Richard Dunwoody

C

Colin Phillips

At the Start
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
13,268
Location
Talbot Green
From Dunwoody's column on the Sporting Life site :

The RSPCA have called upon the BHA to ban jump racing on good to firm ground or quicker.

The result of their research into last season's spate of equine fatalities at Sedgefield has yet to be released but David Muir, the RSPCA's equine consultant is convinced of the significance that eight of the 12 fatalities at the County Durham track across 18 fixtures up to March 25 occurred on going that was either good to firm or firm.

Muir said: "I feel that the ground condition parameters should be revisited, as in Sedgefield's case two-thirds of the horses who died raced on good to firm or firm ground." He added: "We ask the BHA that ground conditions for National Hunt racing are reconsidered."

I respect David's opinion. In my dealings with him, he has been nothing but helpful and he is a friend to racing.

This is a contentious subject and there are no hard and fast answers. Aintree have announced that never again will there be a Grand National run on good to firm ground, for the simple reason that fast ground causes more fatalities.

But what if those animals that need faster ground? Where do you draw the line?

There must be a degree of common sense. What if you ban racing on good to firm ground and there are still fatalities. Do you only race on soft ground?

Horses are no more or less fragile than they have always been. Some have fatal accidents on the safest of surfaces in the biggest races on the Flat. Only last weekend we saw Eight Belles break two legs in the Kentucky Derby.

Clerks of the courses are better trained in course management than they have ever been and they have a responsibility to produce safe ground. Likewise, trainers have a duty to withdraw their horses if they are unhappy with the going.

Nine times out of ten, good to firm ground for jumping is very raceable. The fact of the matter is there will always be fatalities as long as there is racing.
 
I've talked at some length with Nicky Henderson about this and with other trainers at less length. They are almost all of the opinion that jumping horses on GF or F [ie summer ground] is detrimental to the horses *whether or not they prefer firm going* and Nicky H was particularly vociferous in this regard. GF is fine for Flat horses, but even F debatable on the flat as the strain on knees is considerable. Over jumps, there's not much question.

Most jumps trainers of my acquaintance feel that GF and F is not safe to jump on as it crocks the horses' knees - the damage may not be immediately clear, but over a few races it destroys the cartilege and the joints are damaged. You only have to think of the weight carried on a jumper's forelegs as it lands [esp over fences] to see the truth of this. A horse may "prefer" Firm, but it doesn't know its life is going to be cut short due to chronic arthritis after a couple of years. I suppose it depends whether you think horses are disposable commodities or not.
 
Is it just me or is the RSPCA guy incredibly naive?

Who decides the going? Who is he employed by? Who has most to lose if the going can force a fixture to be abandoned?
 
The trouble is that I would accept a trainer's opinion that jumping on good to firm or firm ground was damaging the horses if they refused to run their horses on it. So long as they continue to run their horses on such going they don't have a leg to stand on in my book - if you consider it to be that dangerous you wouldn;t risk your horse on it in the first place, would you?
 
Nicky Henderson doesn't do 'summer jumping' and nor do several other trainers [eg your own SL]
 
Originally posted by Headstrong@May 11 2008, 08:10 PM
Nicky Henderson doesn't do 'summer jumping' and nor do several other trainers [eg your own SL]
Click to expand...
True, and false; the only person who could currently be described as SL's trainer had a runner today. Just for information, you understand :P
 
The way courses water these days is frequently a very big problem, both on the jumps and the flat!
 
Wouldn't it be dependant on accurate going descriptions, what's to stop them calling it good when it's firm? Thirsk did it in reverse on Saturday and overwatered to boot, good to firm (firm) an act of pure fiction.
Personally don't like to see jumping on faster than good, they seemed to pulling up lame left, right and centre yesterday.
 
Originally posted by Gareth Flynn@May 10 2008, 01:20 PM
Is it just me or is the RSPCA guy incredibly naive?

Who decides the going? Who is he employed by? Who has most to lose if the going can force a fixture to be abandoned?
Click to expand...
Why is he being naive?

