Students mixing with a regular racegoer at Cork© Photo Healy Racing
The British National Hunt season went out with a bang on Saturday at Sandown when Willie Mullins was crowned Champion British Trainer for the very first time.
His end of season assault on the British tracks was nothing short of epic with 36 runners at 6 different tracks in little over a week yielding 9 victories, including the Scottish Grand National, bet365 Gold Cup and the Grade Two Select Hurdle to seal the title.
Aside from the dominance of Mullins, it is interesting to note that three other Irish-based trainers also made the top 20 in the British Trainers Championship with Gordon Elliott 5th, Henry De Bromhead 14th and Gavin Cromwell 20th. Some performances considering that a total of 650 trainers ran horses in Britain during the jumps season.
It is also worth mentioning that the top four owners in Britain during the season - JP McManus, Robcour, Gigginstown House Stud and Simon Munir/Isaac Souede - have the majority of their horses trained in Ireland.
The Irish National Hunt season draws to a close this week at Punchestown where Willie Mullins will pick up the Irish Trainers Title for an incredible 18th time. JP McManus will once again complete the Irish-British double in the owners category, but the Jockeys Championship is still in the balance with Jack Kennedy seven winners clear of Paul Townend entering the final stretch.
My heart says Jack Kennedy will prevail, he certainly deserves a change of luck, but my head thinks that Paul Townend, with the firepower he will have at his disposal across the week at Punchestown, still holds every chance of regaining his title.
What is most impressive about the two jockeys vying for the title is the number of winners they have each notched up during the season. When Paul Townend won his first title back in 2010/2011 he did so with 80 winners. This season he has already ridden more winners than in any previous season with 115 victories, but still finds himself 7 adrift of Jack Kennedy.
Another interesting aspect to this National Hunt season is how dominant the big stables have become. The first season Willie Mullins was crowned Champion National Hunt Trainer in Ireland was in 2007/2008. During that season 15 individual trainers managed to have 20 or more winners.
By the 2021/2022 season that number had dropped to 11 trainers. Last season there were just 9 different trainers that managed 20 winners or more. This season the number stands at a mere 5.
Despite the dominance of a handful of stables, National Hunt racing is still managing to pull in the crowds. Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) have released figures for the first three months of this year that show attendances were up 3.9% on the same period last year (achieved with 3 less meetings this year) and according to their commissioned research this increase is being driven by 18-34-year-olds.
Attracting a younger audience to racing in Ireland has been the Holy Grail for the sport for decades and on this evidence there appears to now be definite cause for optimism.
Adding to these buoyant Q1 figures, we have seen three packed out Student race days already this month which certainly feed into the narrative that racing is all of a sudden becoming a young person's sport.
HRI have been actively seeking out a younger audience and their initiative to produce live Tik Tok content from Cheltenham looks to have been a resounding success. The video content hosted by Bernard Jackman and Fran Berry garnered 3.9 million views across the Festival week and has swelled the HRI account on the social media network to over 46,000 followers.
We are told that over 60% of these followers are aged between 18-34 which is all the more impressive considering neither Jackman nor Berry fit that particular demographic with their combined age of 90 years.
Changing the subject, I’m not quite sure what to make of the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) announcement last week concerning a change to the rules regarding non-runners in Flat races with starting stalls.
“Under the existing Rules, a horse can only be declared a non-runner if it has been prevented from starting due to a faulty action of the starting stalls or if it is riderless at the off.”
This is very similar to the Irish Rules, which only take into account non-starters, rather than slow starters, when determining non-runners.
But from the 1st May the BHA are empowering the on-course stewards to employ a degree of discretion when it comes to “situations where a horse has been prevented from starting on equal terms and its chances in a race have been materially affected as a consequence.”
Adding an element of discretion to these critical decisions is likely to cause as many problems as it will potentially solve.
The obvious application of this discretionary Rule change will be when one or more stalls open late and now, rather than voiding the race, the stewards will be able to avail of their new powers to deem the affected horse or horses as non-runners and allow the result to stand.
If this occurs in a 30 runner handicap where 1 stall opens late, it makes perfect sense to allow the result to stand and those who backed the affected horse get their money back. But what happens in a 10 runner Group One race when 3 stalls open late?
We are now relying on common sense to prevail in all situations and the sport’s on-course regulators don’t exactly have an exemplary record when forced into this type of on-the-spot decision making.
The BHA says it is introducing this Rule change to align with other racing nations, but there are many other examples of Rules and practices that are not aligned, so why choose this one?
And, if this is the right course of action to take, why has this discretionary power not also been extended to National Hunt racing?
Similar powers for National Hunt stewards would have averted the farce that occurred at Sandown on Saturday when the starter made an error by beginning the opening race of the day with one horse facing in the wrong direction. Those who backed Masai Mara got zero run for their money, but under the current Rules the horse was deemed a runner, and all those punters lost their stakes.
