Australia prior to his final race at Leopardstown© Photo Healy Racing
Those bemoaning the supposedly premature retirement of Australia as a sign of flat racing’s arid soul might consider how it is in fact a game that is both sport and business: always has been, always will be. As John Giles famously insists, every game has to be taken “on its merits” so failure to get the head around that duality is an inevitable recipe for heartache. Sentiment might make us wish for Australia to have a four year old career but it is always easy to be sentimental with someone else’s money.
That doesn’t mean the colt finishes his racing career without a lingering sense of what-might-have-been, which is quite a statement for a dual-Derby and Juddmonte International winner. But perceptions of Australia have always been coloured through the prism of Aidan O’Brien’s ‘best-I’ve-ever-had’ comments. The expectations generated by those comments were often unrealistic but they nevertheless existed.
So an eight-race career, featuring three Group 1 victories and a pair of top-flight placings, still does leave us wondering just how good the horse was, a reality that was never going to deflect Coolmore from putting their top-class animal straight into the ultimate business of generating stallion income whenever it was practicable. Theoretical arguments are an indulgence most of us would probably dismiss too if we were in on the breeding juggernauts which dominate the top-echelons of the world’s bloodstock game.
Coolmore & Co do not have some statutory requirement to promote racing. It might be nice if some big-picture context in terms of the overall health of the game was present sometimes but a counter argument could be that their operations are big enough pictures to be getting on with. And each case is different. For Australia, there is Camelot. For Kingman, a Frankel.
Any comparison with the decision to keep Treve in training as a five year old is offside. The Al-Shaqab move to aim the great filly at a third Arc is very welcome and entirely admirable. But there’s practically nothing to lose with her doing that. It’s not comparing like and like when drawing comparisons between that call and the ones to retire both Australia and Kingman. Would it be nice to see both colts as four year olds? Of course it would. But that’s flat racing’s yin-yang reality, a reality that’s an intrinsic element of the whole flat-racing package.
Such issues only make the masses that dismiss the flat, and paint less than flattering comparisons to the supposed competitive purity of the jumping game, even happier at this time of year. It’s all ahead, and there’s much to look forward to now that the National Hunt big guns are readying to hit top gear. So it will be interesting to see when the bitching starts this time.
When will the first sniper shots about uncompetitive fields, and too much prizemoney going to a tiny golden circle of billionaire businessmen, ring out? Or how Willie Mullins’s grip is throttling the life out of things? Or that it’s impossible for the ‘small man’ to have a chance these days? Or how the whole calendar is out of whack because of an all-encompassing devotion and concentration on all things Cheltenham? And that there are no characters anymore and there’s no colour? And basically the game’s f---ed.
Give it a month I reckon. The game will be f---ed by then. It always is. And yet by this time in 2015 it will all be forgotten again. It’s a bit like pregnancy – quickly forgotten, which, when take on its merits, is probably just as well!
It was interesting at the weekend to see the Fairyhouse stewards refer the matter of Bashful Beauty’s running and riding to the Referrals Committee after trainer Norman Lee’s obvious unhappiness with the ride Danny Mullins gave the horse. At the original enquiry Lee agreed with Mullins’s account of the riding instructions but stated “he felt he (Mullins) had failed to ride his charge with determination and in so doing had failed to obtain his best possible placing.” Given the seriousness of the allegation, it’s no surprise to see it passed up the system.
There does appear to be genuine pique surrounding this particular incident but it isn’t the first enquiry recently that featured obvious displeasure from trainers towards their jockeys. Of course riders getting it in the neck is hardly news. But such dissections usually tended to be more discreet. Is there some new spirit floating about racecourses these days, a modern reluctance to emotionally suppress? God forbid it might be rooted in calculation.
It’s easy to be sceptical sometimes, and fun too. But talking of statutory requirements, there was news last week that the Racegoers Consultative Forum requires new members from the North East and the West. There was even a helpful reminder of what the RCF actually is, a statutory committee representing the views of racegoers to the Horse Racing Ireland Board.
Members are regular racegoers with a keen interest in their local racecourses who are willing to receive feedback from other racegoers and report to HRI. They also can’t be industry stakeholders, not even be members of a syndicate, a requirement that had one arch-sceptic pointing out if such creatures are present at many fixtures in this country.
You can see why something like the RFC was introduced when the Horse & Greyhound Bill was first introduced and everything was inclusively possible. It looks good on paper, something for the politicos to point to as democratic. But if there is a meaningful example of the RFC suggesting something and the HRI board suddenly going “you might have a point there” then please let us know.
And finally it was interesting to see how the legendary Olympic skier Bode Miller is apparently aiming to become a racehorse trainer in the US. Quite what the relationship is between skiing and racing is hard to know but that didn’t stop Mick Channon successfully switching disciplines. It’s interesting to ponder what the chances of something similar happening here might be, and who might switch?
