Getting The Start

The depth of racing talent this country produces can be gauged by the most successful Irish Group One jockey in the world right now being John Allen. Some of you might recall Allen as a former jump jockey who couldn't get arrested here. His career fortunes got so bad that seven years ago he moved to try his luck in Australia. On Saturday he beat the Irish Derby winner Latrobe in the $2 million Mackinnon Stakes at Flemington. The previous Saturday Allen landed the Victoria Derby. It's special stuff for a guy who looked to be on a one way ticket to obscurity back home.

What Australia has given Allen is opportunity. After making an initial impression over jumps it is his transformation into a Group One flat jockey that is most striking. The Irishman's chances are restricted by weight . But even prior to recent weeks, back to back South Australian Derby wins in 2016-17 indicated a career restricted by little else.

One of Australia's top trainers, Darren Weir, has been instrumental in Allen's burgeoning career on the flat. He has described the 32 year old from Kilworth in north Cork as "the greatest horseman I've ever had anything to do with." But he has backed up words with all important chances for Allen to show his skills.

It's the sort of 'start' Irish people have always looked for overseas. Allen's is a tale familiar in so many employment spheres, that of significant talent and ability which must leave the country to be fulfilled. Dubliner James Graham is another example of an Irish jockey who has carved out significant success overseas, in his case in the US.

They have made the most of the opportunities presented to them, opportunities it is hard to imagine they'd have got anywhere near in an Irish racing scene that is unquestionably one of the best and most competitive in the world but which can also be suffocating and unavoidably small when it comes to the 'start.'

Australian racing generally has come under the microscope in recent weeks and it's been hard not to notice how it looks to be both flourishing financially but under pressure reputationally. Racing there has an enviable public profile in sporting terms. But it is accompanied by growing welfare criticism that surged again on the back of Cliffs Of Moher's death in the Melbourne Cup.

The sad fate of Aidan O'Brien's 2017 Derby runner up seemed to feature as much as Cross Counter's victory in the post race fallout. Some Australian coverage was vehement in its criticism, and not just on the badlands of social media. Plenty mainstream coverage focussed on this supposed latest example of the racing industry's 'cruelty.'

Much of it was framed in the context of thousands of drunk, party-going race-goers blithely betting and indifferent to what had happened Cliffs Of Moher.

Inevitably the Irish horse's demise was also put into the context of how it was the fifth fatality in six years at the Melbourne Cup. That one of those was due to a horse sustaining fatal injuries when spooked after the race, or that Red Cadeaux was put down two and a half weeks later, were inconvenient details to fit into the narrative.

There are valid queries about such statistics. Two mile flat handicaps are not supposed to generate such a rate of attrition. But it's hard to see what more can be done in terms of pre-race veterinary examination. And it's not like last Tuesday's ground was gun-metal hard either. What's invalid though are anthropological excesses that frame a sport and industry in terms of rampant cruelty.

Rehashing the arguments as to why that's the case can be saved for another day although it's a debate racing authorities everywhere need to feel comfortable about having at anytime and anywhere. Doing what they say they do in welfare terms is vital in pitching against extremists hardly doing their cause any favours with the sheer joylessness of their outlook sometimes.

However dismissing it as irrelevant is a dangerous indulgence that even the hardest racing chaw can't afford. Changing social attitudes down under aren't an Australian aberration. If racing can become increasingly unfashionable in a country famous for its love of sport and betting then perspectives can alter elsewhere too.

It's the context in which a House of Commons debate on the back of an 'e‑petition' set up by the animal rights group Animal Aid was held last month. During that debate the British Horseracing Authority was accused of lacking urgency in its response to some incidents and of failing to deal with the whip issue.

Part of the debate related to the BHA's evidence of a falling death rate, both on and off track. That led one MP to query as to when the number of racing deaths will be "zero." It betrayed both a dreadful ignorance of the reality of working with animals and also growing public unease with the optics of racing. Some might dismiss it as sentiment. But we all work on emotions of some kind.

It's why the issue of the whip is going to get even more contentious. Racing cannot operate in a vacuum. Nor should it aspire to. And for a sport which in the coming years is likely to come under more and more scrutiny in terms of animal welfare, it is vital that action be proactive rather than reactive.

South African racing has taken an initiative and introduced trail races without whips, describing it as "a statement that needed to be made" in terms of attracting new audiences who might perceive the whip negatively. This is the sort of step that needs to be made and should have been made here long ago. Not surprisingly though there will be a lot of official European scrutiny of what happens.

The reflex reaction among so many in racing will be that this is pandering to ignorance, a PR exercise rather than anything substantial or educative. There's plenty of justification for that. But as this space has repeatedly argued, this is a sentimental rather than rational issue. And there's no way of making dumb animals being struck with a whip look attractive. In this case the optics really do matter.

Hugh Bowman was one of half a dozen Melbourne Cup jockeys who got penalties for their whip use. Bowman's Cup ride earned him a 35 meeting suspension in total and it was interesting to see that 21 of those were for weighing in half a kilogram overweight. Most reaction to that here was incredulity. But that surely says more about the place punters occupy on Irish racing's list of priorities.

Australian racing's self interest is rooted in encouraging punters to believe their interests are taken seriously. The same self interest doesn't exist here.

Finally, punters and public optics are important. However it is possible to cater for both without having to swallow some of the Group One rubbish that gets generated sometimes, such as Ruby Walsh's supposed fondness for jumping off horses at the final fence just to pull the plug on Joe Paranoid's two Euro accumulator.

This hardy trope got generated again on the back of the exits of both Footpad and Saldier at Naas on Saturday. The outcome was yet more social media evidence that some people will believe any bilge if they really want to. Following John Allen to Australia isn't a runner for Walsh at this stage. But you'd think he might be tempted sometimes.