SupaSundae is 25/1 for the Supreme Novices Hurdle© Photo Healy Racing
Queen Elizabeth II’s famous ‘Annus Horribilis’ was 1992: history could decide 2015 to have been the Turf Club’s. History will be dismissed as bunk by those eagerly eyeing their brave new recession-free future but 225 years of the stuff is difficult to wave away entirely. The Turf Club of 2016 will be very different to that of even a decade ago. The current consensus is that that is inevitable given racing’s financial realities and future consensus may be that the inevitable was rubber-stamped this year.
Losing control of the Curragh is bound to be regarded as the landmark moment. That was inevitable. The place is decrepit and the Turf Club can’t afford to refurbish it. It was pointed out that state grants for other sports don’t come in return for ownership stakes but given the bitter wrangling that has characterised recent racing politics that was always a pedantic point. The Curragh’s new bottom-line tone is already in place.
However, if that has been the spectacular slash to the regulatory body’s self-image, and the most obvious example of its diminishing influence - even more so than its inability to get government to play any sort of ball - there have also been several other cuts this year.
A lot of credibility was pinned to the case of Foxrock and his missing shoes. If nothing else the vigour with which the matter was pursued was welcome and caught many by surprise. But reality of all hues demanded the case to be watertight and it wasn’t. Plenty took plenty from the evidence but ultimately it was irrelevant.
It was telling yet unsurprising that an information hotline set up on the back of the 2014 steroids controversy yielded little or nothing this year, and that instances where race-day stewards bucked the perceived wisdom, and actually acted as the rules demand, wound up in appeals, many of which were successful.
On the back of the recent successful appeals by connections of both Shantou Ed and Bobbie’s Diamond, the ridiculousness of panels making decisions without fundamental official veterinary information was highlighted.
That many within the Turf Club privately rail at such examples of self-inflicted injury doesn’t mean they are divorced from Irish racing’s regulatory reality, a reality that can be summed up by how integrity officials paid to police industry professionals ultimately wind up getting paid by a representative board made up of the industry professionals they are paid to police!
The model is hardly unique: who pays the Gardai for example. But it leaves the tiny racing village wide open to the perception it continues to be a resolutely closed shop.
None of this is new and the accusation by those outside the shop that regulation is merely a flimsy and incestuous fig-leaf for the prevention of high-powered blushes will become even harder to reject given the one plus point the Turf Club has consistently provided was at least an aspiration towards integrity independence.
The actuality often veered away from the aspiration but the theory of separating policing from promotion has a history of validity even if momentum continues to remorselessly progress towards dispensing with it.
And that could well be the lasting legacy of 2015. Independence costs, everyone knows who holds the purse-strings, and they seem to believe historical theory is little more than nostalgia. It’s in that context that the Turf Club faces into 2016. It still has a role. What it needs is a new idea of itself.
We are assured the Anti-Doping Task Force Report is complete and will be published in the first quarter of 2016, more than a year after it was announced to great fanfare, and long after it was originally scheduled to be released. None of which will matter a damn if the extra time has been used productively to closely examine the medication reality on the ground. But delays in reports are rarely encouraging, especially when the numbers of vested interests with a stake are so many.
One of the most noteworthy aspects to HRI’s 2016 budget relates to increases in better prizemoney for placed horses in an attempt to increase some field sizes. There will be payments out to six places in races worth E40,000 or more and to five places in all other races. Second placed horses will receive 20% of prizemoney rather than 17%, third placers will get 10% compared to 8% and fourth placed runners will remain the same at 5%.
The logic in this is hard to knock, just as it is hard to knock the suspicion that any impact will be minimal. Does prizemoney really encourage either ownership or participation among the majority of owners? Among the big boys almost certainly not, and among others it will always be pointed out that being able to afford a racehorse in the first place presumes a level of affluence that a couple of grand here or there isn’t going to impact greatly on.
As for HRI identifying as a “key priority” increasing the value of lower grade handicaps so as to target the largest section of the horse population, one can hear protesting cries of a “race to the bottom” already.
And finally some Christmas observations, the first of which is that while Don Cossack fell in the King George, his performance in managing to somehow get into a challenging position at the second last actually enhanced his reputation. The horse was never going yet he looked to have Cue Card covered when he came down, and Cue Card managed to overhaul Vautour who emptied spectacularly. Don Cossack remains firmly in the Gold Cup mix.
Secondly, how many think the fine and suspension Paddy Brennan picked up for breaching the whip rules on Cue Card will prevent him doing exactly the same again should the situation demand? Anyone saying ‘yes’ should have anything sharp removed from their person immediately.
Last of all, ante-post betting is not this corner’s cup of tea at all but the 25-1 floating about for the Supreme after Supersundae won his maiden at Leopardstown could prove an exception. The giant gelding from the family of Nathaniel couldn’t jump out of his way on his Gowran debut but improved at Leopardstown and he can get better again. Henry De Bromhead rates him a serious tool and there’s a fundamental ability there that time and maturity could turn into something well above the ordinary.
