British jump racing is sick but attempts are being made to treat it

When the exceptional Willie Mullins saddled the first five home in the Gallagher Novices’ Hurdle, no one batted an eyelid. When Grey Dawning beat Ginny’s Destiny and Djelo in the Turners Novices’ Chase, the commentator made the point that it was a British 1-2-3 as if it was an extraordinary happening.

A good doctor, though, does not just rely on a patient’s temperature reading and give them a headache pill. To make a diagnosis they will check blood pressure, maybe order a blood test and a scan. And in this case all measurements – field sizes, attendances, betting turnover, horses in training, ownership – suggest the patient is poorly.

Only one British Grade One between last year’s Gold Cup and this year’s Festival attracted a double-figure field. The biggest British-based owners are flocking to Ireland. When Ballyburn led home a 1-2-3-4-5 for Mullins, four of the five runners belonged to British-based owners.

Affordability checks on people having a bet, one of the most un-Conservative policies I have ever seen, is having an adverse effect on betting turnover. Some bookmakers, who have an eye on the much bigger prize of the US market, are using it as an excuse to shut down or limit winning accounts. I know several people who have stopped owning horses because they are now unable to get a bet on their own runners.

The changing face of how horses are sourced can be summed up in the Triumph Hurdle won by Majborough, with Kargese second. This used to be the Cheltenham race for Flat-sourced horses, yet these were French-bred jumpers who had never run in a Flat race. The good Flat horses now go to the Middle East or Australia.

In the plus column, prize money is finally beginning to creep upwards at the higher end. However, with this Government regarding the sport as just another road with potholes in it and Labour likely to regard it somewhere between private schools (to be taxed) and country sports (to be outlawed) because of underlying class prejudice and false belief that it is a rich man’s game, Lord knows where all that money is going to keep coming from. Sunday evening racing does not look like the answer to me.

These things are, by nature, cyclical and it will swing round again, it is just what can you do to give the swing a push? That may even be done for us as the Irish government becomes more metropolitan and its racing industry has less access to the corridors of power than it once did. Irish racing, too, looks like it faces some bumps in the road.

I do not think the British Horseracing Authority is asleep at the wheel. Julie Harrington, its chief executive, put out a “state of the nation” pronouncement about British jump racing on Saturday and accepted that it had been a bruising week, pointing out that Irish domination of the Grade One races is a problem for both sides of the Irish Sea.

“Put simply,” she said starkly, “the rate of decline of jump racing in Britain at the top end has outstripped the measures that have been put in place to tackle it. We must do more, more quickly, and in a more coordinated and decisive manner.

“Central to this is the delivery of the industry strategy. At the core of this is investment in the top echelons of our sport, with a view to incentivising the best horses to be bred, owned, trained and raced on these shores. An additional £3.8 million in prize money has already been earmarked for investment in 2024 across the top end of the sport in both codes.”

(I should point out that £3.8 million might buy you seven horses to have trained by Mullins.)

“We also need to grow our fanbase by encouraging new fans and retaining existing fans and owners, improve the experience of ownership and attending and viewing racing, and much more besides,” added Harrington.

“To achieve this the sport must work together with urgency and clarity of purpose. The times of being reluctant to embrace change or new ideas, lack of transparency, and focusing on narrow self-interest must be put firmly behind us.”

Barry Geraghty, the Irish jockey who sold Constitution Hill to Nicky Henderson, says British trainers and owners need to buy the better horses. “English trainers are not lazy but they need to be more proactive in finding horses and moving on them,” he said.

There is no question that there is too much jump racing for the current horse population and I would cut at least a couple more meetings, one in the north and one in the south, a week. Prune a rose and it comes back stronger. It may not be totally indicative of racing’s well-being here or in the Emerald Isle but, in an ideal world, for both Britain and Ireland, the Prestbury Cup should be in the balance every year.