Time for Turf Club to grasp the going description nettle
A fine crowd, big buzz and faces you hadn’t seen too often through the summer told you all you needed to know.
We can dress up flat racing all we want, throw as much money as we like at it, but the simple facts are that, for the vast majority of punters in this country, National Hunt is what gets them rocking.
Between now and Punchestown next April is, for them, what this game is all about.
The ongoing problem of going descriptions reared its head at Limerick and it is about time this was sorted out once and for all by the Turf Club.
The first thing anyone who intends having a half-decent wager should do is to find out the exact nature of the ground.
Those of us who tip horses for a living are well aware that the surface horses are set to race on is absolutely vital.
You will often hear people say a good horse will go on any ground, but that is simply balderdash of the highest order.
Travelling to Limerick on Sunday, I think most people felt the ground would be on the good side.
We began with a surface described as yielding, good to yielding in places. The opening contest was hardly over before the grumbling began.
After the first the ground was changed to yielding to soft. So, essentially what was being said was that the ground had, rather miraculously, moved from being on the good side to the soft side. They are poles apart.
Quite frankly, that was ridiculous, considering there wasn’t even a hint of rain, but not at all untypical of what sometimes happens in Ireland.
Jockeys arrive in after the first, mutter a few well-chosen words and, just like that, as Tommy Cooper might say, the ground is suddenly different to the original description.
Wrong going descriptions can leave punters totally short-changed. Take the Grade 3 Chase at Limerick, won by Let Yourself Go.
Heading to the meeting, I felt that might fall to in-form Archie Boy. I was inclined to dismiss Let Yourself Go, successful previously in very testing conditions at Galway, on the basis the ground would be far too fast for him.
Any punter thinking along those lines might have had his few quid on Archie Boy in the morning.
By the time one or two contests had passed, however, you quickly realised Archie Boy’s prospects had greatly diminished and Let Yourself Go was now a major player.
Shortly before the race trainer, Paul Flynn, decided to take Archie Boy out, unsuitable ground was the explanation, and those who had backed it in good faith earlier on were saved.
But it emphasised once again the total necessity of having an accurate description of the ground and the hit-and-miss nature of them currently.
When it rains in Ireland for a month or so the village idiot can get it right, but there are occasions when a far greater degree of professionalism is required.
This case has now been referred on and, hopefully, the Turf Club will finally grasp the nettle and actually instigate real reform.
Generally speaking, perhaps ensuring a particular clerk of a course doesn’t live a hundred miles plus away from a track might be a start!
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DOES it get up your nose when you hear people arguing as to whether Sea The Stars was the best flat horse this planet has ever seen?
You know the drips who go on about the likes of Mill Reef, Nijinsky and Dancing Brave and how Sea The Stars fits in with them.
I mean, who gives a continental. We can never work out who was the best, but what we can be sure of is that Sea The Stars was simply a great horse.
He lit up the flat scene for some six months and why some people couldn’t enjoy him, without endlessly waffling about much devalued triple crowns and staying in training as a four-year-old are, was, well, irritating.
