EMERALD ISLE HAS US GREEN WITH ENVY
YOU were in for a rude awakening if you thought the Irish domination of National Hunt racing, so evident at Cheltenham, would ease off at Aintree.
It wasn’t quite the 23-5 thrashing from the Prestbury Cup, but there were still plenty of alarm bells ringing on Merseyside. The headline numbers came in the Grand National itself, with just one of the first 11 home — Blaklion — trained in Britain, which provided 22 of the 40 starters but just three of the 15 finishers.
Quite simply, the home-saddled runners were unable to live with the brutal gallop through the early and middle parts of the National.
One by one, they cried, ‘Enough!’ – and dropped away.
The National result triggered another call among the British training ranks for the handicap system to be looked at. But the idea that a few pounds here and there will serve to level the playing field is madness.
When the Irish horses ran at Cheltenham last month, their ratings were adjusted upwards by the British Horseracing Authority handicappers.
On average, the visitors competed from marks 5lb higher than they would have done at home.
But the improvement shown by the winning horses from across the Irish Sea was more akin to double — even treble — that figure. In terms of handicapping, it was off the scale. Revisit in your own mind the Coral Cup win by Heaven Help Us, who made the running before sprinting up the hill to score by nine lengths.
Or Mrs Milner in the Pertemps Network Final, getting messed about for much of the race but still having five lengths to spare. Then there was Mount Ida (left), who jumped the first few obstacles of the Fulke Walwyn
Kim Muir Challenge Cup like she’d never seen a fence, yet made effortless progress from being detached in last place to come home unchallenged by nine and a half lengths.
Belfast Banter won the County Hurdle before landing a Grade 1 at Aintree, and Paddy Power Plate victor The Shunter would have done likewise but for jumping like he was wearing a clown’s shoes.
If you think any of these results is made possible only by an error on the part of the assessors, you’re watching a different sport to me.
Putting aside the Grade 1s, where Ireland’s challengers are also so far in the ascendancy — Appreciate It, Honeysuckle, Allaho, Minella Indo, to name but four — their levels of success in handicaps are such that we have never seen before in the history of jump racing.
Plenty of reasons have been put forth for the Emerald Isle’s hegemony. Some say it’s down to prize-money or the strength of the Irish point-to-point scene.
Others claim Ireland’s trainers are simply better than their opposite numbers in Britain, and that they number more big-spending owners among their clients. There are plenty of other theories. But the suggestion that a handicapping system that has been fit for purpose for decades has now broken down is bunkum. The number-crunchers aren’t to blame.
A famous ship sank 109 years ago on Thursday. Tinker with the handicap ladder? You might as well rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic.