Australia at Leopardstown© Photo Healy Racing
Horse of the Year is a major sweat in the USA and about as relevant here as racing on dirt. In America the award defines careers: here it defines Horse Racing Ireland’s awards day - which happens to be today – before being more or less forgotten. When Hurricane Fly’s copious achievements are listed, getting Horse of the Year in 2011 and 2013 rarely gets a look in. He’s in there again for 2014 but any other result than Australia might relegate the award to curio status.
That’s just one opinion of course and there’s a diversity of other opinions involved in the voting which makes predicting the winner far from straight-forward. Also nominated are Jezki, Lord Windemere, Slade Power and Sole Power, all worthy nominees, all top class horses, and all on the back of a hugely successful 2014. This is no walkover a la Sea The Stars in 2009. But if Horse of the Year is about identifying the best and most accomplished horse then Australia should be a shoo-in.
That’s not distinguishing between National Hunt and the flat, or taking into account profile, or public impact, or the sort of sentiment that would probably make Hurricane Fly an odds-on favourite: just in terms of talent and accomplishment Australia is surely an automatic choice.
Aidan O’Brien set the bar impossibly high in terms of public expectation with this colt, and ultimately Australia couldn’t quite live up to the hype. But this was still Europe’s highest-rated horse in 2014, a dual-Derby winner who finished a slightly unlucky third in a vintage 2,000 Guineas over a mile and comprehensively beat older horses, and a French Derby winner, in the Juddmonte over ten furlongs. Ultimately that proved to be Australia’s finest hour, but even then, one containing statements he might not have been even fully wound-up.
It was expectation generated by that which possibly contributed towards the sense of anti-climax after The Grey Gatsby reversed that Juddmonte form in the Irish Champion Stakes, although a poor ride was probably a rather more tangible reason. However the sum total of Australia’s career leaves no doubt about his status as a truly top-class horse. His ‘HotY’ rivals have their own considerable CV’s. Some of their connections may even possess a particularly high popularity quotient. But boil it down to who the best and most accomplished horse in 2014 was and Australia gets it.
Whatever wins though will present HRI with a good opportunity to run up racing’s flag in the consciousness of the general public which, since it is briefed to promote the sport and industry, is only right and proper. Waiting for anyone else to do the job would involve waiting forever, especially since the anyone else includes plenty casting envious glances at the continuing and indeed increased financial assistance racing gets from government and wondering why they can’t get the same.
The argument against racing’s automatic entitlement to revenue generated from betting tax was cogently outlined in one influential media platform over the weekend. It is an argument based on the coldly logical reality that the days when betting mainly revolved around racing is long-gone. When there are easily accessible markets on Portuguese second-division football, the idea that everyone is staring at the 2.30 at Thurles is silly.
But it is also an argument which ignores an even colder political reality, which is that sports eager to get their grips on state money mostly can’t blend a public pitch based on rural employment with a rather more private pitch based on significant political pull. And it’s cross-party political pull. Arguing against the current status-quo on a political basis became effectively redundant when Labour bought into it alongside their more right-wing brethren.
Maybe a new and more turbulent climate will result in a change: maybe the Shinners will turn on racing’s supposed toffs and redistribute the pot. Or maybe, just maybe, they will overcome their class scruples too and join the betting tax consensus.
It’s hard to know what to make of that relay race at Clonmel where Davy Russell and Philip Enright got five day bans under disrepute rules for their use of a whip. On one level there’s no disputing it was silly thing to do, and technically rules were broken. But at the same time getting five days for that whereas Bryan Cooper got just four days for improper riding at Navan a couple of week before jars a little.
Film of the Navan race revealed Cooper almost trying to ride Paul Carberry off the track: film of the Clonmel race might appear sometime on ‘what-happened next?’
What happens next in the two-mile division over fences will be particularly fascinating. So much depends on what happens when, or if, Sprinter Sacre and Sire De Grugy return. If one or both come back in peak form then they will be very hard to beat at Cheltenham in March. But it would hardly be the strangest thing if that doesn’t happen; and then what?
Fair play to Dodging Bullet for landing a Tingle Creek but he isn’t one to have the opposition quaking. The same goes for Uxizandre and Balder Success. It’s actually not that hard to envisage a scenario where the two-mile crown is wide open to be picked up. And is it outlandish to envisage a scenario where the Champion Chase actually winds up no greater a challenge than the Arkle: at which stage Willie Mullins might have a quandary to relish in terms of what to do with Vautour.
The champion trainer rarely deviates from keeping novices to novice races. But not many in Closutton are deviating from the view that Vautour is a rare novice prospect indeed. He may even be one in the running for Horse of the Year reckoning sooner rather than later.