If ground is waterlogged it gets abandoned, or if the winds are high it is called off so if the rules were changed to include official descriptions of "gd fm" as a reason for abandoning jumps meetings then so be it?

I suspect if this ever came to pass the RSPCA would have to send an official to the track to give an "independent" verification of the prevailing going conditions to make sure the local officials didn't say it was "good" just to get the meeting on.

At the end of the day, as much as we like to attach ourselves to our favourite horses, they are "commodities" in the broad sense, and so if "top of the ground" jumpers are prevented from earning their keep on the track then I suspect it is highly likely they will be put down or worse still exported for meat etc.

I guess the key question has to be, is it better to let the animals run as race horses on firm ground, at the heightened risk of immediate or future injury, or have their careers finished by bureaucrats and allow them to become "unwanted" by the industry?

Its not an easy question to answer I am afraid, especially when we love the animals so much.
 
If ground is waterlogged it gets abandoned, or if the winds are high it is called off so if the rules were changed to include official descriptions of "gd fm" as a reason for abandoning jumps meetings then so be it?
Click to expand...

Those reasons (waterlogging, high winds) are extreme cases, in which it is usually in the course's interest to abandon anyway.

I suspect if this ever came to pass the RSPCA would have to send an official to the track to give an "independent" verification of the prevailing going conditions to make sure the local officials didn't say it was "good" just to get the meeting on.
Click to expand...

The BHA would have to introduce the rule. They're not going to go over the head's of the clerks when it comes to deciding on the ground (much as we'd like them to sometimes!).

You'll just end up with a situation like France, where connections generally don't like fast ground and so instances of Good To Firm (and above) are just reported as Good.
 
Frozen conditions are probably a fairer comparison to make - meetings are often abandoned in this case because the ground, ironically, is considered too hard to be safe for the horses to jump on. I don't see therefore why abandoning because of good to firm for precisely the same reasons as abandoning due to frozen ground is necessarily displaying naivety on the part of the RSPCA.

As for the officials letting meetings go ahead by stating the ground is less firm than it actually is - couldn't they do that when the ground is frozen, by simply saying it isn't?

I am not sure abandoning for waterlogged conditions or high winds is necessarily to the course's advantage? In the extreme case of this year's Cheltenham then yes it was in the interest of the course, but they have abandoned at Catterick in the past when safety of the horses and jockeys has been the motivation as opposed to the course structure/punters.
 
As for the officials letting meetings go ahead by stating the ground is less firm than it actually is - couldn't they do that when the ground is frozen, by simply saying it isn't?
Click to expand...

They could, but then there'd be a huge number of non-runners and a huge stink from trainers who can plainly see that the ground is frozen. On the contrary, Good To Firm is apparantly acceptable to enough jumps trainers to keep the Summer Jumping bandwagon rolling.

I am not sure abandoning for waterlogged conditions or high winds is necessarily to the course's advantage? In the extreme case of this year's Cheltenham then yes it was in the interest of the course, but they have abandoned at Catterick in the past when safety of the horses and jockeys has been the motivation as opposed to the course structure/punters.
Click to expand...

It's the same bottom line though; health, safety and insurance premiums.
 
Fair enough, and I guess Good to firm ususally occurs when the sun is splitting the stones meaning they would have to turn away bumper crowds.

I think the RSPCA deserve applause for trying to reduce injury and fatalities, but I tend to agree with Dunwoody - wherever you have horse racing you have injuries. I don't know the stats but I presume the incidence of horse fatalities are no less frequent when horses jump downhill at speed than on top of the ground.

Also, where does this put point-to-pointing? I suspect p-t-p meets dont have the luxury of sophisticated watering systems and their going in the spring is often gd fm and fm. I imagine they would come under the same rule would they?
 
BTW I'd love to see the RSPCA to send independent going-assessors to *all* meetings. As long as they share the data with us :D
 
The better NH stables generally don't run horses in the UK during the summer and until recently there used to be no summer jumping at all before Newton Abbot in August.

