Tag: National Hunt racing

Dominance is What Elite Sport is All About

The growing supremacy of the Willie Mullins stable in National Hunt racing begs the question: is it damaging anybody or anything?

Dominance is the raison d'etre of elite sport. When Rafa Nadal was winning 14 French Open tennis titles it never entered his head that what he was doing might be harmful to the game. Manchester City won't be thinking that five Premier League title wins in six seasons is quite enough, thank you very much, and that to make it six in seven would be detrimental. If you're preaching against reigns and dynasties, you might as well chastise the tide for going in and out.

But the issue raised by the Mullins operation's brilliant scouting and training of jump racers isn't about his right to annex the sport. The small flares of disquiet relate more to the effect it might have on public enjoyment, other trainers and owners, betting turnover and the sport's profile at a time when National Hunt racing is bedevilled by small fields and worrying economic indicators.

Let's lay out the stats.

  • Mullins is even money to train more winners at this year's Cheltenham Festival than Great Britain (one trainer versus a whole country)
  • He has 14 ante-post favourites for the 28 races at next month's meeting.
  • At the recent Dublin Racing Festival he won all eight Grade 1 races and saddled 29 of the 48 Grade 1 runners
  • Ten of the last 13 Cheltenham Festival leading trainer's titles have made their way back to his base in County Carlow
  • Entries for this year's Supreme, Ballymore, Albert Bartlett and Triumph revealed a total of 80 names from the Mullins yard

Nobody disputes the skill (and wealth) required to spot, buy, train and deliver horses capable of overwhelming Henry de Bromhead, Nicky Henderson, Paul Nicholls and Gordon Elliott. Henderson, it should be said, has the best horse in National Hunt training – Constitution Hill. The Mullins numbers are powerless to negate that reality. The hard part is knowing when success becomes weaponised – and starts to do harm.

Dissenting voices are few. Richard Johnson, the former champion jockey, is an admirer of Mullins, but sounded an ominous note in a recent discussion with BoyleSports bookmakers. Johnson said: “It definitely is not good for racing. It is not good for competitive sport. When you are looking at the racing at Dublin last weekend people were saying Irish racing is so strong. It's not Irish racing. It's Willie Mullins who is so strong.”

Johnson's belief that Mullins is distorting the Anglo-Irish balance of power is contradicted by this year's Grand National entries. Astonishingly: 61 of the 94 are trained in Ireland (54 was the previous high).

Another part of Johnson's lament is the repetitive nature of the storyline, which you could also sometimes diagnose in Flat racing, with Aidan O'Brien and Coolmore. “Looking at more of the same isn't great and doesn't encourage new people into our sport,” Johnson said.

Is this true? Plenty on the other side point to Tiger Woods and Usain Bolt and ask whether interest dipped when golf and Olympics sprinting felt like pageants.

In his Daily Mail column at the weekend, ITV Racing's Ed Chamberlin wrote: “Of course, true sport relies on competition but does the might of Mullins threaten to ruin Cheltenham? Not for one second. The archetypal racegoer to Cheltenham, or ITV viewer, simply wants a good time and a bet, especially an each-way one.”

Evidence to prove an exodus by punters put-off by odds-on favourites constantly 'going in' for Mullins would be hard to find, given the other possible socio-economic explanations for betting turnover fluctuations. And so far rival trainers are understandably wary of graffitiing the Mullins legend with accusations of unfairness.

Mullins is only six short of a century of Cheltenham Festival winners and we can expect the 100 to be reached next month at a course where, in 2022, he won a record 10 of the 28 races. Having 29 of the 86 entries for the Baring Bingham Novices' Hurdle is only one illustration of his power to swarm the biggest targets.

In football and other team sports, when a trophy is being raised and the tickertape is falling, a journalistic reflex prompts us to ask: is this the start of a dynasty, should everyone else panic, is a new age of dominance upon us? With Liverpool in the 1970s and 80s – yes. With Manchester United subsequently – yes. With Manchester City now – yes.

Often dominance entrances us. Sometimes it suggests imbalance, repetition, staleness, even injustice, if money is the real dominating force. The shadow debate in jump racing around the Mullins numbers hasn't shed much light on the effect on other good yards of owners taking the easy option of sending horses to Closutton, or on the polarisation of wealth in National Hunt racing, or whether racegoers and punters care who saddled the winner.

One thing, we know: being too polite to even discuss those aspects is a quiet form of harm.

