ALL YOU WANNA DO IS TALK TALK

Remember that song ‘Talk Talk’ by a pop band of the same name. Imagine it playing as background music to a montage of all the ITV, RUK and ATR announcers.The song was from the 1980's, an era of unstimulating tunes as by the end of the 1970's the creation tank was empty, everything worth trying having been covered.

The creation tank of those who produce and direct horse racing coverage on televison also appears empty. That is why they rely on gimmicks to complicate things and think it necessary to avoid silence at all costs .

With horse racing there appears to be an unwritten rule of law that those who present and co present the sport on TV have to continually talk and talk. But have the audiences ever been consulted? Perhaps they don’t want those prickly uncomfortable questions such as ‘why are so many of you needed on a single programme ?’

Directors who wrongly believe that the audience need filler, which translates basically to someone to continually talk inanely for long periods, have chosen the wrong character in Mick Fitzgerald for one of the lead roles as he is continually found out. However much he tries to be the serious co-presenter, putting on a professional expression, a sudden injection of resolve into the tone, he is not kidding any of us.

Fitzgerald  now appears so much that you could be forgiven for believing he lives inside your television set. The other week he said something similar to‘when I start looking at the form for these races a couple of days before.......’Well whatever his idea of form study is he most definitely does not give the impression that it amounts to much more than a cursory look through the Racing Post.

He has never really come across as someone who has too much enthusiasm for flat racing either. Remember during his very early days in his new role when each member of the team on call that day picked out their favourite Arc de Triomphe winner. Fitzgerald picked out Sea The Stars concentrating on the moment when he went to win his race, describing it in a voice what sounded like feigned enthusiasm.

Now every single racing enthusiast who watched that running of the Arc was left with that unforgettable memory of how Mick Kinane desperately fought to settle his charge in the early stages of the race. And how it looked that it was verging on calamity for more than a few worrying  moments.You cannot conjure up the names Sea The Stars and Arc de Triomphe without that image.

Fitzgerald’s  observations left the viewer in no doubt that he 'd been given a favourite Arc winner by the director and been shown the last couple of furlongs to come up with  his script.What is frustrating about Fitzgerald in his television  role is that when he was riding he came across more articulate with the spoken word than most of his weighing room colleagues and one who you would envisage bedding into the TV role better than most ex riders.

Of course whether ex riders are suitable candidates for broadcasting is very doubtful. John Francome  slotted in nicely on C4. He never tried to be a weights and measures expert, was reserved word wise but was witty in the Carry On style and paired well with Timeform Jim McGrath.

But over on the Beeb there was Willie Carson. Most of us still remember him for being a truly great jockey in his pomp but unfortunately most under 40 will know him as a gibbering assistant television presenter, a figure of caricature. He would never really settle in to that role. When the right words would not come out we got a cackle instead.

Racing is a sport where everyone has their own opinion whether born from traditional or random methods. The audience don't sit there dependant on every word. Truth is if asked we would rather have periods of silence. Pictures of proceedings ticking along do not need continual vocal overlay.
Indeed pictures with periods of silence appeal as being therapeutic.

Those responsible for drawing up the format of how the sport is broadcast could do a lot worse than watch some other sports. Cricket has it right. Gower, Athers, Nasser, Mikey, Beefey and Bumble. All fit in well, all very insightful, chilled out, in control and a terrific natural camaraderie between them.

Golf too. roaming commentator Wayne Riley acts the goat but he is astute and eerily accurate when predicting how a player will escape or not from his poor lie. The studio teams are with the odd exception also excellent.

The Grand Prix coverage on Sky is covered by a team who are a bit too suave for some. But then again it is a sport for the suave. And they deliver a great show. Their after race post- mortem is expertly delivered with a natural coordination in existence. No needless, sudden raising of the tone. There is time to breath.

Those that produce and direct televised horse racing need to have a re-think and ask themselves why they are continually out performed by rival sports coverage if they really do want the current trends bucked. So far there is little sign that they have learnt anything.

