The flat season proper has started. It officially began 55 days ago only to operate mostly in a twilight zone as the jump game’s glut of spring festivals dominated centre stage. Only now that Punchestown is over does the spotlight switch, which is a mixed blessing for a lot of people.
The phrase ‘wouldn’t cross the road’ might have been invented for a swathe of Irish racing fans and their attitude to the flat. It’s an inverted snootiness towards the perceived elitist branch of the sport, all looking down from below. There’s a touch of hurling fans’ condescending attitude towards Gaelic football about it.
Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary ripely summed it up during the winter, proclaiming that he can’t stomach flat racing. This is despite a growing operation breeding horses for the top end of the sport. O’Leary bred the Aidan O’Brien-trained Group Three winner Mission Central, who lined up at the Breeders Cup last autumn. O’Leary didn’t go to watch.
“If they ran the Breeders Cup in my front field, I wouldn’t go out to look at it. Flat racing ... Jesus,” he told the Irish Field. “Willie [Mullins] has asked me a few times if I’d like to go for the Ebor or that big ridiculous handicap that’s run at the Curragh, the Cesarewitch ... I’d rather win a maiden hurdle at Wexford.”
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While O’Leary is never one for understatement, his point resonates with a lot of racing fans. Apart from the two big races at Galway, and perhaps the Kerry National, much of the coming six months will be dismissed as a diversion until the real stuff starts back properly again. Each to their own, although it smacks of trying just that bit too hard sometimes.
There’s more money tied up in the flat but jump racing’s self-image as an egalitarian alternative is well past its sell-by date. Aidan O’Brien and his son Joseph secured almost €10 million in prize money on the flat in Ireland last year. Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott scooped up a million more than that between them during the last jumps season.
Acclaiming Mullins for his transformation of the National Hunt sphere doesn’t preclude acknowledging how he’s among a tiny oligarchy of trainers and owners – including O’Leary – that dominate the sport to an extent which maybe exceeds even the most rarefied context on the flat.
Arguing against personal preference is a futile exercise at the best of times, although the last six days since Bow Echo’s spectacular 2,000 Guineas triumph in Newmarket last weekend underline how short-sighted dismissing the flat’s appeal can be, particularly in its capacity to maintain a big-race narrative throughout the season.
Unlike how the jumps campaign builds for months towards Cheltenham, followed by much of the rest of the sport’s big prizes getting crammed into a narrow seven-week slot, there is a continuous sweep of big races capable of focusing interest in a way that simply doesn’t apply during the depths of winter.
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This week has been dominated by Derby and Oaks Trials. On Sunday the French Guineas races are in Longchamp. The first Curragh classics are in a fortnight. They will be shortly followed by the Epsom and Chantilly classics before Royal Ascot takes over. Then there’s Goodwood, York, the Irish Champions Festival and the Arc.
There’s an even broader international element towards the end of the year that is necessarily different from a game mostly confined to Ireland and Britain.
Of course, such a narrative only appeals to those prepared to pay attention to it and Irish race fans continually vote with their feet. Last week’s Punchestown festival attracted a record attendance of over 139,000 during the five days. It included a bumper 43,572 Ladies Day crowd, although for many the action on the track looked an optional diversion from a good day out.
But even when that’s the priority it’s still National Hunt festivals that get footfall. Over 28,000 attended a weather-ravaged Dublin Racing Festival in February. Less than 20,000 were at last year’s Irish Champions Festival where some of the best horses in the world appeared at Leopardstown and the Curragh.
How to increase flat racing’s appeal in Ireland continues to be a conundrum. Irish Champions Weekend and the Curragh revamp have been two initiatives that failed to shift the dial. It’s three years since Horse Racing Ireland’s promotional effort ‘Flat Out Exhilaration’ – which smacks of the sport’s ruling body being flat out of ideas. That’s hardly good enough for the sport’s long-term health.
The flat can be an acquired taste to many an Irish racing palate drawn to the thrilling spectacle of thoroughbreds racing over obstacles. It’s a grim irony then how the essence of that spectacle is also its greatest long-term vulnerability. Pressure on National Hunt racing in terms of equine welfare is only going to grow.
Serious injuries and fatalities are inevitable when a creature as fragile as a thoroughbred is put under pressure, whatever the code. Europe’s champion two-year-old Gewan was fatally injured in a routine gallop last month. But even jump racing’s greatest advocates might concede it can be an uneasy task sometimes standing over the rate of attrition involved. Another reason perhaps to give the flat more of a chance.
Something for the Weekend
When Bud Fox (1.53) was winning a bumper at last year’s Punchestown festival, it seemed unlikely he’d be at Killarney tomorrow trying to break his duck over hurdles. He started favourite for another bumper at Christmas but cut out badly on his only try over flights to date at Down Royal in January. Gavin Cromwell’s team weren’t firing at the time, though, and on quick going he can start delivering on that potential.
As a half brother to the smart dual-purpose horse Absurde, tomorrow’s stamina test in the Lingfield Derby Trial should be right up the street of Bay of Brilliance (1.58) Twice a winner as a juvenile, the form of his Goodwood success has worked out particularly well.
