HRI moves to address National Hunt imbalance

Last week Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) announced a new series of National Hunt races beginning in January that specifically precludes horses trained by Willie Mullins, Gordon Elliott, Henry De Bromhead and Gavin Cromwell from competing.

There are 60 of these races planned for 2025 - bumpers, maiden hurdles, beginners chases and handicap hurdles - which equates to 4% of the National Hunt programme. These races are open to all National Hunt trainers that didn’t train 50 or more winners in either of the last two seasons or in other words every trainer except the big four.

HRI has made this decision in response to the dominance of the big four stables in recent seasons and it is an attempt to give the smaller trainers a chance to win more races and in turn give these “trainers the confidence to attract new owners into their yards with the knowledge that there is a programme of races there to support them in that endeavour.”

There is no doubt something was needed to address the imbalance in National Hunt racing, but I’m not convinced this was necessarily the best way of achieving it.

One problem with this approach is that it presumes all horses trained by the big four trainers are equal, but that is simply not the case. Last season while the all-conquering Mullins and Elliott, De Bromhead and Cromwell were mopping up races with their better horses, they also trained 510 other horses between them that failed to win a single race.

The owners of these 510 horses are the ones most affected by these changes. They are now precluded from running their horses in the very 60 races where they might have had the best chance to recoup some of their expenses, simply by virtue of where they chose to have their horse trained.

While this initiative is a bit of a blunt instrument, it should nonetheless have the desired effect to bring ‘new owners’ to the smaller trainers. In most cases they will likely be existing owners with lesser horses that will transfer from the big four trainers, as moving yards will afford those horses better opportunities.

I’d be less confident that this new initiative will ‘spur investment’ in the sport overall.

It will be interesting to see how it all pans out over the next year and what impact it will have on the field sizes for bumpers, maiden hurdles and beginners chases that are not part of the series.

Many maiden hurdles currently attract maximum fields, but only a select few of the runners are capable or indeed interested in winning, so it will make no difference from a betting perspective if there are fewer runners in these contests. Conversely, the maiden hurdles within the new series could be ultra competitive by comparison.

Changing the subject, it was pointed out to me the other day that the stewards didn’t bother to get their vets to examine Mountain Bear after the horse’s recent poor performance in the Group 2 Minstrel Stakes at the Curragh. The colt took a significant walk in the market close to the off (13/8 out to 9/4 on the show) before missing the break badly and never getting competitive in the seven furlong contest.

Despite Mountain Bear trailing home 11 lengths behind the second last placed finisher and being beaten 22 lengths in total no routine samples were taken for analysis.

This type of under-performance should automatically trigger an investigation by the stewards to maintain confidence in the sport as a betting medium.

The Curragh Racecourse in particular must be disappointed that the IHRB officials didn’t act here. The Curragh has finally managed to get itself on the WorldPool roster and wouldn’t want anything to jeopardise that lucrative revenue stream.

I’d imagine the Hong Kong Jockey Club, which allocates the races to be included in WorldPool, would likely take a dim view of this type of lax regulation.