 12.25 Big Picture 12.55 Coolvalla 1.30 Guguss Collonges 2.05 Hot Rod Lincoln 2.35 Sheldon 3.05 Mistral Lady 3.35 Walk In The Wilde
Taunton 12.40 Timeforatune 1.10 Can You Call 1.45 Jet Of Magic 2.20 Investment Manager (nap) 2.50 Irish Hill (nb) 3.20 Lazy Sunday 3.50 Cobbs Corner
Kelso 12.48 Chapel Green 1.20 Bestiarius 1.55 Hoganville 2.28 Without Conviction 2.58 Destiny Is All 3.28 Gipsy Lee Rose
But of all our major sports, racing – and arguably jumping in particular - is particularly exposed to the effects of climate change, because the quality of the racing surface is intrinsically linked to both horse welfare and competitiveness. And to some degree at least, it is something that the sport as a whole will need to accept and work around where possible, while we all do what we can in the wider struggle too.
