The jumps season is underway© Photo Healy Racing
It isn’t just the Autumn chill that’s making race fans shiver. Listowel traditionally refocuses attention towards the jumps, provoking familiar anticipation about the impeding return of National Hunt racing’s greatest stars. The flat has its qualities but the jumps always trump it for sentiment. And it’s that sentiment which makes the idea of Douvan not being targeted at the Gold Cup this winter so infuriating.
Douvan isn’t the jump game’s greatest star. He is coming out of two novice campaigns over hurdles and fences after all. But he is its most exciting star. His potential is limitless. Willie Mullins has made no secret he believes this horse could be the best he’s had through his hands. It’s easy for us on the sidelines to get excited about young talent: when top professionals do the same it’s a sign of something special.
So it’s dispiriting to see Patrick Mullins quoted as saying: “It is a question of whether we stay at two miles with him (Douvan) this season or up him to three miles. He settles very well and you’d think that he could get three miles but he is so good over two miles, why change it?”
The ‘why’ is simple: the Gold Cup is the ultimate. It’s why the ‘Blue Riband’ tag is tied around it, the same with the Epsom Derby. Money often trumps sentiment for the Derby. Galileo Gold skipped it this year on the basis of a genetic test which appeared to coincide with a suspicion that the potential financial cost of rolling the stamina dice might be too great. But there are no such impediments to stamina considerations in the jumps game.
Of course it’s easy to be brave with someone else’s horse. And of course it is Rich Ricci’s privilege to decide. And of course there is plenty evidence of how Willie Mullins’ belief in keeping his horses in the worst of company to maximise their winning chance has spectacularly paid off. There is even the reality that simply getting a horse to Cheltenham in six months time is an achievement in itself.
But the Gold Cup is supposed to be the pinnacle, the ultimate test of the best steeplechasers. Should Douvan win the Champion Chase in style this March he will probably be lauded to the skies and simultaneously leave everyone wondering ‘what if?’ A horse with his quality and speed who’s never raced beyond an extended two miles would need to be a freak to also properly stay the Gold Cup trip. But Douvan might be such a freak. And how will we ultimately know if he is or isn’t if that talent isn’t tested in the ultimate cauldron.
Sure this is a professional business for those involved but they’re hardly short of a bob or three either. They can afford to dream, maybe get a little sentimental, even a bit brave with this horse.
Thistlecrack is the Gold Cup favourite, and he hasn’t even run over fences yet. Don Cossack is coming back off a leg problem. Coneygree is on the comeback trail too. Cue Card can hardly improve. Of course Ricci has Djakadam and Vautour too but it could be argued one has had his shot at Gold Cup glory and the other is starting to approach enigmatic status. And all the while the Gold Cup remains the one race Mullins has yet to win, and the one he wants most.
Maybe that might yet prove the ultimate ‘why’ should cool eventually be trumped by sentiment.
Speaking of the seasons, Sunday night’s Woodbine Mile saw the start of the North American international campaign leading up to the Breeders Cup and renewed focus on the medication issue across the Atlantic.
Everyone’s roles are well rehearsed by now. Americans get defensive and shirty about race-day lasix while European visitors shake their heads regretfully before often adopting a ‘When In Rome’ policy that allows them have their cake and eat it. And that isn’t good enough anymore.
After a while it really does come down to walking the walk. No one can have it every way. Either race-day medication is outside the pale — and it obviously should be — or it isn’t. Adopting a morally superior attitude towards the Americans is fine and dandy but making it an each way bet by then playing strictly to the dumb rules that operate there automatically reduces people’s credibility.
The insular reality of US racing is that they don’t really care what anyone thinks of their medication regime even though it’s cockeyed, discreditable and has provoked a detrimental impact on the breed there. But if nothing else it does at least contain the virtue of consistency, the very thing Europeans often lack on their trans-Atlantic raids.
There are exceptions. Andre Fabre is entitled to be disdainful of the Americans since he has walked the medication walk for decades. In contrast a ‘When In Rome’ attitude not only grates but helps perpetuate a system which is inexorably cutting away the very credibility racing depends on. Eventually it will come down to practising what you preach, or else why say anything at all.
The pan-national answer to that is often a requirement to be seen to say something. There were those sceptics who feared that Irish racing’s Anti-Doping Task Force report would be little more than an exercise in being seen to do something in response to steroid controversies. They will hardly have been disabused of those fears by the comparative silence on the subject since the start of February.
For instance when the report was published it was proposed the Task Force would review the implementation of its recommendations six months later. That hasn’t happened yet and those in the know say there appears to be precious little urgency about making up for lost time either. Dr Lynn Hillyer took over as the Turf Club’s chief veterinary officer and head of anti-doping at the start of this month. She obviously needs time to settle into the job. But appearing to park something so important doesn’t look great.
Finally, the provision of free ‘Wifi’ at all 26 Irish racecourses will be welcomed by many as simply a reflection of modern digital reality. But rare is the free stuff that doesn’t come with a catch. Already bookmakers are concerned about unlicensed online competition and are demanding certain sites be blocked. And once you go down the blocking road, it can lead to God knows where.
