No Percentage In Nostalgia

Someone wise once described nostalgia as memory without the pain. Many within National Hunt racing's will probably hark back to the past during what's set to be another winter of success for some and discontent for others. It's jump racing's current contradiction that it has never been more successful yet more people feel more excluded from it than ever before. Nostalgia is deceptive comfort though. It presumes a halcyon time which in all likelihood never existed.

That doesn't mean racing's supposedly more egalitarian code hasn't gone through a crisis of identity in the last decade. When the flat represents a better opportunity for so many people to compete in, and the jumps provides an increasingly narrow competitive narrative for fans, then lamenting a past of unlikely little guy successes is tempting.

But it's misleading. Such little guy stories stood out because they were rare. Money has always shouted in racing. The difference now is the scale of wealth at the top of the National Hunt game. It's money that only has to whisper.

Tom Mullins recently outlined an admirably forthright perspective on how a concentration of resources by an ownership elite has made the opportunity to compete for anyone else incredibly difficult. Mullins pointed to a handful of trainers, including his brother, Willie, who're dealing with billionaires such Michael O'Leary and JP McManus.

He also outlined a scenario where having such a billionaire owner prepared to put in 40 horses at an average €100,000 a go is required to challenge. Then a trainer can compete at the top level.

In Mullins's case this is almost certainly true. He is someone who has proven his ability to saddle winners with relatively cheap material. He was also a vital cog in the operation towards the end of his legendary father Paddy's career. Group One success on the flat this year for Ken Condon and Patrick Prendergast indicates the level of horsemanship out there if securing the right material.

That however has always been racing's primary 'if.' And it has always led to an elite, whether in terms of owners or the trainers they choose to send material to. Success has always bred success and often it can seem rooted in nothing more substantial than fashion. But at its heart is the cold reality that paying the piper means calling whatever tune you like. And that has never changed.

Jump racing's elitism pays off in terms of quality horses winning at Cheltenham and other Spring festivals when they get portrayed under some vague and sometimes disingenuous 'Team Ireland' banner. In cold hard terms this is success for 'Team Gigginstown' or 'Team Mullins.' And if you're professionally hanging on in the face of those teams it must be hard to get patriotic on-cue.

Especially since the consequences of that elitism will have been stamped all over months of winter action beforehand; valuable graded races turned into little more than private small-field tussles, part of an overall picture that highlights excellence while also increasingly divorcing the action from the sport's grassroots.

The famously squeezed middle continues to get squeezed. And the consequence of that will be stamped all over the upcoming winter action, both in terms of the racing itself but also public engagement. There's no silver bullet. Equality of opportunity is impossible. Equality of outcome is ridiculous. But one sure thing is that there's no percentage in nostalgia.

There might be a percentage this Saturday though in plumping for Mendelssohn to bridge a quarter century gap by becoming the first European based horse since Arcangues to win the Breeders Cup Classic on dirt.

An attempt to put in perspective the scale of the challenge facing Aidan O'Brien's colt is contained in the following link - Can Roaring Lion Win Breeders Cup Classic Where Others Failed

O'Brien's Classic challenge is different this year. Almost two decades of firing turf stars at the dirt in a largely hit-and-hope policy has yielded a runner up spot with Giants Causeway and a third with Declaration Of War. Time, and the experience of other Ballydoyle turf champions, has shown just how exceptional both efforts were by horses competing on an alien surface for the first time.

But this has been Mendelssohn's objective ever since his Kentucky Derby flame out in May. It isn't some end of season shot to nothing but an end game with the potential to transform his future stud profile. He has already proven his ability to run on dirt. Maybe it isn't at the level that freakish Meydan performance suggested in the Spring. But there could be enough to finally give O'Brien the pot he cherishes more than any other.

Mendelssohn was a decent second in the Travers. But it was his third in the Jockey Club last time that suggests he is a legitimate contender in a Classic without an outstanding home contender. So is Godolphin's Thunder Snow on that Belmont form. But considering the pace Ryan Moore asked him to chase that day there was an admirable resolution to the way Mendelssohn kept going.

At this time of year, flat racing's final international hurrah always highlights various peculiarities and differences that operate elsewhere. Last week's Australian action was informative in a number of aspects, not least of which was that the eight-runner Cox Plate field was known a full four days before the race was run. Yet 48 hour declarations here can still provoke outraged signs of the cross.

Another interesting aspect was the 15 meeting ban Oisin Murphy picked up for his Manikato Stakes ride on Spirit Of Valor which rules him out of the Melbourne Cup. Admittedly without having seen the head-on, I reckon Murphy's manoeuvre would barely have earned him a slap on the wrist in this part of the world. Any action would almost certainly have been filed under accidental.

At Moonee Valley though the stewards deemed the interference to be in the high range. Even taking into account the Irish rider's record, which they described as impeccable, they slapped 15 meetings on for allowing Spirit Of Valor to lay in over the final 50 metres of the race. Much of the reaction here was little more than variations of whether or not Australian officials lost their sanity.

Except of course these are officials who regulate a racing culture where famously jockeys ride a lot tighter than here. And while doing that they somehow mostly manage not to engage in the sort of routine accidental on purpose drifting that makes an already dangerous job even more fraught than it already is.

Murphy admirably sucked it up and didn't complain. He'll know better next time he rides in Australia. That is unless months of bad practise riding to the rules that apply back here make him forget.

As for Winx, she is clearly an absolute top-notcher. Benbatl clearly isn't. It's no coincidence he's won his Group One's in Germany and Dubai. By absolute top European standards he's a Group Two horse. But Winx dealt with him the way a proper Group One horse should. This stupid hemispheric posturing about how wonderful she is or isn't is tedious. By any measure she's surely a topper.

Just how much of a topper Samcro could prove too is probably the most intriguing question for many ahead of the winter jumps action kicking off properly. Whether Samcro reappears at Down Royal this week could come down to ground conditions. And whether or not he stays over hurdles or goes over fences is ultimately down to Michael O'Leary. He is after all the one paying the piper.