Make no mistake, this sport really is on dodgy ground

THE only thing more dispiriting than seeing a raft of non-runners at Ascot was how predictable the shambolic day unfolded.

We’ve all seen this movie before and when Edward-stone was taken out of his intended race at Cheltenham on Sunday, another high-profile meeting that was blighted by no-shows, nobody really expected him to run off top weight yesterday at Ascot.

Nicky Henderson took out Constitution Hill. Another predictable absence given the past experiences with Shishkin and Altior. The trainer takes a cautious approach with his string and that was never going to change with Constitution Hill but the regular updates of will he, won’t he run on a daily basis in the build-up to the race were tiresome.

L’Homme Presse is probably the most ground-dependent of the Cheltenham Festival-winning trio but was the last to pull out. So it was a day of walkovers, match races and general apathy. The ground at Ascot wasn’t unsafe, it was good. Why the clerk of the course felt the need to slip in the word ‘soft’ in the going description yesterday morning is anyone’s guess.

There’s a case for meetings when there’s a graded race on that there should be an independent assessment of what the going description is.

If trainers don’t trust the going description then punters can’t have any sort of confidence in betting as it’s such a key element of racing. That results in zero confidence in the product.

We’ve seen this all before and are at various stages of the grieving process. The sport is in denial, fans are angry and some are already at the stage of acceptance that this sport is spiralling into a terminal decline.