JUST LIKE OLD TIMES

As if horse racing was not suffering enough, it now has another doping scandal which may cascade into numerous connected cases which the authorities will have to consider carefully how to 'manage' in the sense of releasing minimal information, or as it seems what the Irish authorities have done in this instance, released a full detailed report with inuendos as to who they think may be responsible.

Unless we are privileged to have access to all the investigations undertook to combat curruption in racing, both official and off record, then we can only form opinions from what comes out in the wash, allied to bits and pieces circulated by the rumor mill.

Horse and greyhound racing are unique when it comes to how discoveries of corrupt practices are managed. Neither sport would exist as we know it if punters decided to focus all of their betting activities on other sports - there indeed has been a steady stream of interest being switched to these other sports which has been damaging racing's finances for many years but, as of now, there is just about enough punters money to help keep the model afloat.

Cycle racing, whose glamour image has risen to levels close to that of Formula One, has arguably been the most plagued sport when it comes to drug cheating and the governing International Cycling Union have been clearly afraid to hang their dirty washing out for all to see as plenty of evidence exists a to suggest that on occasions they are themselves complicit in it.

Nevertheless, as there is no reliance on the general public speculating money on the outcome of whole races or stages of races, that sport, in a different league to horse racing in popularity in France, retains its mojo.

Returning to the equine sport; it's not really possible to measure with any degree of accuracy the damage done to punter participation when episodes such as that involving the doping of Viking Hoard with a sedative emerge into the open. There is a minority view that the affect on punter participation is negligible on the basis that many find the cheating and deceiving side of the sport fascinating, with some first becoming interested in the sport by this dark side, such engrossment borne out by how well Dick Francis novels have sold down the years.

Furthermore, you will bump into people who bet on horses who have no interest in ' horse A beat horse B by two lengths in receipt of 5 lb ', and are more interest in wanting to uncover some nugget for themselves where they believe a race is about to be fixed.

I do wonder how many passing in viewers of ITV racing, or those who write in letters expressing how racing has helped them keep sane during lock down, realise that Paul Nicholls once found himself as an innocent participant in one of the most shocking doping scandals in modern times.

Moreover, it is so hard to fathom just how much corruption was flooding national hunt racing during the 1980's. Jockeys being entertained and even invited on plush holidays by a figure alleged to be Britain's largest importer of illegal drugs, strange, incompetent rides, and horses being got at, which is were the then journeyman West Country based rider Nichols comes in.

I recall the 1988 festival very clearly, attending all three days - in what was a sustained golden era, continued on from the 1970's, and most certainly the last decade in which no one was prepared or could forsee a decline in the sport's popularity and the damage that would be inflicted by the growth of general sports betting.

The Cheltenham Gold Cup looked wide open with Nicholls partnering the David Barons trained Playschool, who had gone on a marked upward curve winning the Hennessy, the Welsh National, and the Vincent O'Brien Irish Gold Cup, where he proved without doubt that he was now a top class staying chaser. He was a horse with plenty to like. I'd seen him before in the flesh when he contested the Fred Withington Novice Chase at Cheltenham in December 1986, looking sure to figure when coming down three out in a race won by a certain Mr Frisk.

In the 1988 Gold Cup, Playschool started the 100/30 favorite in a 15 runner field that included the surprise French trained King George winner Nupsala, the 1985 winner Forgive 'n Forget, Playschool's 1987 Sun Alliance Chase conqueror Kildimo, past Grand National winner West Tip, soon to be Grand National winner Rhyme 'n Reason, and the much improved pair Charter Party and Cavvies Clown, whose stable companion Desert Orchid had run instead in the Champion Chase a day earlier when he finished runner up to the terrific Pearlyman.

Supporters of the favorite knew their fate early on - the returning Raceform comment by John Sharratt reading, " blnd 5th dropped rr 17th p.u. bef 20th". Timeform commented that, " the reliable, usually sound jumping Playschool was never moving or jumping with his usual fluency. "

The race eventually fell to the locally trained Charter Party, with tragedy striking when Forgive,n Forget was suddenly pulled up with a fatal injury when travelling supremely well, though he never did always find when coming off the bit.

Although a post race dope test on Playschool returned negative, and the Jockey Club, no doubt with potential harmful consequences to the image of the sport in mind, made a statement to the effect that they did not believe the horse had been doped, connections of the horse along with the wider racing fraternity, were adamant that the New Zealand bred gelding had been got at.