 

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National Hunt Racing To Return To Windsor Racecourse

National Hunt racing is to return to Windsor, the venue's owner Arena Racing Company announced on Monday. The track staged jump racing until 1998 but also stepped in to host a number of fixtures when Ascot was being redeveloped in 2005 and 2006.

It is hoped the first meetings will take place during the 2024-25 season with December 15, 2024 earmarked for the first action.

“We have long held a desire to bring jump racing back to Royal Windsor racecourse, and we are really pleased to confirm this plan well ahead of the planned first fixture in December 2024,” said Mark Spincer, managing director of ARC's racing division.

“Whilst the racecourse hasn't hosted regularly scheduled jumps fixtures since 1998, we believe that the plans that we have put together with the British Horseracing Authority will mean that the small number of fixtures that we would like to host will sit well alongside the long established, popular summer Flat programme.

“A significant amount of work has gone into considering the optimal layout for jump racing at Royal Windsor, which will see the course configured differently to how it was previously, but we believe that it is an excellent proposal to offer jump racing fans the chance to come back to Royal Windsor, whilst not impacting on the Flat programme, which is an important consideration.

“The proximity to the River Thames gives the track excellent drainage, and our records show that the racecourse very rarely ran jumps fixtures on heavy ground, with the majority of abandonments coming due to frost.

“Happily, turf management techniques have developed significantly since that time, so we are confident of providing excellent jumping ground for the fixtures that we would like to host in 2024 and 2025 and beyond.”

Windsor will not see an increase in its number of net fixtures, however, with the new jump cards switched from traditional Flat meetings in April and October.

To facilitate the return of National Hunt racing, the track will be reconfigured to utilise previous dormant areas of the site, with the jumps course a continuous left-handed circuit rather than the current figure of eight.

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The Doctor Will Amuse You Now

Happy Blue Monday, if that's not a contradiction in terms. Some of us may feel that the whole of January is utterly foul, but someone, somewhere, once decided that the third Monday of this month was the most depressing day of the year, so here we are.

Fear not, however, because if you need a little pick-me-up on this dark day then you could do worse than follow the Twitter account of trainer Fergal O'Brien (@OBMRacing), head of the most upwardly mobile National Hunt stable in Britain, which is guaranteed to deliver daily something between a belly laugh and a small chortle, and often both. Considering the high frequency of winners emanating from O'Brien's stable (he is currently ahead of the multiple champion Paul Nicholls in this regard and was the first of his colleagues to breach the 100-winner mark this season), one might very well wonder how the trainer finds so much time to tweet. The answer is that he doesn't.

Like a number of trainers, O'Brien outsources his social media, and those familiar with the account may assume that he employs a full-time comedian to manage his online presence, but in fact he doesn't employ anyone. The man behind the account is Dr Simon Gillson (@DrSimonCMP), who co-founded the private general practice company Concierge Medical in 2013 and tweets for fun, which has in turn brought plenty of fun to others. That he is based close to Cleeve Hill allows 'Dr Simon', as he's known in racing circles, to indulge his passion for the jumps at Cheltenham, his local racecourse, and at O'Brien's nearby yard of Ravenswell.

“We have a private medical practice in the Cotswolds, an old-fashioned family doctor home-visiting service, and the first person that ever signed up to that back in late 2013 was one of Ferg's owners,” Gillson explains. “I didn't know him at the time but towards the end of 2014, I went to the owners' and trainers' bar with him in Cheltenham. That's when I met Ferg and, like any good trainer, within four weeks of that he had encouraged me to buy a share in a racehorse.”

He continues, “Both my grandads liked to bet, and then one of them particularly used to go racing, so when I was growing up in Yorkshire, you could get to about nine or 10 courses within an hour and a half. During summer holidays we spent a lot of time Flat racing, which at the time was great, but then that morphed into me being more of a National Hunt fan.”

'Racing Twitter' really took off about a decade ago and during that time there have been some good, bad and downright ugly exchanges on the social networking site.

Jockeys, especially, and some trainers come in for plenty of stick, which can often be deeply unpleasant, but Twitter has also become a vital news and promotional source for the industry, as well as a huge amount of amusement.

