Jump racing policy should err on side of too much watering than too little

Topweight in the Thankless Task Handicap right now might be the clerks of the course struggling to supply appropriate going as the climate challenge throws up enough unpredictability to make tipping big-odds winners look easy.

Just how volatile ground conditions can be in the new weather reality was underlined on Wednesday when Wexford raced on watered ground. It was a postponed fixture from the October bank holiday Monday, just nine days earlier, that was cancelled due to waterlogging.

It’s the sort of wildly fluctuating swing to one of the sport’s most basic elements – the surface – that represents a core issue for National Hunt racing particularly.

The thorny problem was amplified at the first Grade One fixture of the new jumps season in Down Royal on Saturday, as the track’s biggest day of the year was decimated after 19 horses were taken out due to the going. They included Affordale Fury and Heart Wood in the €160,000 Champion Chase, which was ultimately won by the cross-channel raider Haiti Couleurs.

Gordon Elliott, consistently the most successful trainer at the meeting, expressed his displeasure at the ground being too quick after just one race the previous day when he took out five runners.

“These are winter horses,” he said. “You can’t depend on the rain. You have a good watering system here. It’s not good enough.”

To water or not to water is a question that is keeping a lot of track officials awake at night. Do too much, and those with runners that like it quick are unhappy; do too little, and those with apparently proper winter horses are irate. It’s a case of damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

Mixed up in all this is the concept of safe ground. Just how subjective a concept it is was reflected in Henry de Bromhead taking Heart Wood out of the big race. A day earlier he said his jockey Darragh O’Keeffe described the course as “lovely safe ground”, with de Bromhead adding that as long as those conditions remained, he would line up. Overnight watering didn’t prevent Heart Wood being a non-runner.

Elliott’s argument was that Down Royal should have watered in the days before, even though rain was forecast. It didn’t materialise, but if it had, and heavier rain than expected came, then the flak could have flipped to conditions being too testing for horses first-time out.

In big-picture terms, the ground issue is even more urgent in Britain, where the jumps programme has been seriously disrupted this autumn.

On Friday and Saturday, Aintree hosts a pair of meetings originally scheduled for Exeter and Wincanton. The impact of the summer drought means the West Country tracks can’t provide suitable jumping ground. The irony is that, even in November, watering is taking place at Aintree.

No amount of watering could save Monday’s Kempton fixture. The ground is so dry that the 56mm of rain that fell last weekend made no difference.

The daunting thought is that this is probably just a taste of what’s to come. Climate change reality is rearing up in racing’s own little parish and the sport faces having to make real decisions to make sure the problem doesn’t become a runaway.

A seminar on the issue was held at Naas racecourse on Monday. Representatives from every track and the various professional groups within Irish racing attended. It’s likely to be the first of many such gatherings aiming to find solutions.

The nature of the sport means ground is vital. The act of half a tonne of horseflesh repeatedly hitting the turf after jumping obstacles puts pressure on animals. When those animals are valuable and talented, the caution is understandable.

At the sport’s biggest events, every effort is made to ensure some ease in the going.

The Cheltenham Festival aims to start on ground that’s at least good to soft. That it’s an imprecise matter was amplified by Willie Mullins’s threat last March to not bring his best horses in future if conditions aren’t soft enough. Yielding is the minimum at Punchestown’s festival.

That should be the baseline for all jumps racing. It’s not straightforward for tracks that race on the flat too. But there have been jumps meetings runs on ground with firm in the description and from a welfare viewpoint that’s a reputational own goal waiting to happen.

It makes the sport open to the charge that caution is selectively applied to the best and most valuable horses on the most high-profile stages.

Racing must face up to the changing climate reality and how its impacted by it. Water is an increasingly precious resource, but apparently Irish tracks are pretty much self-sufficient when it comes to watering, although how sustainable that is on the back of more summers like the one just gone is anyone’s guess.

But if watering is doable, then it’s in jump racing’s own interests to officially err on the side of too much of it, rather than too little. Reliance on imprecise definitions such as safe won’t cut it. As much accurate and tangible information needs to be available to all concerned. Otherwise, racing will find itself storing up reservoirs of problems for itself.

Something for the Weekend

Just six runners line up for the transferred Haldon Gold Cup at Aintree on Friday and it’s hard to get away from Dan Skelton’s Mirabad (3pm) as the likely winner. A course and distance Grade One winner in the spring, he returned to action with a spin over hurdles at Carlisle that should set him up perfectly for this valuable contest.

Ralph Beckett claims 5lbs off the 2024 winner Lord Melbourne (3.25pm), who has a third crack at Saturday’s November Handicap in Doncaster. Sixth last year, the horse showed a glimpse of form again when third on his last start at York and could carry that that momentum forward at decent odds.