Various metrics of success will be applied to this weekend’s Irish Champions Festival (ICF) action, and one will be if headlines about pacemakers and team tactics are avoided. But repeated failures to grasp the nettle on this issue means few would bet big about such a self-inflicted scenario being avoided.
It’s not like Irish flat racing’s €5 million shop-window event can be immune from a problem that usually comes to the boil when the stakes are highest, as they will be at Leopardstown on Saturday and the Curragh on Sunday. There’s even a presumption that it might get amplified further.
An oven-ready script is ready to ping about plucky Brits such as Item and Blue Bolt taking on Aidan O’Brien’s Ballydoyle team in Ireland, replete with references to Lions’ Dens and backyards. A year ago, John Gosden famously ducked the ICF challenge with Ombudsman, not wanting to race multiple entries from one stable on a supposedly short Leopardstown straight.
It was a pointed narrative that cast O’Brien as an unlikely Lord Voldemort free to practise dark tactical arts as tame local stewards conveniently point their binoculars back to front. The Irishman responded with notable waspishness, accused Gosden of whingeing, and everybody relished two of the game’s grandees stereotypically rasping off each other.
Coolmore and Juddmonte superpowers face off in Irish Champions Festival
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Racing needs will to implement the rule book when it comes to pacemakers
Constitution River joined by Derby hero Lambourn and Hawk Mountain in Champion Stakes mix
But no matter the jurisdiction or the accent, the issues of pacemakers and team tactics are a problem for racing. They’ve fused around O’Brien because of the singular position he’s in. No other trainer has ever had the depth of talent that Coolmore entrusts to him. It allows him multiple entries, in turn allowing multiple tactical permutations in the races that matter most.
On occasions it can work dramatically in his favour. A 1-2-3 led by Constitution River in this season’s French Derby underlined the benefits of dominating the pace scenario. But last month’s Juddmonte International was a “complete mess” according to O’Brien as Constitution River ran far too free when denied cover after a pacemaker missed the break.
It was the second time in a row that much of the fallout from the York highlight revolved around pacemakers. Last year, Gosden’s 150-1 Birr Castle looked for much of the race like winning, such was everyone else’s determination, it seemed, to ignore him. O’Brien’s opposition is hardly indisposed towards playing the game to suit themselves too.
Nevertheless, a confluence of self-interest, sanctimony and humbug has pooled around the pacemaker problem, the extent of which has blighted the complexion of far too many of the sport’s most high-profile races.
Perhaps the most unctuous justification for the practice is that a strong pace is fair for everyone. It isn’t. It’s hardly fair for a suspect stayer to have an opponent’s stable companions sacrificed on the altar of a gruelling stamina test. Neither does it favour a horse able to settle of its own accord rather than imposing an artificially frantic tempo to help a headstrong type.
That compromises the important racing ingredient of tactical versatility. A horse with the ability and temperament to race from the front is an important card for any rider to play. Getting the tempo right on the lead can be a thing of beauty to watch. Piggott, Cauthen and Dettori were masters at it. Such adaptability should be prized if the aim really is to improve the breed.
But rather than properly police a tactic fundamentally at odds with the rules, racing only gets into deeper muddles with all sorts of convoluted “fixes” that swerve the central issue. The result is a continuing pattern of elite races that far too frequently open reputational cans of worms for the sport.
There can be no hard and fast rule. Pacemakers do sometimes hang on to win. Qirat in last year’s Sussex Stakes was one that didn’t so much get away as it was simply neglected by opposition tying itself into tactical knots about whether to stick or twist. The upshot was one of the headline races of the season effectively turned into a joke.
But there are rules and ultimately, racing everywhere needs to get back to the basics of implementing what’s in the book. It isn’t a team sport. Every runner must try to achieve its best possible position no matter its connections. Proving intent otherwise is a difficult task, as underlined by the Puerto Rico episode at Royal Ascot in June, but it shouldn’t be necessary.
O’Brien is automatically under the spotlight with all this. His runners in Saturday’s featured Royal Bahrain Irish Champion Stakes will come under intense scrutiny.
The widespread expectation is that last year’s dual-Derby hero Lambourn and the Group One winner Hawk Mountain are there to deliver Constitution River an ideal pace scenario. It’s an embarrassment of riches and how their main rivals, including Item and Almaqam, navigate their way around Leopardstown in such circumstances will dominate much of the build-up.
O’Brien and Coolmore operate to suit themselves as the rules are currently applied. As with so much regulation, that application comes down to subjective interpretation by professionals paid to implement the rule book. Such interpretation needs to be a lot more assertive. If rules are being blatantly flouted it needs to be called out. But it requires the will to do it.
That subjective interpretation also needs to be backed up in a disciplinary process where too often it looks like a fudge is the desired outcome, no matter what the jurisdiction. Waiting for objective proof probably means waiting forever, which sceptics might suspect is the whole point.
Something for the Weekend
Constitution River has been a strong ante-post favourite for the Irish Champion Stakes which suggests the presumption he will reverse York form with Item and Almaqam on his home patch in Leopardstown. He didn’t look a straightforward ride at York, though, and ground conditions again look like being on the easy side. That could ultimately help ALMAQAM (Saturday, 5pm) have the edge this time.
Saturday’s St Leger, the 250th edition of the world’s oldest Classic, sees Wayne Lordan sent to Doncaster to ride PIERRE BONNARD (3.35pm). That the Ballydoyle No 2 is diverted from Leopardstown where he would have been busy in three Group Ones looks significant.
