CHEWING, AGAIN, ON A BONE OF CONTENTION.

As someone born and partially raised in Bristol, I should have known the following fact long before I acquired a copy of Michael Tanner's book 'The Champion Hurdle'. The first officially recorded hurdle race took place at Durdham Down, Bristol. The auspicious day, or inauspicious, if you are of my mindset on the issue, was April 2nd, 1821. The person who is to blame for putting the idea of jumping hurdles into the minds of the equestrian-minded was the Prince Regent who, along with his royal party of hangers-on amused themselves by jumping sheep hurdles on the Downs at Brighton.

Yesterday, after my labours, which at my age take their toll, I watched racing from Southwell on Youtube. The racing provided several close finishes which, if I were a bettor, would have had me on the edge of the sofa. But what truly took my interest was the 'French-style' hurdles used at Southwell and how well they were being jumped, with, of course, the odd exception. 

When I was younger, admittedly a long time ago now, I would regularly (perhaps an exaggeration) read or hear people say that a horse put it's leg through the top two bars of a hurdle which caused it to break a leg. It was said with a matter-of-factness that would draw critcism left, right and centre nowadays. 'It happens', followed by a shrug of the shoulders. Before 1959, when the top bars were first padded, hurdles, with their construction of angled and straight wooden bars dressed in lengths of birch, were akin to obstacles jumped out hunting that had barbed-wire in front or on the landimg side. They were, though I was ignorant of the peril, a dangerous form of obstacle, making horse racing the only equestrian sport that asked a horse to jump an obstacle that could be moving on or during take-off. Not even out hunting would a horse be asked to jump an obstacle that was not static.

I see absolutely no reason why, in an age where horse welfare is proclaimed the sport's number one priority, we continue to race horses, predominately young horses, over an obstacle that can be at times as potentially deadly as a snare or tiger trap. It is not as if there is not a satisfactory and well-trialled alternative to the sheep-style hurdle that amused the Prince Regent back in the days of mass malnutrition and highwayman. The steeplechase fence may have very little to do with church steeples but they are a near representation of the hedges that riders encountered when hunting or riding across country. Riders have never as a rule jumped sheep hurdles for their amusement, yet 3 or 4-hundred-years later jumping hurdles for sport is somehow considered sacred and unopposable and that I am a nunpty for objecting to their use.

Think on this for a moment. Constitution Hill has famously left National Hunt to be trained for flat racing because he cannot anymore jump a hurdle without falling.  What if he had never had to jump the sheep hurdle but from his early schooling to his first race he had only jumped the type of hurdle they have at Southwell? He would have had no swinging hurdle to contend with. He could not hit the top bar and got away with it, neither on the schooling ground nor the racecourse. I realise it suits my argument to claim the sheep hurdle is to blame for Constitution Hill's jumping woes but unless my opinion becomes part of the debate we, the sport, may be guilty of preferring tradition over horse welfare.

Three horses at Kempton Park recently suffered horrific falls, of which only one horse survived. Three completely seperate falls. This sport has been my greatest passion for all of my adult life and a few years before; yet I still want to crawl under a stone when a horse dies in pursuit of what ultimately is my entertainment. If I could change one element of our sport, my sport, I would like to see an end to the jumping of the British-style hurdle and for flight of hurdles to be replaced by the static French-type hurdle used at Southwell.