THE SORRY STATE OF OUR TOP HURDLE RACES

There was once a Sea Pigeon that raced in the famous Jock Whitney colours. Look at re-runs of the 1973 Epsom Derby. With Tony Murray aboard he makes his run on the outside, starts to hang in like many do at the course but is still in fifth with a furlong left to run. He is eventually passed by two other rivals to come home a respectable seventh.

Jeremy Tree was not one to willingly pitch no hopers into races and Sea Pigeon had ran a decent enough Derby prep behind Owen Dudley in the Dante and was considered one of the runners that may be capable of causing an upset.

Fast forward to now and bring that same horse to the present, away from that unsophisticated, brusque era without the shackles of political correctness when Gene Hunt and Sam Tyler solved crimes, and every Group One race in the relatively new Pattern system was worthy of the title.

You see nowadays a horse with the profile Sea Pigeon held at the stage in his career after the Derby run would be getting eyed up by many fold prospective purchasers. Smaller chance it be a Nicky Henderson than agents from Australia searching for a Melbourne Cup horse for 18 months down the line, and smaller chance of that than the omnipresent Godolphin looking to take him aboard.

This is a development that has set in in the last 20 years. It fits with the beliefs of  'the world is smaller' brigade. These believe that the globalisation of the sport and the fast changing fixture list that it brings with it are strengths that should be welcomed.

If their Derby hand was looking weak Godolphin could even have scooped him up before the Dante as a squad player. If they came in after York the fact he'd ran from the front in the Dante could have put him in mind as an optional pacemaker if he ran below the level what they hoped for at Epsom. Even back to the Knaveshmire for a pacemaking role for their Juddmonte runners.

With Charlie Appleby or Saeed bin Suroor next to the name he would then be running on the Dubai Spring cards. Then perhaps reappearing again in the 1m 6f listed at York today.

As dispiriting as this all may sound it is actually an optimistic working of the imagination of what may have been. To put it bluntly there would be more of a chance  of  poor old Sea Pigeon simply disappearing from action, another acquisition messed up. Or a long absence, a Winter in Dubai then reappearing carrying loads of excess. Again that York race today would have been the sort of race for him to reappear in.

Whatever they would have decided to do with him he would not have been let near a flight of hurdles - he  certainly doesn't have the profile of one who'd find himself in John Ferguson's team during that five year period of activity.

Thankfully, he lived in the right age. Gelded and sold to Pat Muldoon the following year, he found himself in the care of Gordon Richards. A promising initial appearance for his new yard when runner up in the Moet and Chandon under a young Nicky Richards and despite running like one with a questionable resolution at Beverley the race after a switch in codes would be the making of a household name.

A splendid first season over hurdles, three from four and things got better, A fall out followed between Muldoon and Richards, a move to Peter Easterby and Sea Pigeon graduated into a big,big player in the greatest era of hurdlers ever, not to mention him winning a couple of Chester Cups and an Ebor.

Today, who knows how many Sea Pigeons have been taken out of the traditional circulation due to the world getting smaller and to a lesser extent the expansion of All Weather racing.

Admittedly we have had and probably now lost the excellent Faugheen very recently and Hurricane Fly would have played a useful support part in any era, and a chief player in average years. Istabraq is recent enough to be classed as a modern day winner too though a good degree of guessing was involved with him and it's debatable whether he really did achieve the 180 rating Timeform gave him. They have him, 2 lb behind Night Nurse level with Monksfield and ahead of Sea Pigeon.
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See You Then was not afforded the same kindness in subjectivity by the Halifax organisation. He beat better horses than Istabraq including Flatterer the best US jumper of all time but  overall he was also not racing in a vintage era. It's that misty area where they add a few pounds for what they consider is left in the tank.

In fact of the fourteen hurdlers that  raced around the Champion Hurdle distance and received an annual Timeform rating of 175 or more, eight ran in the 1970's. And alarmingly, in the 27 years from 1990 to the present, only Istabraq and Faugheen are in the fourteen - I could in fact extend that to the 33 years from 1984 to the present but if Istabraq is included then we all know See You Then should be in there too.