In fact, there is a wealth of evidence that points to such practices happening frequently until Dermot Browne was unmasked as being the 'needleman' who administered the same sedative Ace Promazine, that was given to Viking Hoard, when he carried out the misdeed on two favourites at the 1990 Doncaster St Leger meeting - Sheikh Mohammed's Norwich, and the Dick Hern trained Bravefoot who had been making news earlier in the season for being the first winner sired by Dancing Brave.

And it wasn't just doping - there were plenty of short prices turned over in some quite high profile contests where the market is strong that were the subject of dark rumours, with betting patterns often highlighting that all was not what it seemed   - it's no use even going into another can of worms opened long ago concerning the beaten favorite in the Cathcart, Raise An Argument, a race run just over an hour later from that Gold Cup - by Christ things were surreal then!

One footnote to the transgressions prevalent during that era concerns that 1985 Champion Hurdle when Browne was aboard the short priced favourite Brown's Gazette, when the gelding, in Timeform's words,    " lost considerable ground at the start by charging across the field almost at right angles to the direction he should have been taking, just as the tapes rose."

History tells us that Brown's Gazette eventually finished sixth, fourteen length behind See You Then. Weights and measures form had See You Then's winning performance behind that of Brown's Gazette's wide margin success from Desert Orchid and the yet to peak See You Then in the Christmas hurdle, with many observers feeling that the Monica Dickinson inmate was the 'moral' champion.

However, those with clear enough memories who remember that race vividly must have been left in some doubt whether Browne's Gazette would have won without the hullabaloo at the start, such was the impression See You Then left, by the way he quickened away from his rivals. To many, despite the unusual circumstances, he was a worthy winner and would go down as one of the greats when going on to win the race twice more.

Wonder will ITV racing be taking a look back at this era - it would be very relevant in light of the Viking Hoard incident along with the concerns expressed by Jim Bolger recently; but on the other hand it's not part of the image they wish to project for the sport so no doubt, similar to the BHA, they'd be glad if all memories of the dirty aspects of that era was lost in the archives for ever.

image taken from author's scrapbooks 

This track is from an other wordly album which was released in that that drought hit summer of 1976 when rumours were rife concerning illegal substances in connection with the striking success of the French raiders.

NO GROUNDS FOR OPTIMISM IN ANY SHAPE OR FORM

The way we view our racing has changed in a way that could not have been imagined a few decades back - not only do we not need terrestrial tv anymore, we likewise don't require to be patrons of any subscription channels as there are now so many ways of finding a way to watch any race we want, legally and live if we wish.

Often, when there is wall to wall racing and a ridiculous number of meetings we can dip in and out to watch what takes our fancy. If we are watching replays after racing then on the national hunt cards the novice hurdle and novice chases from the tracks that throw up quality future horses will be unmissable; the same applying to the juvenile events and early season three year old maidens on the level.

There was once a time when the BBC had the finest team to cover horse racing - small, select, damn serious but by God they paid the sport the respect it deserved. And Channel 4, bar the odd exception once also had a strong team with Brough Scott fronting, and a great duo on the team, the studious Timeform Jim McGrath and less intense, off the cuff John Francome, who complemented one another.

McGrath was reckoned to be the best judge of the form book at the time in a time when you had to crawl around on hands and knees with books spread out, getting mucky at the coalface as opposed to clicking away on a computer, with tasks now taking a fraction of the time they once took.

Francome had more of a lazy, intuitive approach to events but they blended well, and pleased the viewers. There is a tale of the pair staying in a hotel while working at one of the meetings covered by their channel. Francome got out of bed in the early hours of the morning to go to the kitchen and discovered McGrath in full flow study, form books spread over the floor.

Anyone can now sail through a horses form in depth, in a relatively short space of time, looking at the strength of opponents in a past performance by clicking on the recent performances of the rivals coming into a race, then going on to look how they performed after. No need to imagine how long such a task would take with the old form books - in fact it could limit the study to one or two races a day and that would take hours and hours.

It meant that those who were prepared to graft tirelessly, knew what they were looking at, and possessed  the steely self discipline that the great majority of us lack, gave themselves a chance. Now that everyone can do this clicking away on the mouse or tapping away on the tablet, means that during that past couple of decades many went down the pace and racing against a bias angle, which, without sounding trying to sound schmaltzy, doesn't evoke the warmth of going through the old form books. 

At the BBC, Julian Wilson was likewise one who spent hours with the form books, while John Hammer worked on the Raceform team that produced the form book, and you would see Peter O'Sullivan walk into the course before racing carrying his Raceform loose leaf and military style binoculars. Jimmy Lindley was almost a lieutenant to Wilson, ultimately professional while during the winter months Richard Pitman came across as the unassuming one, certainly when compared with his fellow team members.

