Racing: Get the Derby back on track

The plot of “Silks”, one of Dick Francis’s later novels, written in collaboration with his son Felix, turns on the photograph of a new-born foal which goes on to win The Derby. The two people with the foal, a stud groom and a young vet die mysteriously, and when the vet’s brother is later murdered, the photograph is ripped from its frame and presumably destroyed. It’s the date of the stud groom’s death that enables the novel’s hero to solve the crime, for this establishes that the foal was born in December, not the following January. Since race-horses all have their official birthday on the first of January, this date of birth means that the colt was officially a four year-old when he won the Derby and therefore ineligible to run in the race. His value as a stallion and the stud-fees his owners would collect are of course determined by his status as a Derby winner.

Racing has of course always been an industry as well as a sport, and at times a crooked one, even if crimes are not quite as common as in Dick Francis’s splendid novels. What happens on the course is the sport, but the really big money comes from the breeding side of the industry. Classic winning colts will almost never run for more than three seasons, many only for two, but their stud career may last twenty years or more in each of which they may father thirty or forty foals. The famous Hyperion, winner of the 1933 Derby, was still siring winners when he was over thirty.

There has been no flat-racing this season – no racing at all indeed since Cheltenham in March. So none of this year’s three year-olds has had an opportunity to prove his worth – nor of course have the fillies, but, from the breeding point of view the chaps are much more valuable than the girls who will give birth to only one foal a year when their racing days are done. This of course is why stallions are much more highly-priced than mares.

If, on account of the Coronavirus, there was to be no racing this year, the present crop of three year-olds would not be tested, no stars would emerge, and it would be very difficult to estimate their value at stud. Of course this is always a gamble. There are Derby winners who prove successful sires and Derby winners who don’t. But normally there is some evidence on which judgement may be based. At the very least a Derby winner has shown that on one afternoon in the first week of June he was the fastest horse over the testing one-and-a-half miles of Epsom’s undulating track.

Now Jockey Club Racecourses have made an application to Epsom and Ewell Council for permission to stage the Derby and its companion, The Oaks (which is reserved to fillies) on July 4. The one-day meeting would be held behind closed doors – that is, without a crowd of spectators – the Derby usually attracts around 100,000. The venue would be fenced off and surrounding footpaths closed for 24 hours.

If approval isn’t given for July 4, or for some other Saturday in July or August, then it might be possible to run The Derby and The Oaks at Newmarket, as was done in some years in both World Wars. This wouldn’t be wholly satisfactory, if only because Epsom offers a very different test of a horse. But it would be better than having no Derby and no Oaks, this year.

Likewise staging the races behind closed doors with the public excluded would be a sad, if necessary, compromise. The Derby is a great popular occasion, and if the crowd is less colourful than the one portrayed in Frith’s famous Victorian painting, it still contributes hugely to the atmosphere and drama.

All sports are suffering from the lockdown. All professional ones, being also businesses, are losing money. All are eager to return to action as soon as this is deemed safe. It’s difficult to make a special case for racing, difficult but not, however, impossible. Trainers can’t lay off stable staff any more than farmers can lay off shepherds and cattlemen or do without fruit and vegetable pickers; and you can’t furlough racehorses.

The authorities – that is, the politicians who decide these matters – are understandably going to be cautious about lifting restrictions, cautious, one might say, to the point of timidity, and even beyond it. Many will regard the misfortunes of rich owners of racehorses, and even trainers and jockeys with a shrug of the shoulders: so what? Better safe than sorry, they will say. Fair enough. The trouble is however that many will continue to say this even when the most dangerous weeks are past and occasions for sorrow are fewer.

At the very least racing behind closed doors should be permitted now. It can’t be more hazardous than much that has gone on almost as normal, no more so surely than travelling on the London tube or any city metro.

Meanwhile in its absence the best advice I can offer to racegoers who can’t go to the races is that they scour their bookshelves for a Dick Francis novel or two. “Odds Against”, “Nerve” and “Reflex” are three good ones to start with.