It was not Istabraq's fault that the poor era he found himself in meant he was never given the platform to show a more measurable merit. The way I look at it is that in the five Champion Hurdles from 1976 - 1979, the first three arguably being the strongest renewals of all time, Night Nurse beat Bird's Nest, Night Nurse beat Monksfield, Monksfield beat Sea Pigeon, Monksfield beat Sea Pigeon and Sea Pigeon beat Monksfield.

In his three successive victories in the race Istabraq beat Theartreworld, Istabraq beat Theartreworld, Istabraq beat Hors La Loi. This is not meant to drag this superb performer down, rather a quick snapshot showing the dreary overall quality in the hurdling division as we reached the millennium.

There is one thing we better get accustomed to; it's going to continue to be the norm to see a Buveur  D'air, a Uknowhatimeanharry,  and a Nichols Canyon leading the hurdling ranks. And never again a Night Nurse, a Monksfield and a Sea Pigeon. 

PROFESSOR PLUM WITH A NEEDLE IN THE STABLE

The broodmare Set Free immediately comes to mind every time I hear the name  Hughie Morrison . Whether that means he's not been successful enough as a trainer to be recognised by racing fans from the 1970's as a stand alone name is a moot point.

Morrison's family owned Set Free who was the dam of Oaks winners Juliette Marny and Scintillate, along with the St Leger winner Julio Mariner. He came late to training after working in the outside world and you could argue a strong case that given the ammunition he's had down the years he has outperformed more than underperformed, the highlight being two individual July Cup winners.

Unfortunately for Morrison it could be that he is going to be remembered most for being the trainer of Our Little Sister who tested positive for the anabolic steroid nandrolone after finishing last of eight runners at Wolverhampton on the 14th January this year.

If you are looking to fuel the flames you can factually point out that the filly, although a very poor performer, was racing off her lowest mark to date,55. Furthermore her best piece of form in the book was at the same venue almost a year previous when finishing runner up and the apprentice who was aboard her then was back on board for only the second time since. Finally, if you want to be mischievous you can add that her price shortened from 22/1 into 12/1, though in a market like that it would only have taken pennies.

Of course if she had of won then the more likely she would have been called into the testing shed which begs the question of why she was chosen to be tested, a tip off or pure luck with a random choice.

The use of steroids in horse racing has been occurring for approximately 70 years. We hear tales of geldings walking around the paddock with erections as long ago as the 1950's. And it is taken for granted that many of the most successful trainers in the olden days made use of them.

It is also common knowledge that two trainers who did well with a few French imported jumpers in the late 1970's - early 1980's were taking advantage of steroids during a window when the poachers were ahead of the gamekeepers.

Both these trainers have now passed on but it seems quite funny now that they allowed the Timeform photographers down for the posed portraits of a few of the horses involved and the imposing, eye catching physiques are there for all to see.

In fact down the years many perpetrators have left clues for the lenses of the Timeform photographers. It's the consistency of theses physiques that catches them out. On the balance of probabilities something has been going on.

When trainers cross to illegality to upgrade their fortunes patterns usually emerge. Horses in all departments of the yard improve, acquisitions from other yards improve considerable amounts, the whispering starts.

This returns us to Morrison, a trainer with no previous in this area. There has been no sudden upturn in form. Just a yard steadily moving along, some years a bit better than others without any drastic long term swings. He has issued a plea for information with the offer of a £10,000 reward and has not ruled out the perpetrator being a member of staff. The Police and independent private investigators have been brought in. The onus is on Morrison to prove his innocence.

All are clearly very jumpy and we had that incident the other week where the travelling head lad reported one of the staff for urinating inside a  racecourse stable. No doubt a chilled, surreal atmosphere is prevalent  inside Moulton Paddocks at the moment. Jobs and reputations are on the line.

What if the puzzle is not solved ? The buck will then stop with Morrison, and his future will lie in the hands of the authorities and he will have his licence revoked. The question being will it be for a period that limits the damage and allows him to return after a temporary handover to stand in. Or will it be so severe that he will have to start all over again with long standing patrons moved on to pastures new.

Given his clean record it is likely the punishment will not be insurmountable in the long term which will lead to the inevitable accusations of the incident being fudged and suspicions of information relating to the case being kept out the public domain to protect the image of the sport.

This could run and run.