'Ah Here!' The 2017 Irish Derby shows how racing lacks quite a few things. A basic self-awareness for one. Restricting access to its showpiece event was a joke in PR terms: failure to even make the paltry capacity limit turned it into a sad joke. It also revealed a sadder failure to appreciate how taking state money behoves an industry to not treat the public as intruders. Racing's playpen has rarely looked more childishly self-absorbed or indulgent. But what the Derby debacle really showed once again is a lack of anyone in authority prepared to shout 'Ah Here!' Any playpen left to its own devices will run amok. It's the nature of the beast to see how much can be got away with. The threat of consequence is important. A brake is vital. And it doesn't seem to exist in racing. Did anyone in the Department of Agriculture watch this Derby controversy and think to themselves 'Ah Here - Come On!' The Minister ultimately gets to carry the can but he's got other stuff on his plate and can't reasonably be expected to babysit one particular sector of his brief. But officials wise, did no one in Agriculture House not tot up the amount of effective subsidy racing continually gets here - not to mention the millions being put into the Curragh redevelopment - and conclude that effectively making the public surplus to requirements really is a bit Irish? Maybe they did privately. Publicly of course all racing queries get passed to Horse Racing Ireland, the semi-state body supposedly keeping its beady eye on what happens to all this state money. But waiting for HRI to shout 'Ah Here!' involves waiting forever. It's basically a conglomeration of racing's interest groups anyway and does what its told with essentially an aim of getting more state money and inviting everyone else to stay out of the way while its spent. In such a scenario all inconvenient shouting does is cause ruffles so anyone climbing racing's political pole doesn't get very far without an appreciation of how their progress depends on whispering what the correct ear wants to hear. The Curragh board has been notably dumbstruck throughout, it seems merely nodding through whatever is expedient. The one good joke at the weekend was a mischievous one that the 'Ah Here' bit is a media job: the words 'wind' and 'pissing' and 'into' come to mind. It's hard to know what option is there but Derby weekend sadly confirmed once again what Irish racing's priorities are and the lack of any check on them. There are no consequences when private priorities ride roughshod over public considerations. It's a lack that resonates throughout racing. We saw that last year with the furore over the reappointment of HRI's chief executive, a process which saw state guidelines effectively treated as an irrelevance to be manoeuvred around after which HRI's chairman went before a Dail committee to apologise in one breath and in another blithely claim he wouldn't have done anything differently. Despite that, a little shifting around of the optics, a couple of committees and a lot of hot air was more than enough to keep things steady as she goes at the helm. It's the kind of mindset underpinning the failure of the breeding industry to engage properly in the formation of an Anti-Doping programme. That failure to do so inevitably invites suspicion about what might lurk behind the public piety doesn't seem to matter: it's just steady as she goes on the sea of positivity. John Magnier stressed the importance of such positivity after Capri's victory. He also made a point of praising the efforts of those on the Curragh ground charged with staging the big race. The Coolmore boss said too it's a good thing that a proper facility will be in place at Irish racing's HQ by 2019. All of which is inarguable. The Coolmore boss pointed out the virtues of the Curragh's mile and a half track. No one can dispute that either. In fact there's much more common ground than not here although from some of the touchiness pervading the weekend it seemed anyone not on-board with absolutely everything must be some kind of bolshie heretic. The point isn't the wonderful Curragh track, or the wonderful new project, or the wonderful people on the ground. The point is that this isn't a purely racing issue. If it was then you could run the Derby at half five on a Thursday morning in front of owners and trainers watching through opera glasses. This is about a sport whose fortunes are so hermetically sealed up in the self interest of an elite few that it can conjure a scenario where encouraging the public to stay away is a valid course of action. And that's so barmy it really does require someone somewhere to shout 'Ah Here!' The same could also be said about the supposed reluctance of both John Gosden and Andre Fabre to run their Derby horses anywhere else but the Curragh. Whatever happened to owners having a say in running plans: in fact last I heard most of the top owners insist on it. Coolmore having a share in Waldgeist might even be presumed to influence Fabre's thinking on where the colt runs. As for the idea that Leopardstown's mile and a half track would have overseas connections holding up crucifixes in horror I must say that's a new one on me. Apparently there's a bend just after the start which makes life difficult for jockeys. One could say a bit like the bend that comes after the mile and a half start at the Curragh in fact. If Leopardstown's bend is suddenly enough to make people decide against running then Epsom better start preparing for some crap classics from now on. And if it's enough to turn a €1.5 million race into an all domestic affair then at least we'll have had plenty of all-domestic practise in recent years. It's hard not to think this is smokescreen stuff on the back of a dumb selfish call. And since no one with any kid of clout is prepared to shout 'Ah Here!' we can look forward to having it rehashed again in 2018. On a much more positive note, the strength of the actual racing programme here is indisputable right now as indicated by the Derby results. Capri broke his maiden at Galway last year, beating Rekindling no less. The sadly retired Epsom hero Wings Of Eagles could finish only seventh in his own Galway maiden. Then he broke his duck at Killarney. This is creme de la creme stuff at venues not high on international flat racing's gourmet menu. Finally, speaking of Galway it's a sign of the times that extra security measures will be in place for the festival. Maybe it's inevitable since Galway does attract attention far beyond racing's confines. But there's always a worry that announcing such measures only puts ideas in the heads of morons looking for attention. Hopefully sound west of Ireland sense wins out.