Now it's a world where we find information in seconds from a phone that at one time would have took a visit to a library to find. Convenient, but dispassionate, and one that creates characters who Google during conversations and pass off what they have found as though it was knowledge long embedded in the mind. Delve deeper during a conversation and you’ll find them out.

Terrestrial TV is less of a necessity for horse racing than before when you consider it competes with hundreds of other channels, streams, Netflix, box sets, the internet and PlayStations, the exception being middle aged to elderly passing viewers who are set in their ways and understandably see no reason why they should change.

They read out a letter on ITV racing from one such couple, praising the racing coverage and how much it helps boost their spirits during the lockdowns. In reality though we all have programmes that keep us ticking over and we even adopt habits from them - drinkers who rarely touch lager suddenly drinking Amstel and Heineken to enhance the experience of their original series Van der Valk box set, regressing to having salmon paste on sandwiches because Rigsby once did so when attempting to impress posh guests, eating chilli or Reggiani cheese as they have the Columbo approval, buying The Beach Boys Live in London album as there was a poster from the concert displayed on the living room wall in the first few series of Man About The House....examples are endless.

But at the end of the day, and no matter how many letters are read out, horse racing would sadly now be lower down the pecking order than ever before in the list of ‘comfort’ programmes. And the harsh reality is there now exists a greater urgency than ever before that those who watch the sport regularly bet on it.

Amid the present chaos we forget the financial turmoil that racing in the UK was in before COVID-19 emerged. Bitter in house fighting amongst the power sharing bodies, forecasts of the sport having to downsize, owner’s, trainers and riders taking industrial action in protest at the prize money levels at the Arena owned courses.

These concerns will now have intensified many times over with any proposed resolutions to replace the present Levy system already put on the back burner. And for humble fans, why bother looking ahead to Cheltenham - it was bad enough trying to second guess the main target for an animal who may have multiple choices of events owing to the watering down of the meeting; but now we are left wondering will  a situation develop where the Irish horses are prevented from travelling over, or can we even be sure that the meeting will go ahead.

There was a time when by now we’d already have pieced together how the Cheltenham fields may look. We’d also have looked at how the Grand National is shaping prior to the weights being revealed, and the Lincoln ante-post market would be strengthening up - we would probably have entered the annual Sporting Life competition where you had to predict the weights for the Doncaster curtain raiser. Further ahead, we’d have scanned the ante-post markets for the first four classics and even marvelled at how strong a hand a particular trainer had in the Derby market if he had three listed priced at 16/1, 25/1 and 40/1. 

Those times have gone and won’t be returning. The sport had deteriorated but in some ways remained bearable enough to keep a reasonable sized if dwindling fanbase engaged. The outlook now is truly bleak  - the only thing we can’t pinpoint is just how deep and sustained the damage will be.  

image from unrecompensed.com

 This track is from an album called Yeti, strong throughout, and released the month Gay Trip won the Grand National and no doubt in plenty of households during Nijinsky’s three year old campaign along with the juvenile careers of Mill Reef and Brigadier Gerard. The band Amon Duul 11 emerged from the Berlin squatting communes - sometimes they’d turn up on stage with half a dozen members, sometimes with as many as fourteen. Some songs were pure improvisations but bits and pieces have been stolen by many bands since without giving them any acknowledgement. The character on the cover was the band’s sound man Wolfgang Krischke, who two weeks after the photo used for this depiction was taken, left a friends house in sub zero conditions with the intention of making his way home, took LSD, and decided to enter a forest and make his way to a castle. His body was later discovered. He had frozen to death.

LOOK BACK NOT FORWARD, THE GAME IS FINISHED

We sometimes take for granted that other sports can wash their hands of their links with betting and bookmakers, and come away unscathed. It is however a notion that the present plague ridden world has proven to be wide of the mark.

It's taken an alignment of negative developments for this to happen but when paying audiences are absent from football, cricket and rugby stadiums, income provided from bookmaker sponsorship deals become a higher source of dependence. In some cases it could be the difference between survival and calling in the administrators, which means that the momentum towards increased gambling regulation, along with further restrictions on bookmaker advertising, must be inducing nightmares across the sporting arena.

It has been common knowledge for a while now that racecourses actively pursue the younger crowds who will fill the bars and spend to their hearts content, while at the same time not bothering to venture outside to watch a live race, many not even having the inclination to look up at one of the screens inside to watch a race as they probably will not even had a wager or have lost interest after an early leg went down in a communal placepot.

Whenever things return to something near normal then expect the racecourses to double their efforts to welcome these emerging generations with open arms - they have no other option, particularly with the increasing heed paid to the wishes of the gambling lobbies and a niggling worry that punters could from next year be means tested when their level of wagering in a month passes a level that would not cover a night out at a concert.