Those trainers and jockeys who have stuck with the platform can use it to their advantage while giving racing fans some great behind-the-scenes insight, though there has been a trend for 'managed' social media accounts, which lose something in their inauthenticity. That is certainly not the case for O'Brien, thanks to the wacky humour of Gillson, whose wry daily observations on all manner of subjects from the sporting to baking to the political are a breath of fresh air. He also doesn't neglect his real-life position (IRL, as the kids like to say) as a doctor to put across the more serious message of mental health issues while avoiding the soppy memes that pop up around this important subject.

“I think, with my doctor head on, we have a platform now which has helped people,” he says. “Combine that with the horses, and we're able to help people. Even if that's just a few that come to the yard and feel so much better about it, then that's obviously no skin off our noses at all. And the thought that we've made someone's day a bit better is brilliant. And if they want to come back then that's fine as well, because there is clearly a therapeutic effect to horses for some people and we're very happy to share that with anybody.

“I was doing the social media for my medical practice, and it's a very different environment doing medical-related tweets. It's not exactly a jokey thing. And then I realised that nobody was really doing any social media for the yard, which seemed such a shame for someone with Ferg's size of personality not to be getting some of that out across into social media. So that's where it started.”

Gillson continues, “The whole point to it really was that I felt quite lucky when I took that share [in a horse] and then got up to the yard to see things that I'd never seen as a racegoer. It opened my eyes to how much goes on behind the scenes. There are so many people involved. It's funny, it's hard work, it's heartbreaking at times. And actually I felt that that's the sort of stuff that people should be seeing. And yeah, I think my original thought process was that I'd like to be able to tweet what I'd like to see as a race fan. And that's where we were aiming from. I think some of the jokes and things came in later.

“There were a lot were lot of accounts run by trainers or people within the stable, which obviously knew a huge amount of stuff about the horses and racing but weren't conveying it that brilliantly. Or there were some obviously PR-led ones which were beautiful but didn't give you a huge amount of insight into what was actually going on. And the aim was to try and get somewhere in between the two. I did wonder early on in this whether people would get fed up.”

In fact, the opposite has happened, and in the seven years that Gillson has been tweeting for O'Brien, the stable's account has accrued 55,500 followers, and counting. On occasion, followers will suggest to the trainer that the unofficial social media manager needs a pay rise.

“He'll say 'you can have a hundred per cent raise', because he's paying me nothing,” says the doctor with a laugh.

With some of his tweets, his wry humour has sailed a bit close to the wind and the Twitter overlords have suspended the account on occasion.

He adds, “The most embarrassing one I got banned for was Covid misinformation because I made what was very obviously a joke based on a professor who was on TV a lot at the start of the pandemic who kept saying that everything will be all right.”

As we all know, not everything is all right all of the time. We all need a break from the norm sometimes, and for people who love racing but do not have the level of access of the sport's daily practitioners, social media has been invaluable in transporting people virtually, or sometimes in the case of O'Brien's open-door policy, actually to the heart of the action. Gillson is not immune to its benefits either.

“I enjoy doing it and it's a welcome release from my day job,” he says. “Don't get me wrong, I have worked in much more stressful environments, but still it's nice to have something which is completely different.”

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Affinisea Gelding Leads May Store Sale

Lot 179, a gelded 3-year-old son of Affinisea (Ire) topped the Tattersalls Ireland May Store Sale at €50,000. The Knockalane House offering went to Ballyboy Stables.

Right behind him was a gelding by Workforce (GB) (lot 103) from Rathywork Stud, agent to Milestone Bloodstock. The son of Blazing Dawn (Ire) (Presenting {GB}) was knocked down for €48,000. His second dam is listed hurdle winner Blazing Sky (Ire) (Beneficial {GB}).

Third on the buyers' sheets was lot 68, J'Suis Kashe Bam's (Fr) (Buck's Boum {Fr}), a member of Liss House's draft. Joey Logan Bloodstock shelled out €47,000 for the bay gelding. His dam, Urkashe (Fr) (Clety {Fr}) was placed in the Listed Prix Rigoletto Chase at Auteuil.

Overall, 165 horses sold from 207 offered for an improved clearance rate of 80%. The gross was €2,704,400. The average decreased 8% to €16,390 and the median dropped to €13,000 (-15%).

Tattersalls Ireland CEO Simon Kerins said, “Today saw the first store sale take place on its original dates for the first time in two years and the trade has been very strong. Most noteworthy was the record clearance rate which increased to 80% and turnover that surpassed the 2018 and 2019 May Store Sale sessions. We extend our thanks to our vendors for providing us with quality horses as well as every purchaser who engaged as they sought to find their next star.”

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