In Ireland there has always been summer jumping and the main stables do have runners, because there is more rainfall and conditions are generally safer. Nevertheless the classier horses are nearly all kept for the main NH season.

To me the conclusions are clear: UK summer racing is dross, supported by lesser stables hoping for easier opportunities for their charges.

If the RSPCA or anyone else has hard evidence about attrition rates for jumpers on fast ground it ought to be taken seriously.
 
Rory, you're talking rubbish again, or you can't count - it was three runners! :D

Grey, plenty of better NH yards DO run their horses on summer jumping ground, yes, even Hen. So does Nicholls, Pipe runs loads, and so on. Nicholls has run 9 horses in less than a week on good to firm ground! So in no way can it be said that only small yards run bad horses on it.

Of course some horses NEED a fast surface in order to turn in their best perfomances, what do they do if summer jumping is abandoned? That's all before you take into account the small fact that this is England and "summer jumping" is often run on soft ground due to prolonged periods of rain in our "summer".

The emphasis should be on making the ground safe, which good to firm cna certainly be; even firm ground can be also. I'd like more attention paid to the frankly criminal road crossings at Ludlow or the horrendous ground conditions you encounter at Hereford at any time of the year ~ utterly inconsistent and totally at odds with the official going (often ditto the same at Ludlow).

The other thing people are forgetting is that in the last week, I do believe the lion's share of the fatalities/injuries have actually occurred in flat races. And on good ground, even.

My take on the unusually high injury rate this week is that it has a lot to do with utterly saturated ground that has been in that state for months and months, suddenly drying out in this warm weather. It makes for cracks and inconsistencies in the ground and makes the surface unlevel, something which cannot necessarily be seen under the grass cover, not least when it is a good covering of healthy spring grass at this time of year.
 
Good points SL, esp that aobut the recent spate of accidents

As regards watering, the objection many jumps trainers have to watered summer ground is that it's 'false' ground in two respects - firstly it *seems* Good, but in fact a thin watered layer is hiding rock-hard dryed out earth which does jar the horses' legs on landing; and secondly the surface becomes 'false' in the sense it tends to move because the layer of watered grass comes away from the baked earth below and so becomes dangerous/slippery.

Watering in summer sunshine only adds to this problem, as it attracts grass roots to the surface, so making the separation of the watered layer of grass and the baked earth even more likely. The water doesn'lt penetrate the baked layer so the roots don't grow down into it
 
Originally posted by Shadow Leader@May 12 2008, 06:43 PM
Grey, plenty of better NH yards DO run their horses on summer jumping ground, yes, even Hen. So does Nicholls, Pipe runs loads, and so on. Nicholls has run 9 horses in less than a week on good to firm ground! So in no way can it be said that only small yards run bad horses on it.
Click to expand...
In 2007 the Nicholls stable had 16 runners over jumps in the months June to September included. The Pipe stable had about 25 runners in each of those months, but this was down considerably from when the dad was in charge (more than 60 runners per month in summer 2005). Hen had three runners in June 2006 and that was it until October.
 
Yet she/they still had them, Grey!!!

Headstrong's right about the excessive watering being no good for tracks either, in the long or short term. In the short term it creates false patches of ground which is especially detrimental to jumpers; basically the top can slide around on top of the hard undersurface so if they land on that after jumping an obstacle you can only imagine what damage can be done to the tendons even if they don't fall on the surface which has moved under them.

As HS also points out, long term it doesn't do a lot for the roots, they tend to become shallower in time after periods of watering which affects the quality of the grass cover and its durability - if the roots are nearer the surface, it is easier to uproot.
 
Originally posted by numbersix@May 12 2008, 12:17 PM
Also, where does this put point-to-pointing? I suspect p-t-p meets dont have the luxury of sophisticated watering systems and their going in the spring is often gd fm and fm. I imagine they would come under the same rule would they?
Click to expand...
I'm not sure whether point-to-pointing is answerable going-wise in the same way as Rules racing is. In so far as Hard - an unacceptable state of going over jumps since summer jumping-precipitated watering edicts were laid down in 1995 - still occasionally appears at pointing venues late in the season, the strictures are either a little more relaxed or alternatively not being rigorously enforced.