This means that long term racing fans must also now come around to accept that if they really wish for the sport to the continue at its present level, they have to bite their tongue and be thankful that all these characters with not the slightest endearment towards the sport, fill out the cult fixtures and play their role in keeping the show on the road.

But then again, those of us who are convinced that the sport has seen its heyday and has been on the decline for years may not care whether it survives or not; we won't be around to see it and it is perhaps preferable for the sport to perish and fade rather than be inherited by arrogant peoples full of wokeness who will only finish the sport off anyway - unfortunately, jump racing's future is limited and if this sounds a bit too dramatic just consider that the Waterloo Cup, once the biggest sporting event in the country and still popular in the 1970's when the Sporting Life employed John McCririck as their hare coursing correspondent, was not just stopped, it seems to have been obliterated from history.

The winter game, already neutered by giving concessions instead of facing up to to those who have an intention to end the sport, will relatively soon have disappeared into oblivion also, after which 'they' will begin to dismantle flat racing. If we accept this is what lies in store for the future, then racing fans who still have a tinge of affection for the game can be consoled by the fact that they can spend the rest of their days looking back at the history of the sport and even swatting up on certain periods from the past.

The demand for memorabilia has to be one of the most accurate methods of measuring not only the popularity of individual beings, a series of programmes, a make of machinery including cars and motorbikes, but whole sports in general. Racing is very much included - particularly when you consider how misleading racecourse attendance levels are in guaging true engagement with the sport.

This is an area that can be pleasurable for lifelong fans - it can also be a grim reminder that the tradional fans have, through age, fallen terminally ill, gone mad, or passed away because the announcement that Timeform will publish no more of it's treasured annuals has not resulted in any anticipated surge in the prices of old copies on the second hand market.

In fact, most of those that I've acquired are in such good condition for their age that the owners have clearly treasured them and that there is a good chance they are being dispersed with due to the owner passing away and, as will be common now, the genuine interest and love for the sport has not been shared by the next generation of the family.

The prose used in the older annuals is far more absorbing than later additions - in a sense classical. In Racehorse of 1959, the essay on Prix du Jockey Club winner Herbager, covers the inbreeding in his pedigree and widens into the theme of inbreeding in general, even referring to the Old Testament.

The essay states that Herbager's dam "..is the product of a breeding system, which at times aroused violent antagonism, part of which stems from the social taboos and religious prohibitions that have been erected around it in the human field." It then goes on to refer to the present ( ie 1959) as a supposedly enlightened age!......If only they could have looked into the crystal ball and watched how rapidly all things racing along with society in general would change in the following six decades - though for racing itself, the sudden changes for the worse would not begin until a further thirty years had passed by.

I have also acquired the further Richard Stone Reeves book I was after, Classic Lines, to add to Decade of Champions, and though it's an area where a degree of trust is required I've not been able to resist a framed photo of Nijinsky signed by Lester for eighty quid from a highly reputable company with a high monetary turnover and who only gather signatures from official, open signing sessions which are photographed with the signee photographed signing one of the numbered series with the company's certificate of authenticity on display.

Furthermore, common sense tells you that following a scam in the United States, those running a successful, lucrative business in this field would not go lax or take liberties as one whiff of scandal or a journalistic investigation would blow the business apart - even if they are totally innocent. 

Every so often I search around the memorabilia sites for signed Kate Jackson photos - the original Sabrina Duncan - but am unable to find one that won't forever just leave that trickle of doubt. For now Nijinsky and Lester can take centre stage.I have race cards that I got the likes of Eddery, Carson and Starkey to sign as a kid, but Nijinsky and Lester, is there a more sought after combination for signed photo in the sport that you could ever wish for?

Ormonde and Fred Archer - how could that be authenticated?  Arkle and Pat Taafe, perhaps. You can't have Dessie as if you ask a group of racing fans which pilot you would associate the great horse with I'd bet that it would be pretty equal between Dunwoody, Brown and Simon Sherwood. Same with Rummy, Fletcher or Stack? And apart from Dessie and Dunwoody, the other aforementioned examples contain an inbalance in the standing of the horse and rider. Kauto and Ruby enter the reckoning but that era is much, much too recent to draw in any nostalgic warmth over just yet.

Whatever, I would be fairly sure that a large section of old racing enthusiasts who retain a level of sanity and who are unable to completely banish the most in depth, fascinating sport in history from their systems are developing similar, reminiscent traits. This is what things have now come to.

image in public domain

This taken from an album recorded in the week preceding that of Arkle's final Gold Cup..