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Brian O'Connor

Brian O'Connor's Latest Blog

Jockeys Should Be Seen And Not Heard

Roaring Lion (right) survived a stewards' enquiry to win the Eclipse at SandownRoaring Lion (right) survived a stewards' enquiry to win the Eclipse at Sandown
© Photo Healy Racing

The quality of English teaching in Munster is clearly good. So much is obvious from how articulate both Oisin Murphy and Donnacha O'Brien were at the stewards enquiry after Saturday's Eclipse. So take a bow Colaiste Mhuire and Rockwell: such fluency from your past pupils was impressive. But we shouldn't have had to hear it. It was entirely predictable what both would say. All it really showed once again is how jockeys should be seen and not heard at interference enquiries.

Great play is made of how these scenes make for great TV drama. And maybe they do to an extent although when it comes to jockeys evidence there's rarely if ever a plot twist. Now if O'Brien had told the enquiry it was all a waste of time with Saxon Warrior having had every chance and Roaring Lion just being better that would have been dramatic.

But he didn't because his job isn't drama but doing his best for the connections who employ him. Just as it is Murphy's job to do the same for those who employ him. So we had the spectacle of a head-on film being interpreted to very different extents and which bore little relevance to what was there in front of everyone else's eyes.

It was a futile exercise, a little embarrassing at times, and certainly time-consuming. A straightforward call that could have taken a single minute instead stretched out to an extent that has the big-race sponsors in a huff. The danger of too much haste has been exhibited recently in relation to photo-finish announcements. But this was just silly.

If or when a jockey ever comes up with a level of perspective to call a foul on themselves, or concede a foul didn't cost a place, then riders can have some claim to being present at an enquiry like Saturday's. But until then this tradition of jockeys giving evidence - a relic of when there weren't cameras all over the shop - should be scrapped.

There is of course the important matter of transparency in all this, something to be borne in mind in relation to the thorny issue of televising enquiries in Ireland.

But there's nothing to stop cameras examining the process through which stewards come to their decisions. It mightn't make for much TV drama since a call like the Eclipse would probably be over in the blink of an eye. But at least it would be authentic and not the sort of rote pantomime played out at Sandown.

The real regulatory meat of the Eclipse matter relates to how Murphy accidently-on-purpose allowed Roaring Lion drift right without sufficient correction, slightly bumping Saxon Warrior, for which he got a four day ban for careless riding, thus breaking the rules yet still winning. It's a fundamental contradiction which international standardisation has validated: that's some result.

No one can argue against greater inclusion and diversity. It's like arguing against greater peace and harmony. As ambitions go they are absolutely good.

The BHA's report on inclusion and diversity hopes to benefit racing in terms of the sport's governance, participants, racegoers and fans. There have been calls for similar steps here. All of it is unarguable. Hopefully such steps might be just the first in actually benefitting racing rather than simply being an exercise in generating jargon for its own sake.

Every journey might start with a single step. But you would need to have been living under a rock not to have noticed how so many noble ambitions sound impressive and generate vast amounts of procedural rigmarole only to wind up achieving little or nothing for those actually wronged. The paperwork ends up being the end in itself.

From the workplace to hospitals, schools and the law there are vast amounts of policies and regulations designed to root out prejudice, discrimination, cheating and bullying only for their efficacy on the ground to wind up being minimal. The procedure takes over, gathers a life of its own often producing sound and noise to little actual affect.

The consequence is that those most in need of the stated ambitions of these policies get pulled through officialise so detailed and complicated they wind up without the very courtesy and kindness supposedly at the heart of them. Too often the medium becomes the message, an example of bureaucratic arse-covering rather than a message of real intent.

It is absolutely right that race, colour gender, sexuality, religion, economic status or anything you're having yourself shouldn't prevent anyone either taking an interest in racing or working in it. Such statements can't be made too often or in any walk of life. But it's the follow-through that counts. And racing is no different to other walks of life in too often talking the talk but not walking the walk.

It's different though in facing an acute labour shortage on the shop-floor. It is also different in terms of anxiety about engagement with the general public and the generation of a new and younger fan-base. So there is surely a large dollop of self-interest in actively trying to include any amount of social diversity rather than simply producing grandiose sounding cant and deciding that's job done.

During this lengthy period of drought and high temperatures producing the best racing surface possible must be a difficult task for many tracks. The amount of watering that's having to take place is huge and the depths of racecourse resources, particularly in relation to water itself, is being stretched.

If overall climate predictions are correct we are going to have to get used to these extreme weather conditions and that presents a problem, sorry, a challenge, to tracks, and in particular to the quality of surface that's produced for National Hunt racing.

The issue is complicated here because of how the same ground can be used for both flat and jump racing at some courses. Good to firm going should always be the ideal for flat racing. But at a time when animal welfare has to be a priority the question of whether or not very quick ground conditions is suitable for jump racing, and steeplechasing in particular, isn't going to go away.

The work put in by courses during the current weather is phenomenal. But there's only so much watering that can be done without compromising ground for the longer-term future. There's are also only so much that can be done when having to cater for both codes. There's also the reality that this is the time of year when valuable fixtures and opportunities get shoe-horned into the programme.

Sunday's Limerick fixture followed the recent pattern with a ground description of 'good' and 'good to firm in places.' Inevitably as a meeting proceeds those 'places' increase. Nothing can be done about that, just as there's always going to be subjective opinion about matters relating to ground being safe or having no jar.

But if the ideal at Cheltenham and Punchestown each year is to aim for a 'yielding' surface then racing leaves itself open to accusations of expediency when permitting inferior class horses to jump on what is sometimes, effectively, good to firm ground. Because statistically it's a reality that the faster the ground the higher the fatality rate.

If that isn't acceptable at the major festival fixtures, when the eyes of the world are on the sport, it can't be at any other time when the world has something else to look at. After all, integrity is what we do when no one's looking. One thing that seems certain is that this is an issue which isn't going to go away.