Dual Derby winner Harzand© Photo Healy Racing
Racing gets flak for failing to ‘bill’ its biggest races. But the reason is simple — too many variables. For instance if Minding, Harzand, Fascinating Rock, Almanzor, New Bay and Hawkbill do indeed all line up in Saturday’s QIPCO Irish Champion Stakes, then ‘Irish Champions Weekend’ will have Europe’s ‘Race of the Season.’ But hanging the centrepiece to Irish racing’s €4.25 million shop-window on that is to be a hostage to fortune. Variables take over, illness, injury, loss of form and unquestionably the greatest of them all — Ireland’s weather.
It has repeatedly played havoc with billing Ireland’s highest rated race. The finest horse this country has ever produced, Sea The Stars, ran once here in his epochal classic season and no one could be sure he was running until hours beforehand. Testing ground the year before prevented a clash between New Approach and Duke Of Marmalade. In 2013 Declaration Of War was taken out late and last year there was a ‘will he-won’t run’ saga about Gleneagles right up to the 11th hour.
While the idea of Minding, Harzand & Co taking each other on is mouth-watering, it’s impossible to presume anything until they’re actually being loaded into the stalls. So the run-in to the most lucrative weekend’s racing of the year is set to be yet again dominated by boring Met Office bulletins and speculation about watering, or not watering, or degrees of ‘yielding’ rather than any ‘bigging up’ of the actual race.
It is also why this week’s toughest job isn’t in ‘morkoting’ but the lot of those charged with producing the best possible ground for a collection of outstanding talents whose premium conditions differ so markedly.
Last year Leopardstown’s authorities brought forward the Champion Stakes forward an hour in order to give the horses first crack at rain-softened ground and copped a lot of flak for appearing to try and cater for the Coolmore star, Gleneagles, who wound up not running anyway, upsetting the logistics of some very high-powered people trying to commute from Doncaster’s St Leger into the bargain.
This time the immediate outlook is largely dry and ridiculously warm until, of course, later in the week when heavy rains are forecast with even the Met Office’s ultimate each-way bet — ‘showery’ — thrown in too. So with Dermot Weld outlining the need of an ease for his star duo, Aidan O’Brien preferring fast ground and everyone else expressing their own differing preferences too, who’d try and predict who’s going to line up, never mind come out on top.
Significantly, Leopardstown’s boss Pat Keogh has already outlined the ideal Champion Stakes conditions — “What every track tries to achieve is good to firm going for top quality flat racing.” In that he is only stating the obvious. But just as obvious is the impossibility of pleasing all of the people all of the time.
If there’s one thing more boring than the weather, it’s racing politics. However, and no doubt to the disquiet of much of the Horse Racing Ireland brass, this story about Brian Kavanagh’s third term as chief executive of the industry’s ruling body isn’t going away and is provoking a rather deafening official silence from Ballymany HQ.
Despite the Department of Public Expenditure & Reform and the Department of Agriculture ratifying the HRI’s board decision to make Kavanagh a special case in relation to government guidelines for chief executive officers of commercial state bodies, some clearly remain very unhappy indeed about it.
There’s also a wider climate of unease about the administration of sporting bodies in general right now. Racing’s slalom through the civil service structure currently sees it under the auspices of the Agriculture department but when the Sports Minister Shane Ross expressed disquiet on national TV - as he did in Friday’s Late Late Show - about administrators spending too long at the helm, by definition he’s talking in a wider government context.
Kavanagh is clearly the man racing’s powers that be have decided is indispensable. That alone is testament to his widely acknowledged administrative and political skill. What this new and unprecedented five year term also appears to say is that after a previous pair of seven year terms, no one else is still even close to being up to the job, which, if nothing else, doesn’t say much for the industry’s talent pool.
The HRI argument is that Kavanagh’s skills are vital for the short and medium term jobs ahead of it, including the €65 million Curragh project. It also says he has particular expertise which considering he’s been so long in the job is hardly unreasonable. And it also points to his ongoing membership of various international racing bodies which is frankly irrelevant.
Kavanagh may indeed be indispensable. No one can argue with his abilities or his record. And the reality is that he is in favour with those who count which probably makes academic much of the disquiet surrounding the process of his reappointment.
But another reality is that failing to even advertise the position in the first place, not to mention a process which, amongst other elements, appears to have left some rather bruised egos on the HRI board, are only part of a series of optics that don’t look good at all. They’re certainly not good enough for those in charge to simply hunker down and hope everything goes back to normal.
No one could be blamed for thinking a similar attitude could be in play at the BHA on the back of the disciplinary cock-ups surrounding the role of solicitor Matthew Lohn. But questions aren’t going away in relation to when, or if, Athenry trainer Paul Gilligan will face a rehearing.
Gilligan was banned for six months by the cross-channel authorities in March but that has been parked because of an appearance of bias surrounding Lohn who chaired the enquiry. Gilligan continues to deny charges he ran Dubai Phantom in a ‘flapper’ before the horse won at Uttoxeter in 2014.
Before anything can happen with him however, the tortuous case of English trainer Jim Best has to be sorted out. That effectively leaves Gilligan in a sort of professional limbo which, whatever your view on the matter, is unacceptable.
And finally, speaking of the Late Late Show, there were ‘Champions Weekend’ tickets for everyone in the audience on Friday. Is it mischievous to wonder if all those tickets have already been clocked through the attendance gates?!
