The rules of racing often fail to do what they say on the tin. A pick-and-mix attitude prevails when it comes to what is taken seriously and what isn’t. However, when it comes to the pacemaker blight, it is time for racing to live up to its own rhetoric.
It says on the tin that every horse must run on its merits and get every opportunity to achieve its best possible position. Due to the persistent threat of legal action, the rules in Ireland even got amended to state that every horse must be seen to have run on its merits judged by a reasonable and informed member of the racing public.
That’s the black-and-white aspiration; everyone realises day-to-day reality is a very grey beast in comparison.
The practicalities of a handicap-based structure means horses don’t run on their merits all the time. Regulation involves subjective interpretation. This leads to differentiation between an “easy”, that usually results in a blind eye being turned, and a straightforward “stop”, that sometimes forces action.
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There are far more than 50 such subjective shades of grey and the issue of pacemakers has been widely regarded as vanilla in comparison to some shadier stuff that transgresses the rules. “No harm, no foul” is the prevailing attitude.
Except there is a foul. And there is harm. If there wasn’t, pacemakers wouldn’t be frowned upon in other global jurisdictions. They realise how much their financial bread is buttered by punter confidence in what they’re watching.
A different attitude prevails closer to home. But what kind of a spectacle was last week’s Juddmonte International, where so much of the focus in one of the best races in the world ended up on a lowly pacemaker?
The 150-1 Birr Castle, supplemented into the race simply to cut out a decent tempo for Godolphin’s main hope Ombudsman, was ignored by the five other runners, got loose on the lead and held an almost 30-length lead well into the straight.
The same thought occurred to everyone: “not again”.
The nonsense argument is that a strong, even pace benefits everyone, like the game is famed for such altruism
That’s because three weeks earlier, another of British racing’s showpiece events, the Sussex Stakes, was reduced to farce when another 150-1 pacemaker, Qirat, got loose. He held on to win as the jockeys of his big-gun rivals twisted themselves into convoluted tactical knots.
Birr Castle eventually did get overhauled. But he still managed to hold for third in a performance that suggested his jockey, Rab Havlin, got his pace fractions spot on and some of his opposition messed up.
Nevertheless, because Ombudsman won, there was a sense of all’s well that ends well. It smacked of complacency. Even to those familiar with racing vernacular, it was a painful watch. It must have been baffling to anyone else.
Normally, this is a sport paranoid about the optics it presents to the world. But, apparently, it’s no biggie if twice in three weeks two of its championship events get reduced to a near travesty of what top-class racing is supposed to be.
There’s a reason pacemakers are used in athletics when fast times are the target. There’s also a reason no “rabbits” are allowed in championship races. They ruin the competitive pitch.
Pacemakers are almost always an option only for super-rich owners. It effectively means they control a race tempo and they know how it’s going to be run beforehand. That’s a huge competitive advantage. It’s also team tactics and they’re against the rules.
Banning pacemakers outright is an all but impossible task. It requires proving intent; all a trainer has to say is that their horse likes to go forward anyway. And the reality, as we’ve seen, is that some pacemakers do hold on to win.
But otherwise, if it runs like a pacemaker and looks like a pacemaker, it’s probably a pacemaker. That requires officialdom to act, enforce the rules in place and properly penalise breaches of the rules where achieving the best possible position appears to be a secondary consideration.
One of the dubious justifications used for sacrificing one runner to benefit another is it provides a level playing field for finding out what the best horse is. The nonsense argument is that a strong, even pace benefits everyone, like the game is famed for such altruism.
Many elements go into making up a top-class racehorse and a key one is adaptability. It’s an ability that winds up diluted by artificial pace scenarios.
If, as the saying goes, a good horse can go on any ground, it’s not unreasonable to expect one to be tactically versatile too. There’s nothing philanthropic about packing a race to give an advantage to one horse over another, especially when it is versatile enough to be master of its own tactical fate.
Employing pacemakers is essentially unfair. They also play fast and loose with the rule book, as well as supplying a wholly unsatisfactory spectacle that often undermines the purpose of what is supposed to be the whole idea of a race – finding out what the best horse is.
This issue demands to be taken a lot more seriously than it currently is.
Something for the Weekend
Last year’s Solario Stakes threw up no less than Field Of Gold. His stable companion Publish will be the focus of attention in Saturday’s Sandown feature this time. The Royal Ascot winner Humidity (3.35, Sandown) looked uncomfortable around Goodwood’s gradients last time and the long, testing straight should suit this long-striding colt much more.
Genuine Article (4.37, Curragh) cut no ice in last year’s Irish Cambridgeshire but looked a transformed proposition when scoring at the Galway festival a month ago. The chances of ease in the going will only help his chances.
