Hurricance Fly winning the 2013 Champion Hurdle© Photo Healy Racing
Funny things perceptions: a bit like reputations, they can be tough to shake. A lot of us believe Hurricane Fly has never shown his best at Cheltenham. And yet it continues to be a cold fact that the Anglo-Irish handicappers believe his greatest ever performance came when winning the 2013 Champion Hurdle. So going with the head rather than the heart means 'the Fly' at 8-1 in three weeks time might be the bet of the festival. Or it might not be.
There's little doubt handicappers get it right a lot more often than not. They wouldn't be in the job otherwise. And the dispassion they bring to the task is their greatest asset. It's that dispassionate examination of form which made them award Hurricane Fly a career high mark of 175 two years ago. It's also why even though he's now a 169, he remains the top-rated horse this season going into a fifth attempt at the Champion Hurdle. And on very soft ground in particular, only an idiot will entirely dismiss him.
But otherwise this corner will persist in a similar 'lay-all-day' attitude to last year. Many of us remember that 2013 Champion Hurdle as one of Ruby Walsh's finest hours, not for what he did, rather what he didn't. Remember how after three flights, Hurricane Fly looked cooked? Walsh mostly left him alone, allowed him to work his way back into it without flapping histrionics and the pair ultimately managed to pull out an unlikely victory. But compared to some of the brilliantly stylish victories he has managed in Ireland, it all looked desperately hard work.
There are plenty who place their faith in figures though and will no doubt bank on the semi-scientific statistical vibe that comes with handicap figures: except, as Plato supposedly said, science can be nothing but perception too. Even taking that official 175 reassurance into account, and a proven fifty per cent strike-rate in the race, not to mention he's the best many of us has ever seen, I can't shake the hopelessly unscientific hunch that Hurricane Fly will not quite fire on all cylinders at Cheltenham - again!
This time a year ago Irish racing's self-assurance in regard to doping was about to be blown out of the water. A day after Dunguib won the Boyne Hurdle at Navan came initial reports about his trainer Philip Fenton facing charges on possession of unlicensed medicines including anabolic steroids. Inevitably the initial focus was on Cheltenham and how Fenton possessed Ireland's big Gold Cup hope Last Instalment. But it's interesting to take more of a big-picture view a year later.
What can definitely be said is that comfortable assumptions about 'no evidence' being a definitive rebuttal to suspicions are long gone. So has much of the naivety about the island of saints and scholars somehow being above such things. There is also official recognition that it is in racing's self-interest here to be seen to root out cheats and on the surface this latest doping 'Task-Force' is another display of that official intent.
But it is hard to ignore the suspicion that some at the industry chalk face persist in dismissing the whole sorry episode as some hysterical media creation that can ultimately be ridden out before returning to reality. It's the classic thing of focussing on the symptom and not the problem and it simply isn't good enough. And it has to be seen to be not good enough.
That this much trumpeted Task-Force is only now being set up indicates how glacial the pace of change can be. And since the science into developing a systematic test which will determine not only the 'if' but the 'when' an animal has got banned substances is still some time away, concrete steps to meaningfully police the problem remain mostly theory. The positive is that official readiness to tackle the issue, and inculcate the necessary fear of being caught necessary to dissuade cheats from chancing their arm, appears at least on the surface to be in place. Maintaining that will to keep on top of what lurks under the surface will be the major test in future.
One highly-respected racing professional said he found himself scrambling for a calendar when reading about the Galway festival being threatened with two years of inactivity due to a proposed bypass being plotted through the racecourse - was it April 1 he wondered.
He wasn't alone in his bemusement. We know bureaucracy is asinine most of the time. But politics is about self-interest all of the time and it takes a real leap of the imagination to imagine the politician, either local or national, who will stand over putting a stop to Irish racing's most successful racing festival for a couple of years when alternatives apparently do exist.
A decision has reportedly to be decided in April but surely it really will have to be April 1 for one of Ireland's most high-profile social events - worth millions to a lot of people don't forget - being sacrificed to tarmac. Because in the unlikely event of an outbreak of ethics among said politicians surely there is enough clout within racing to pull them back into line pretty sharp.
And finally, talking of ethics, the cloning of two colts from the sports-horse sire Cruising is understandably attracting much attention, usually with the necessary acknowledgement that a similar course of action is not allowed in racing. Is it too Luddite to hope such a situation persists?
Since cloning is becoming a very real issue in terms of humanity, it's ramifications in terms of animals have to be kept in context: there's no point getting 'heads-in-a-jar' panicky about it. There is also the reality that most of us are woefully under-qualified to even contemplate the complexities involved.
But in horse terms, and especially with the thoroughbred, is it hopelessly unscientific to ponder how the concept of cloning might effectively be a pause button on what by definition should be a continually evolving process. No doubt the science will continue to evolve. But will the animal?
