Top trainer's description of York's ground conditions as 'atrocious' was hardly made from a position of strength
York's four-day Ebor Festival was a triumph in terms of attendance, with 93,316 people through the turnstiles, a 16% increase on last year, while the crowd of nearly 30,000 for the first Ebor Handicap on a Saturday in living memory was some way ahead of expectations and impressive evidence that even during the football season, top-class racing can hold its own on a Saturday afternoon.
Not many of them, though, will have left the Knavesmire with more money than they arrived with, and not simply because the Champagne Lawn was so popular on Ladies' Day that at one point people were queueing merely to set foot on it and join another, even longer, queue for the bar.
The meeting was not exactly a bloodbath for the punters, with seven winning favourites or joint-favourites in 28 races, but the Ebor went to a 25-1 outsider while the Nunthorpe Stakes, one of three Group Ones over the week, was won by the 20-1 shot Margot Did. There were winners too at 33-1, another at 25-1 besides Moyenne Corniche in the Ebor, and three more returned at 20-1.
So there were plenty of punters who were hurting after this showpiece meeting, and more than ready to react in what is now the traditional way ? which is to log on to an internet forum and hurl blame at someone, or something, other than their own poor judgment or bad luck. There was the trusty old kneejerk complaint of "overwatering", even though the course had not been watered, and claims that the going was not consistent across the width of the track.
This time, however, the punters had a significant ally in the bristling form of the trainer Mark Johnston, who suggested on his website that the ground at the Knavesmire was "atrocious". He added that in his view "it is surely wrong, on a 'grade one' track, in August, rain or no rain, to have horses running all over the track in search of the better ground."
Johnston, it is important to note, is not just any trainer. He is also a director of the British Horseracing Authority, and stated when his appointment was announced earlier this year that he wants "what is best for racing and not just for one group".
Johnston's intervention over York, though, smacks of the worst kind of factionalism, in that it is ? or could be construed to be ? the result of his own, very partial, interests, just like the punters who have had a bad week.
If a BHA director decides to criticise a track that has just posted a record attendance at its showpiece meeting, it would be better done from a position of strength. Johnston, though, looks like just another pocket-talker, since he has so far failed to saddle a winner at York from 45 attempts this season.
As it happens, he is not that much worse off than usual in 2011, as Johnston rarely finds his local track as rewarding as, say, Goodwood, where he is always one of the leading trainers. Johnston has had a total of 10 winners at York in the last four complete seasons, a strike rate of only 6%.
Richard Fahey, the leading trainer at York for several years, could be said to be talking through his pocket too, but he brought some much-needed balance to the debate on Monday when he said that it is "one of the fairest tracks in the country and last week the ground was just about perfect".
There will always be unexpected results in racing and, at times, several strange ones will come along at once. But one measure of the overall consistency of results that has been mentioned in this space many times before is the Racing Post tipping table, which currently shows a blind bet on the nearly 6,700 favourites in 2011 returning more on turnover than all but one of the Britain's newspaper tipsters.
The suggestion that there is something "wrong" with the Knavesmire on the back of last week's racing is a ridiculous over-reaction. It does little credit either to Johnston or, by implication, the ruling authority on which he has been invited to serve.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2011/aug/22/york-mark-johnston-ebor
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