SUNDAY TIMES
15th December 2024
Is it worth watching? That, for racing, has become an existential question and if the present ebb tide continues it will be on the rocks in a decade. That’s why Gemirande’s victory in the Nyetimber December Gold Cup was worth watching yesterday.
For, as with all races, it was not just a thrilling spectacle, but also the solution to a galloping crime novel where we know all the characters, are not sure who will do the deed, yet it will all make sense afterwards. It is fascinating, exasperating, and interest is only sharpened by risking some money on the outcome. Which in this case, your correspondent did not.
The chief suspect in yesterday race was Madara backed down to 11/4 on the assumption of improvement on this second run for the in-form Skelton stable. Gemironde was seen as next most likely followed by Ga Law and last year’s winner Fugitiv who both have good form round Cheltenham as, of course has Il Ridotto on whom trainer Paul Nicholls talented daughter Olive was having a chance ride in the week of her 19th birthday.
Hopes for Stage Star emerging as the final perpetrator were based on a repeat of his spring-heeled, front-running victory here under Harry Cobden last November and two soaring leaps over the first two fences made you squeeze the betting slip in the pocket. But once they swung into the straight for the first time Charlie Deutsch had Gemirande outside matching and even exceeding Stage Star jump for jump.
Olive Nicholls had Il Ridotto in third, Harry Skelton kept Madara close with Ga Law and Fugitiv further back, the latter’s jumping at times at fault. But as they came down the hill it was clear that the pressure of matching Gemirande jump for jump let alone concede him 26lb would be too much for Stage Star and it was Madara who came to challenge at the head of the pack.
Gemirande and Madara had it between them at the last with Fugitiv coming strongest from the pack.
For a stride or two Madara looked the master but Charlie Deutsch was always the more confident rider and in the final yards held on quite snugly by a length with Fugitiv struggling home a 7 lengths third.
It was the 7th big chase success for trainer Venetia Williams, five of them ridden by Deutsch who afterwards described her as “a magician” and his equine partner in rather more cryptic terms. “I’ve grown to love this horse,” the jockey said of Gemirande, “He’s quite ignorant in his way and you don’t want to take him on. The more you pull at him the faster he goes, and his jumping was electric.”
All this cheer in Cotswold sunshine came as welcome relief at a time when the number of higher- class jumpers in Britain is at an all time low, many trainers are becoming unviable, betting returns down a catastrophic 25%, and on Thursday the situation was given its most cogent warning in Conor Grant’s speech at The Gimcrack Dinner.
Mr Grant comes as a friend, he is chairman of the Racecourse Media Group, but he has spent 25 years in the betting industry including a spell as Chief Executive of Flutter. He was unsparing in his analysis of as he spoke of a sport “paralysed by self interest” and called for “a modern governance model that can make bold, decisive moves to secure its future.”
Calls for compromise between racing’s competing interests have been made many times before but never with such need for action. The snag is that beside the surrendering of long held positions any such changes will also need a sympathetic look from government when it comes to getting money from bookmakers which politically might seem better directed to other things. Convincing of the needs of the grass roots is not made easier by the astonishing sums still washing around at the very top of the market.
In October the irrepressible Kia Joorabchian shelled out a whopping £4.4 million for an 18 month old filly which had never yet had a saddle on its back. That’s the world of the super yacht, a thing of wonder, but racing has above all to be a spectator sport involving everyone. That’s what you get at Cheltenham.