Horses heading back to the stables after racing was abandoned at Cork© Photo Healy Racing
It has been another difficult week for the IHRB’s clerks of the courses with dramatic changes in ground conditions on not just a daily basis, but an almost hourly basis.
In the space of a little over two hours at Cork on Friday evening the going description went from Yielding (Good to Yielding in places) before the first race at 4.15pm - to Soft before race two - Soft to Heavy after race three - Heavy after race four and the meeting was abandoned before race five due to waterlogging.
Tramore on Friday just about managed to complete the second day of their “Summer Festival” as they were also hit with the brunt of Storm Betty. Sadly the all Flat card on Saturday at Tramore was abandoned after 35mm of rain had fallen in the space of 24 hours the previous day.
In relation to the cancellation of Saturday’s all flat card at Tramore I found it a little surprising that the chief reason given was not that the ground was necessarily unraceable, but instead it was issues relating to the starting stalls.
According to the clerk of the course, moving the starting stalls into position for each race would have caused irreparable damage to the track and moving the stalls back out of the way in time during races represented a major safety issue.
I’m sure that is 100% correct, but why couldn’t these races have been started by tape? Starting stalls are hardly essential to run a flat race, particularly not at Tramore where the shortest distance races on Saturday’s card were over one mile and four furlongs. Also, it’s not as if we are talking about 30 runners over that distance, the safety limit for those races at Tramore is just 12 horses and only two of the six races scheduled for that distance on Saturday even reached that quota. The other two races on the card were over an extended two miles which are commonly started without stalls.
Considering this was one of the biggest days of the year for the racecourse and many racegoers would have booked accommodation in the area for the duration of the Festival it seems to me that forgoing the use of starting stalls would have been a small price to pay to get the meeting on. There is not much point in rescheduling this all flat fixture to Tramore in a couple of weeks time when their Festival audience has long departed.
Then again, if Sunday’s jumps action at Tramore was anything to go by there probably wouldn’t have been any runners if the flat meeting had gone ahead on Saturday.
With fresh ground and an official going description of Yielding - Chase course and Yielding to Soft - Hurdles course, we saw 28 horses withdrawn on Sunday with ‘change in going’ given as the excuse.
These wholescale withdrawals from the races seem utterly ridiculous. I could understand one or two happening with horses that may have been returning from a layoff and the trainer didn’t want to risk them on tacky ground, but 28 of them?
It’s not as if these owners and trainers have one eye on Cheltenham next March for their precocious talent. These are the lowest grades of horses in training and many of them have been around the block a fair few times at this stage. It’s hard to imagine that a couple of circuits on softish ground was going to do them any harm.
Of the horses that did take part in the eight races at Tramore on Sunday, 72 completed their races, 7 pulled up and just 1 fell. This would indicate that the track was perfectly fine for racing as would the fact that top trainers Willie Mullins, Gordon Elliott and Henry de Bromhead all had winners on the day.
When you think of the efforts that officials and ground staff around the country have gone to over the last number of weeks to keep the show on the road you would think that the least the owners and trainers could do is run their horses.
