Gleneagles crowds his rivals at Longchamp© Photo Healy Racing
Can you imagine a different golf rulebook for different countries? Or tennis laws that vary from tournament to tournament? Or a football foul in one place that isn’t in another? Of course you can’t, because that would be very stupid. It’s not like there’s a shortage of evidence to suggest a similar standardisation of racing rules around the world is desperately required, but anyone in need of more got it in spades during the Arc weekend.
Just so there’s no doubt, what happened at Longchamp is how things should be everywhere. Clearly there’s a substantial block of opinion here that greeted the incidents which got Gleneagles thrown out of the Lagadere, and Cirrus Des Aigles out of the Prix Dollar, with splenetic, can’t-race-in-lanes, indignation. And it is true that if those two races were run in Ireland or Britain, nothing would have happened. In fact there’s a good chance there mightn’t even have been enquiries for either.
That supposedly illustrates good-sense, and a desire for the best horse in the race to get rewarded. And it’s rubbish, because all that ‘good-sense’ has done is turn both racetracks and steward-rooms into hopelessly subjective and inconsistent badlands that encourage jockeys to chance their arm and accidently-on-purpose take one for the team, knowing it might result in a fine or a ban, but isn’t likely to cost the race.
There are so many examples of that, there’s no point starting to list them. So let’s confine ourselves to the Lagadere and the Dollar, both races that supposedly highlight how the rest of the world is full of hopelessly namby-pamby wets who’re out of step with good old red-blooded, common sense us; the whole ‘they-don’t-like-it-up-‘em’ bit.
Where to begin: first of all, the ‘split second to decide’ excuse can be immediately dismissed as mealy-mouthed rubbish. The skill levels of top international jockeys can’t be overstated. These guys can judge things to a fraction of a stride. The real top-notchers have an overall awareness of the overall picture that beggars belief. That’s why they’re top-notchers.
Soumillon knew immediately after Cirrus Des Aigles that he’d messed up: Joseph O’Brien probably didn’t after Gleneagles. That’s only a reflection of Soumillon playing at home and knowing the rules there. Up the Curragh, O’Brien would have the edge, and be able to calculate what can be got away with. And that’s the difference. In France, you know. In Ireland, you guess.
In Ireland, and in Britain, the benefit of the doubt goes to those infringing. In France, America, and just about anywhere else, it goes to the infringed. Is it coincidence that the countries out of step are those where punters interests are effectively irrelevant? Maybe it is, but if standardisation is inevitable, and surely it eventually must be, there can’t be any doubt as to which is the better model to follow.
Only the warped can argue for guessing over certainty, or encourage a system that promotes recklessness over propriety, one that effectively rewards those who calculatingly break the rules. O’Brien didn’t do that on Gleneagles. He simply allowed Gleneagles to drift and didn’t bother trying to correct him. And in comparative terms it was a thing of nothing. But he broke the rules.
O’Brien probably thinks the French rules are ludicrous. Most jockeys in this part of the world think the same. But give O’Brien a fortnight riding in France and he would adjust to them just fine. As it stands, he will now return to an environment where some of the riding habits are borderline reckless. All jockeys eventually adapt to the rules that apply. And when the standardisation revolution comes, it will be important to be on the right side of the right rules.
The other great standardisation debate surrounds medication, and is even more urgent.
Legal realities make comment on Pat Hughes’s recent conviction for possession of illegal medicines a tricky business. But what it is likely to do is focus attention on the Turf Club’s Referrals Committee in terms of possible penalties for the trainer, something that’s likely to come to a head before this month is out.
Hughes is probably going to appear before that committee under bringing-racing-into-disrepute rules. What they decide to do with him will have a resonance far beyond one individual, in terms of indicating the seriousness with which such offences are judged by racing’s regulators here.
Headlines aplenty have already been written about the doping issue within Irish racing and a lot more are likely to come. So it might not be any harm to provide a little international context, and point out how on the same week of Hughes’s conviction came confirmation of the top American trainer Doug O’Neill receiving his 19th drug ban.
That’s nineteen. That’s ridiculous. In a country with a notoriously lax attitude to medication it is especially ridiculous. But most ridiculous of all is that O’Neill will be back on the beat within forty five days after coughing up a desultory ten grand fine. Clearly penalties don’t have to fit the crime in the land of the free.
And finally, all hail Treve after that stunning Arc victory, and all hail Criquette Head-Maarek for a remarkable training performance. Maybe those closest to her, including Alec ‘Papa’ Head, saw that coming but damn near no one else did. After such a performance that old chestnut about ‘they-never-come-back’ can be taken with several shovels of salt.
After all the excitement has died down though, maybe some cold analysis of the performance of the Japanese jockeys in the race will be worthwhile. It’s easy to take a pop at overseas riders that you never have to run into. And no doubt Japan’s obsessive desire to win the Arc means having one of their own top when they eventually win it – as is surely the case – will make it all the sweeter. But local knowledge can be valuable too, and there looked to be a desperate lack of that on the backs of their three hopes this time.
Hillary got all the credit for conquering Everest, but he did have the local boy Tenzing on his side.
