The wheels of the rumour mill had been spinning for a while, and last Friday, HRI introduced its newest strategy for Irish horse racing: academy hurdles. I couldn’t understand how this plan would play out last Friday, and a week later I am still far from convinced. I am not against change, nor do I believe that our system in horse racing is perfect, but I would have thought that with a plan comes details, projections and anticipated results.
However, HRI gave us the skeletal outline of a series of races that would be run for standard prize money and have winners and losers, with the runs considered for handicapping purposes. Yet, the winning horses wouldn’t be winners of a hurdle race, as they would retain their maiden status and be eligible for bumpers, and the losers wouldn't have sacrificed their hunter certs. In short, we get point-to-point hurdles without needing a hunter cert and running on the track over hurdles.
We have no idea how many of these races there will be or how many an individual horse can run in. We don't know if a winner can run a second time, and we don't know what distance these races will be, but we have a proposal for new races: races for unraced National Hunt-type three-year-olds to mirror the French system of racing their stock sooner to give what we breed a better chance of maximising its potential. But who has the horses? These academy hurdles propose creating a system where “Irish” horses go into training earlier and run younger to enhanc.
