Runners lining up for the Grand National© Photo Healy Racing
For some reason the Irish as a nation struggle with the concept of protest. No matter how unjust or ludicrous Government policies are we prefer to grumble about it amongst ourselves rather than take to the streets in mass protest.
Covid restrictions were a prime example. Regardless of how ridiculous and unfair the sanctions were we simply took it on the chin - mass lockdowns, 5km control zones; €9 meal in order to have a pint; safe to sit in the pub, but not next to the bar. The small cohort of anti-mask and anti-vax protesters during that time were branded as leftist loonies by the rest of us. Any group that protests in Ireland gets similar treatment - tree-huggers, fascists, racists - we always find a way to pigeonhole and mock the protesters.
But protest has an important role to play in society, it can often act like a canary in a mine. When something is wrong or government policies have gone too far in one direction it takes protest to hold them to account. The French are past masters at the art of protest. They will take to the streets at the slightest whiff of injustice and their politicians know that. In Ireland we are willing to put up with any amount of corruption, cronyism or incompetence and our political class also knows that too.
Horse racing has now become the target of protest in the UK with the high-profile disruption to the start of the Aintree Grand National. In common with political protests our knee-jerk reaction is to brand the protesters as ill-informed vegan nutters and dismiss them out of hand.
There are dozens of sound arguments as to why these protesters are misguided, but maybe they are also the canary in the mine for the sport of horse racing.
Horse racing’s ruling bodies must have known this day was coming. Other animal sports such as fox hunting and coursing have been plagued by protests for decades. There have even been many similar protests against horse racing in Australia. So why has the sport not been on the front foot here. Why has it been left to a concerned group of racing fans to start a campaign to ‘Stand Up For Racing’? Surely those paid (often very well paid) to govern and promote the sport should have been standing up for the sport all along. Making a concerted effort to educate and inform the public about horse racing.
Only now is the industry starting to release figures about how the number of equine fatalities has fallen by one third over the last twenty years. These are the sort of numbers the industry should have been championing rather than just focusing on the economic impact of the sport.
I was shocked by the sheer number of protesters that turned up at Aintree. I had imagined a couple of dozen at most, but with 118 people arrested there must have been many more involved. The advance warnings of the protest garnered huge publicity for the organising group and this undoubtedly swelled their numbers, but without the huge police and security presence at the course it’s difficult to see how the Grand National could have taken place.
Julie Harrington, chief executive of the British Horseracing Authority, has said: “we robustly condemn the reckless and potentially harmful actions of a handful of people in disrupting the race.” I think she is playing down the scale of the protest.
Even a handful of determined protesters could significantly disrupt an average race meeting and the organising group behind Saturday’s protest is already planning more stunts over the summer months.
There is real potential for these protests to escalate into violence as the majority involved in the sport are equally passionate about their horses and many others involved in the industry will see these protests as a direct attack on their livelihoods.
Sandy Thomson, the owner of Hill Sixteen which sadly died as a result of a fall during the Grand National, spoke after the race on Saturday blaming the protesters for the death of his horse. The 15 minute delay to the start of the race caused Hill Sixteen to become ‘hyper’ and he then tragically fell at the very first fence.
This was the first time Hill Sixteen had fallen in a race of his own accord in 27 starts, he had unseated his rider once before when hampered by a faller, so it may well have been his excited state that contributed to the fall. There were also significantly more casualties at the first two fences in this year’s race than in recent years which adds weight to the argument that many of the horses may have been over excited during the prolonged preliminaries.
These protesters clearly have no understanding of how highly strung thoroughbred racehorses are and their actions may well have endangered the lives of not just the horses they claim to care about, but also the jockeys, members of the public and the protesters themselves.
Perhaps it is little more than a coincidence, but the two other horses that died over the three days of racing at Aintree, Dark Raven and Envoye Special, in common with Hill Sixteen, were also falling for the first time in their careers. Mighty Potter also fell for the first time in a race when he was killed at Fairyhouse’s Easter meeting. Could there be a link between horses unfamiliar with falling and fatalities?
The Grand National was an ugly watch on TV. First the protesters and then the early casualties gave me a real sense of unease. I was half expecting someone to run out in suffragette-style in the closing stages. Thankfully that didn’t happen.
I was delighted to see a winner of the race who’s chance was backed up by the formbook. Corach Rambler was 10lbs well-in according to the handicap ratings. The runner-up Vannilier, third home Gaillard Du Mesnil and fifth place finisher The Big Dog have always looked like horses with an abundance of stamina and again it’s nice to see those types of horses contend in the Grand National.
The performance of Noble Yeats to finish fourth is also worthy of a special mention. He was only beaten 8 ½ lengths racing off a rating 19lbs higher than when he won the race last year and in hindsight if he hadn’t run in the Many Clouds Chase at the Course in December he could well have won back-to-back Grand Nationals.