That's not to say that racing occurs at all costs, though, and you may remember that many of the early May Bank Holiday meetings in 2007 were called off due to the dangerously fast going. I was supposed to work at Hackwood Park (Basingstoke) on the Monday of that weekend, but ended up getting the day off.

Watering facilities vary wildly at pointing venues. Dingley, one of the best courses in the country, conveniently sits at the foot of a valley with a river running through it. It required the draining dry of said river to ensure that its Fernie Hunt meeting that same weekend last year went ahead, but go ahead it did, and on perfectly safe ground just on the fast side of good. Guilsborough is similarly blessed with enough natural water supplies to guarantee a decent surface.

Conversely, a lot of the West Country, Devon and Cornwall tracks can be lightning quick and in some cases a wee bit dicey late in the year. Indeed, the brand new course at Treborough Hill, set to replace the hated Mounsey Hill Gate for the first time in the next week or so, is reported on Jumping For Fun as being in a terrible state at present - fast, rough, and in serious danger of not passing the course inspectorate barring the provision of an agrivator (sic) and / or water supplies from elsewhere pretty damn quick.

Jeremy
(graysonscolumn)
 
Originally posted by Shadow Leader@May 12 2008, 04:43 PM
Grey, plenty of better NH yards DO run their horses on summer jumping ground
Click to expand...
Of course they do. And Jonjo O'Neill and Peter Bowen in particular have seen summer jumping as a logical and credible extension of the season.

Bear in mind that Bowen's base in Pembrokeshire must be among the furthest flung of all major training operations in the country. With the summer jumping calendar still largely Midlands-based, it makes blinding sense for him to target so many of the major prizes during the warmer months, when he can reach so many of these courses in three or four hours rather than the six or seven it must take to get to a Folkestone or a Newcastle during the "regular" season.

Bowen won £370,000 worth of prizemoney before the end of September in the 2006-7 season, and not too much shy of that total last season - try telling him that summer jumping is an irrelevance.

Jeremy
(graysonscolumn)
 
Originally posted by Grey@May 12 2008, 01:52 PM
To me the conclusions are clear: UK summer racing is dross, supported by lesser stables hoping for easier opportunities for their charges.
Click to expand...
Given that;

- there is an ever greater defined programme of classy handicaps run during the summer months, including the Summer Plate, Summer Hurdle, Summer National, Bluesq.com Chase and Lord Mildmay Chase, plus numerous recognised trials for these contests (at up to 0-135 grading),

- the Summer Plate, Bluesq.com Chase and Lord Mildmay Chase all attracted maximum fields last season,

- each of those fields featured most or all of the top yards you'd expect to see targetting a Paddy Power Gold Cup or similar a few months later,

- the lowest-rated animal in each of these maximum (16+) fields was rated in the mid- to late 120s,

- with the exception of the increasingly disappointingly-endowed Worcester, summer cards containing at least one class 3 contest are becoming ever more widespread,

...the summer-jumping-is-dross line is as inaccurate as it is invidious nowadays.

Jeremy
(graysonscolumn)
 
Originally posted by Grey@May 12 2008, 01:52 PM
until recently there used to be no summer jumping at all before Newton Abbot in August.
Click to expand...
In the interests of anorakdom, I'll remind you all that the last jumps-free summer was 1994. Then, as in the few years prior to that, it was Bangor on the last Friday in July that kicked off the jumps season rather than Newton Abbot.

Looking even further back, Newton Abbot used to share the opening day of the season in August with the Hooton Park course on the Wirral. Anyone on here who says they remember attending the latter, however, is either in their 80s or 90s now, or else an inveterate liar.

Or a timelord.

Jeremy
(graysonscolumn)
 
Back
Top