Pinatubo won the Group 1 National Stakes by nine lengths© Photo Healy Racing
Racing showed its best side to the world at the Curragh on Sunday and it had nothing to do with the 'Irish Champions Weekend' action. The money-raising effort around Pat Smullen's Champions For Cancer Trials event was carried out with a style synonymous with the man at the centre of it. The only bum note was AP McCoy's after his ill-advised attempt at a flying dismount! Nevertheless, on a notable championship occasion it was this singular event that exuded class.
As we speak the total raised has exceeded €1.3 million and still rising. The single biggest contribution was Sheikh Hamdan's remarkable donation of €500,000. But it's noteworthy how so many were determined to make their own contribution towards something so worthwhile and the brainchild of someone so highly regarded. The following was an immediate attempt on Sunday to capture the mood - Pat Smullen’s cancer fund-raising race unites the Curragh
In terms of priority it reduced everything else to triviality. But just because something is trivial doesn't make it irrelevant. Smullen himself made a point of saying how the event had made a lot of people make the effort to go racing who wouldn't normally do so. Days such as the second leg of Champions Weekend are what the new Curragh was built for, a showcase facility for a shop window event.
The first such event at the revamped Curragh was disastrous in terms of failing to cope properly with an Irish Derby crowd of less than 12,000. Logistically Sunday's programme went off a lot better. There was still some grumbling about queues for food, and anyone standing in the open at the edge of the stand didn't do so for long when the rain started falling. But in general, the atmosphere felt a lot more relaxed for a crowd officially returned at 10,075.
The day before, Leopardstown attendance of 13,433 was the second lowest there in the 'ICW's' six year history. Given there was competition from the All-Ireland football final replay it can be argued it was a reasonable return. Overall the crowds for the two days came to 23,508.
There's a context here however. That total is less than the 24,168 returned for the first 'ICW' in 2014. On that occasion the Curragh crowd was given as 10,978. That was long before €81 million - including €36 million of state funding - got splashed out on an expensive upgrade.
But there's a broader background to these figures. On Saturday over 9,000 were at Listowel for a Mickey Mouse card. It also took place when Kerry was basically empty, either literally, with people travelling to Dublin for the big match, or metaphorically in terms of anything else intruding onto priorities in the Kingdom. Nevertheless, apparently bookmakers on duty there reported turnover to be very good. The previous day, 27,100 was the 'Ladies Day' crowd.
If you want to extend context even further, there were over 56,000 at Sunday's All-Ireland Women's Football final, an event that once barely registered on the national sporting consciousness but which is now a rapidly growing event. That's only one element of the intense competition racing faces for the leisure Euro market.
The niggle in terms of the weekend figures then is that so much of it was top drawer. It can't get better. Pinatubo's performance in particular was unforgettable. This space gets it right so rarely that it's hard not to indulge in a little 'told you so.' But that nine length rout in the National Stakes was beyond any expectations any of us could have had. It ranks with Frankel's ten length Royal Lodge display, Celtic Swing in the Racing Post Trophy, even Arazi's visually devastating Breeders Cup.
What's so noticeable though is how Pinatubo is surprising even those closest to him. He clearly is one of those that doesn't do a stroke at home which in terms of his future prospects is most encouraging. Then there's his pedigree which screams middle-distance yet he's got the speed to put a Futurity winner and a Coventry winner in the haepenny place, and in a superb time too.
By this stage some of us should be wise enough not to get dazzled by flashy two year olds - Too Darn Hot, anyone - but if you can't get a tremor of excitement when a youngster runs like Pinatubo did at the Curragh then the game has turned into a very calculating place indeed.
The maximum penalty in California for a first offence with scopalamine is reportedly $500. By that criteria it is clearly in the minor league of Performance Enhancing Drugs. Since there's evidence of racehorses testing positive after accidental contamination from a weed growing wild in California then news that last year's Triple Crown hero Justify tested positive for the substance after winning the Santa Anita Derby isn't in itself a biggie. However the way that positive outcome was handled has dealt yet another severe blow to US racing's credibility.
Earlier this year the Hong Kong Jockey Club's senior steward Kim Kelly was unequivocal about the most important element to regulation. "Transparency is king. Confidence in the regulation of racing is paramount. Confidence lost, everything lost," he said. By that criteria the Justify controversy is another nail in the coffin of US racing's credibility. The problem isn't a positive test for a prohibited substance which in this case is minor. The problem is how the official reaction to it reeks of an apparent closed shop.
Scopalamine mightn't be a PED biggie but it's on the list and provokes disqualification. According to the New York Times, which broke the story, the positive test came back from the lab on April 18. Justify's trainer Bob Baffert wasn't told until eight days later. He requested a second test and that did not go for testing until May 1. The result of that didn't come back until three days after the Kentucky Derby. Without his Santa Anita win however there would have been no 'Run for the Roses' for Justify. It begs the obvious question as to why there was such a delay in the testing process?
The most pressing question of all though could be how on August 23, a month after Justify's racing career had finished, the California Horse Racing Board committee held a closed meeting and seemingly, in effect, decided to ignore the whole thing. That meeting was chaired by a man who reportedly has shares in horses trained by Baffert.
US racing's most famous and successful trainer has blamed contamination for the positive test, insisted he's never given scopalamine to any of his horses, and proclaimed the whole episode a damn shame. It is all of that, especially for an industry already beleaguered in America due to chronic welfare and medication issues. Now it looks to have shot itself in the foot again due to the CHRB taking more than a month to confirm a positive drug test and then ultimately opting to drop the case without telling anyone. That's more than a damn shame. That's a damn disgrace.
