Attendances at race meetings set new records over Christmas and the New Year and there is no need to look beyond the penultimate race at Sandown on Saturday for a reason why jump racing continues to expand and enthral its audience through the cold, dark months. The final of the 2016 Veterans’ Chase Series has attracted 19 runners, all at least 10 years old, to race for a first prize of £62,000, and for several thousand racegoers it will be part spectacle, part reunion as the field sets off with three miles ahead of them.
The British Horseracing Authority inevitably attracts its share of criticism from all sorts of directions over the course of an average year, at least some of which is thoroughly deserved. But it is only fair to acknowledge its successes, too, and the Veterans’ Series, which was launched in the autumn of 2014 and now concludes its second season, is perhaps the most widely applauded BHA initiative of recent years.
Last season’s inaugural final, won by David Pipe’s Soll in a close finish with Aachen, was an excellent start, but this year’s renewal is stronger still. If there was any concern that a series for older chasers might attract too many horses whose best days were a long way behind them, it has been dispelled.
Classy runners such as Dynaste, who ran well to finish fourth in the Grade One Betfred Bowl at Aintree just nine months ago, and Rocky Creek, third home in a Grade Two back in April, will still get weight from Shuil Royale, who took a recent leg of this series at Aintree in October off a mark of 143. Even 13-year-old Pete The Feat, at the foot of the handicap, races off 124 and has done himself justice from higher marks already this season.
Between them – and thanks are due to Sandown’s PR department for doing the sums – the 19 runners have run in 676 races, winning 134, and covered a combined total of 1,880 miles in their racing careers, which is London to Moscow and a little more besides. Just three months after Mehmas and The Last Lion, two of last year’s leading juveniles, were retired to stud after a single season on the track, the contrast with the Flat could not be more stark.
In theory at least the Grade One Tolworth Hurdle, won last year by the subsequent Festival winner Yorkhill, is the feature event on the Sandown card. The Veterans’ Final, though, is the race that many in the crowd will anticipate most keenly and anyone who manages to find the winner will know that it should pay for the afternoon.
Plenty of backers will find it difficult to get past Dynaste, whose record includes victory in the Grade One Ryanair Chase at the Festival in March 2014 and a series of excellent runs against proven Grade One performers including Cue Card, Silviniaco Conti and even the great staying hurdler Big Buck’s. He certainly deserves to head the market on his form as a whole, but to back him with confidence requires an explanation of his recent form behind Gas Line Boy, one of his main rivals on Saturday, who beat him by 32 lengths at Kelso in early December.
Gas Line Boy is now a stone worse off, but that run is still a concern for David Pipe, Dynaste’s trainer.
“He ran a good race first time out in the Charlie Hall, but then he was disappointing up at Kelso and I don’t know why, really,” Pipe said on Friday. “It depends which Dynaste turns up. He’s in really good form at home but we can only go there hopeful rather than confident. He’s been running in good races but he hasn’t won for a long time and his rating has dropped for a reason.
“I think everyone seems to like these races. National Hunt fans follow these horses, they’ve been running for years and that’s the great thing about National Hunt racing.”
Not quite everyone, perhaps, as Dan Skelton, a top-five trainer this season, complained in a blog post on the Coral website on Friday that the veterans “get the best of both worlds, as they can run in any normal handicaps and then can also run in these races, which are worth plenty, and then have a £100,000 final. We need younger horses coming through, as that’s the cycle of racing, and the prize money there to encourage owners to invest in our sport.”
This is also true but there is, surely, a balance to be struck. For many owners outside the handful of big spenders who dominate Cheltenham’s Festival in March, the possibility that a horse’s career in valuable races could extend until it is 11 or 12 could be an added incentive when weighing up whether to make that initial investment.
And those 676 previous starts, increasing the depth and competitiveness of racing as a whole over the course of half a dozen seasons, must also be acknowledged. Owners who have paid training and entry fees over many months and years have earned a chance to aim at a big prize without worrying about a five-year-old straight from the French provinces, whose handicap mark could well turn out to be a stone and a half too low.
Whichever of these 19 stalwarts emerges in front on Saturday, no winner anywhere on the weekend cards will be more deserving.
