What's Another Year

If, or more likely when, Aidan O'Brien breaks the Group 1 world record at Doncaster on Saturday it will highlight even more how convoluted and illogical the British flat season is as presently constructed. Judging it's human champions on just half of a 12 month sport is odd enough. Drawing the line with a top-class race like the Racing Post Trophy still to go is barmy even without any world-record focus. It's surely time for flat racing both here and in Britain to acknowledge reality and start totting up its champions on an annual basis.

The fact is all-weather racing has changed everything. It made sense to finish in November when flat racing actually finished then. Now it just keeps going. That makes the call to finish the Irish season in early November a relatively arbitrary one since it reduces almost two months worth of Dundalk fixtures to a curious limbo. Such a situation is at least rooted in some sort of tradition. But the British season appears an entirely arbitrary framework that leaves reality to fend for itself.

For the purposes of increasing profile to a largely ambivalent general public, the British authorities have reduced almost half of the year to irrelevance in championship terms. What counts is the six months between May and October when, so the argument goes, the best of the best can be judged in the best races at the best meetings. On Saturday Silvestre De Sousa was crowned champion jockey and Aidan O'Brien was champion trainer for a sixth time. So, thank you and goodnight.

Except there's still a Group 1 to go, one of the very best of the best. O'Brien's odds on to break the world Group 1 record in it. That's a big deal. Yet there's going to be an unavoidable sense of 'after the Lord Mayor's show.' Racing wants to simplify in order to attract new fans. But there's nothing simple about explaining to the uninitiated how one top class race in October won't count for the same as another a week before. Yes it's doable, but it doesn't mean it should have to be done.

The ultimate UK horror seems to be a season fizzling out at Southwell before Christmas. And sure that's not particularly appropriate in profile terms. But even that provides a framework that makes more sense than the current one. Anyone can understand a calendar year. It's one of the reasons even the uninitiated can get Aidan O'Brien's Group 1 feat. And eventually reality has to trump profile demands no matter how many lucrative PR irons are in the fire.

The calendar year argument should certainly be reopened here. It applied in 2010 when Joseph O'Brien was memorably part of a three-way tie for the apprentice championship as Dundalk raced into December. Then a winter season was created. That has hardly captured the public imagination. All it's really done is introduce a demarcation that doesn't really exist. If the all-weather is a lesser beast, as is the inference, then it is illogical for its races to count during the turf season but not afterwards.

It's not like there's lots to lose in profile terms either. Aidan O'Brien is going to be champion trainer again for a 21st time in 2017 and will almost certainly be champion for as long as he works for Coolmore . No one really cares about who is champion owner on the flat. Pat Smullen's tussle with Colin Keane for the jockeys championship continues to be enthralling. But it could be just as enthralling for a lot longer if they were allowed fight it out up to Christmas. It's not like either of them won't be at Dundalk anyway. And they'll be there after Christmas too when a proper 2018 tot could begin again.

It's not as straightforward in the UK but the current situation there is neither one thing or the other. It has all the signs of a holistic and empathetic public relations, human resource management sub-committee outcome that favours tabulated core-product placement designs targeted at perceptions of observed behavioural data for the 18-35 customer experience.

Yes the idea of Southwell in December mightn't appeal as appropriate. So instead why not keep the 'Champions Day' date but find a way not to leave the Racing Post Trophy hanging out like a bear's tail. Make the championships a 12 month tot from October to October. It's not neat but it's a lot more preferable and accurate than the current scenario. Because at some stage reality on the ground must get to dictate presentation and not the other around.

That's why it would be no harm either for the senior jockeys championship in Britain to be decided on prizemoney rather than winners. The reality is that Irish racing is too small for such a change. Ryan Moore could win it with just a handful of the most lucrative races. But the British game is big enough to withstand such a distortion. The situation now is that Moore and Frankie Dettori are British racing's biggest names, accepted as the best in the business, yet neither cares a damn about being champion. That can't be sustainable.

On a very different matter there's been some considerable soul-searching about the government decision in the recent budget to keep its 2018 contribution to the Horse & Greyhound Fund at €64 million. It's a lot of money but no industry likes to see funding stall, especially not when we're constantly assured Ireland's general economic situation is improving. So there's a curious mix of angst and surprise in the air at the moment. The angst may be understandable but surprise?

Political favour shifts with the prevailing winds and there's no hiding how racing hasn't done itself too many favours in the last 12 months since the 2017 Budget announcement.

How hard a political sell was it to argue for more funding to an industry that kept attracting sustained and often negative attention; from the process behind Brian Kavanagh's reappointment as HRI chief executive, to doping controversies, the bizarre scenario of the public being encouraged to stay away from the Curragh, Workplace Relations Commission headlines, the continuing absence of a proper drug-testing protocol and so on.

To a large extent racing exists in its own little vacuum. It's funding doesn't.