With a reduced Premiership football schedule allied to no other eye catching sporting events being broadcast, one would expect that more casual viewers would have tuned into ITV racing last Saturday than would be the norm for the third weekend in dreary February.
The viewing numbers would have been comparably low with past decades but there would still have been enough following proceedings to make you realise that racing 'got away with it' in times when incidents are easily amplified out of proportion by social media.
Just imagine if prospects for racing at Haydock Park had been so remote that they had called the meeting off on Friday. Without doubt, Lingfield would have been called upon to be the saving grace, providing a theme of its own with the return of Kachy, arguably the most popular All Weather horse in the thirty one year history of this arm of the sport in the UK.
Such a broadcast would have been presented as a star double billing, the highest rated chaser in training Cyrname attempting to put his disappointing King George run behind him, and the best AW horse, Kachy, having his prep for his swansong race.
Even those who rightly believe that where welfare issues are concerned racing yields too much to outside interference instead of standing its ground, cannot deny what a public relations calamity it would have been if both of these animals had not returned safely back home.
As things transpired, ITV racing did not have to turn to Lingfield to make up their schedule, leaving the casual viewer oblivious to the fate of Kachy. Rightly or wrongly, the ITV team made no reference to the tragedy knowing that racing fans would of been aware of what happened, while it served no positive purpose bringing the news to the passing viewer.
Fortunately, these viewers would have shared everyones relief as Cyrname appeared from behind the screens minutes after the solemn expression carried by Harry Cobden appear to foretell of news far gloomier. It may not have endeared them to the sport but at least would have shown the high degree of affection these unique creatures are held in by those closest to them.
On the subject of Kachy, even those of us who believe the introduction of AW racing in this country has done little to attract new fans to the sport but has done plenty to interfere with the assumed priority of the winter jumping programme, became quite fond of this animal.
His run in an up to standard Diamond Jubilee at Royal Ascot last summer reminded everyone that he could mix it in with the best on the turf and it would have been fascinating to see how connections would have marketed him as a stallion in the sense that he could have attracted a new niche of breeder with the focus on AW racing - that of course would have been dependant on the sport itself not imploding through lack of funding.
One area in which last weekend was a reminder of, was that hostilities still exist towards the image of strung out animals finishing exhausted in testing ground. Those over a certain age will probably struggle to remember criticism on a similar level as to what you read now, either from journalists or posters on racing forums.
The first time I can remember the media having a dig at what has been forever a traditional sight in National Hunt racing was in the late 1990's when a couple of writers confessed that they much more preferred watching an AW race to a tiring slog over the sticks with the runners appearing to finish in slow motion.
Many stupidly make comparisons with the Battle of the Somme, which is not furthering the point they are trying to make. Records show that the most dangerous surface for jumpers to run on is firm ground. Horses travelling quicker, putting the shock absorbing tendons under strain on landing, with the falls more likely to result in a life ending injury.
One of the most unedifying spectacles came at the beginning of the old jumping seasons, which more often than not use to clash with the Saturday of Glorious Goodwood.
Cards littered with three and four runner fields run on going sometimes described as' hard ', horses commonly finishing lame, nothing to like at all. They eventually prohibited racing on such surfaces and not before time.
Whenever a Cheltenham Festival has a fatality total that raises concerns outside of the normal hostile bodies to the sport, the word 'soft' tends not to play a part in the going description.
It's ironic that the drainage installed forty years ago was an end product from the shortened, thirteen race 1975 Festival, which was staged in conditions so testing that it was questioned whether the final two days should have gone ahead after the Tuesday was abandoned.
They took the bails off after Ten Up won the Gold Cup on part waterlogged terrain but history tells us that there was not a single fatality at the meeting. Neither was there any losses from that comic strip Grand National won by Red Maurauder.
The old fashioned mud loving slogger, once part and parcel of the winter months, will soon be finding itself redundant if the image freaks have their way. And this will be part of a continuing, blinkered sanitation process, that will ultimately lead to the death of National Hunt racing as we know it.
image cc attribution Simone Bisotti
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