GG Jumps Journal - Should gallops days really replace the racing?

It’s official. He’s back. Just don’t mention the horses Constitution Hill was galloping with. It ruins the absurdly expanding illusion of the racecourse gallop.

GG Jumps Journal – The absurdity of the grand gallop

Apologies to the GG social media team, but they’re the biggest culprits here, even if this was a little tongue-in-cheek…

Beyond the fact that this column has given me an excuse to see whether Keely Hodgkinson is holding an open training session south of Surrey soon (she isn’t), the racecourse gallop is now out of control. The spectacle has broken contain.

Newbury’s Coral Gold Cup gallops morning is now A Thing™. In an interview with the Racing Post in advance of Tuesday’s run out, clerk of the course George Hill worryingly suggested that “every year it seems to get bigger and more popular.” Richard Hoiles was poised in the gantry and the star name in Berkshire was Constitution Hill, continuing to fulfil his role as the equine breed’s first ever public speaker. Why race when you can but show your face?

Constitution Hill is rapidly becoming an ambassador for racehorses who don’t race. Given that this is a horse who put in the most startling Cheltenham Festival performance of all time just three years ago, this feels a sorrowful fate, the seemingly unbeatable reduced to galloping at this juncture every year and scarcely managing to finish on his most recent run at Punchestown after two falls in the Champion and Aintree Hurdles in the spring.

He’s back though, right? You saw the way he took off down the stands rail, leaving muddy slices of turf to flail in his wake at stablemates Act Of Innocence and Therapist, those two great names of National Hunt. To put an end to the sarcasm, Act Of Innocence has not even made his introduction to timber yet and Therapist is rated 119, last seen winning a three-runner handicap at Stratford in July.

Yet, the charade prevails. Imagine if Arne Slot held an open training session tomorrow and Mo Salah curled a whipping finish into the far corner following a raking Virgil Van Dijk diagonal and we all suddenly agreed Liverpool were title favourites once again. Of course, that hypothetical goal would presumably have been scored against Liverpool’s under-21 ranks, but who cares if it looks good and we know it could plausibly be good again if we just hope really hard?

It is maddening scripture in the age of content. Hoiles being there in situ, with respect to the man, makes it all the weirder. Peter Drury would not make a random sojourn to Carrington to commentate to the masses on Ruben Amorim turning things around on the training pitch.

Which brings me back to Hodgkinson, and about time too. She and her fellow British athletes do at least get to communicate with followers, sincerely or superficially, via social media, while Constitution Hill, at least to my knowledge, is yet to hit up the gram. However, there is no open invitation to come and watch her or Josh Kerr or Dina Asher-Smith train and it certainly would not stop the athletics world in its tracks if that were to change. Furthermore, we would not walk away from watching any of them run trials of their respective events thinking they were sudden certainties for Olympic gold in 2030. 

I am sure Nicky Henderson is genuinely delighted about Constitution Hill’s progress and his away day to Newbury may have done a world of good we could not possibly comprehend from the outside. That is just it though, we do not comprehend, nor do we need to. Horse whispering via training is a science so exact that it is bewildering that one man or woman and their team could train any more than ten at a time.

A racecourse gallop could surely be an integral part of the process, but watching Constitution Hill stroll along, and against such inferior rivals, warms no cockles and stirs no emotions. The odd gallop becoming public knowledge is fine. They happen, we can choose whether we are informed, and we can move on.

But the Newbury Coral Gold Cup gallops morning must not be allowed to No-Face its way any further to spirit away actual racing.

There were 28 races held across the UK and Ireland yesterday and they will barely have received a tweet or paragraph. We are as guilty as each other if we allow horses not racing to emerge as a greater spectacle than the thrill of a race itself.

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Tip for the Weekend

Haydock’s going stick may not tell us the whole truth until the afternoon on Saturday, as the dry forecast during the working week is only replaced by downpours on the day itself. The Betfair Chase could yet be a slog.

Even if it is not, Haydock absorbs more than most and the stamina-laden Haiti Couleurs is on the cusp of proving himself Britain’s best staying chaser. He has a fitness edge over Grey Dawning having reappeared at Newbury recently (where he was actually racing) and his Irish Grand National success lives sturdily in the memory.