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No Festival rides for Hughes...
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...due to the influence of a handful of large, dominant NH yards
T AMAZED me one day in March when hearing tthe comments made by pundits through an afternoon of mid-week racing when they were discussing the phenomenon that is the British champion NH jockey elect Brian Hughes. It was a concern that the conversation revealed how little they seemed to understand about the current make up of NH horseracing. The guys were voicing their opinion on the planned non-appearance of Hughes at The Festival, which was a pre-announced decision made by the jockey. Both pundits declaring what a shame it was that the leading jumps jockey in Britain was not riding at the country’s pre-eminent jumps race meeting. One went as far as to imply that it was wrong of Hughes to have made the decision to stay riding at smaller meetings in the north, that he owed it to the sport to be at Cheltenham. Of course, a man of Hughes’s talents should be at the meeting with chance after chance after chance of riding big-race winners. But he does not have those opportunities due to the current make up of the NH training ranks. Hughes essentially rides in the north of England, most of the main (largest) NH yards are in the south of England or Ireland. Those few NH yards have the bulk of big race chances because big race owners seem to prefer having their horses trained in those larger yards… in England, Nicky Henderson, Paul Nicholls, Dan Skelton, and Colin and Joe Tizzard dominate. In Ireland, Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott head
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“Of course, a man of Hughes’s talents should be at the meeting with chance after chance after chance of riding big-race winners
affairs, with Henry De Bromhead loitering behind. Most of the races at Cheltenham are dominated by this handful (Nicholls and Skelton aside this year) and all these yards have their own attached jockeys – and numbers of them – in order to ride the second, third and, on occasions, fourth to seventh strings. On Tuesday’s opening Supreme Hurdle, the top ten in the ante-post betting were trained by one of the above, in the Arkle, Alan King had the favourite and eventual winner with Edwardstone but he was the only “outside” trainer with a horse in the top seven fancied horses. The Ultima Handicap Chase was a more open affair, in the Champion Hurdle, David Pipe was the only trainer to break up the De Bromhead / Mullins / Elliott / Henderson dominance at the top of the market Trainer Donald McCain, who has supplied (at the time of writing), 87 of Hughes’s winners this season, had a handful of entries, the shortest-priced at ante-post stage was Richmond Lake, a 20/1 shot in the conditional jockeys’ race. In the end the trainer did not have a single runner over the four-day meeting. How is Hughes going to get on any of those horses who were going into The Festival with a legitimate winning or even each-way chance? There are just no opportunities for him, and why (why?) would he want to get on an outsider that is only running to give the owner a day out? It is just not worth Hughes’s time, effort or risk. He’d have been crazy to have put his stated goal of becoming champion jockey and riding 200 winners in the season at such threat. As he seems like a good bloke, too, it is doubtful he’d ever
