Wake Me Up When September Ends
Being a fan of the jumps all year round, September is comfortably my least favourite month of the entire racing calendar, and thus entirely deserving of the Green Day song title I've pinched for my heading this time.
There are several reasons for this. First of all, it occupies that curious transition period between the official summer jumping season (which officially always finishes with the meetings before Bangor's July Friday meeting, no matter what anyone on C4 might try to tell you during the coverage from Rasen this coming weekend. "The big climax to the summer jumping season", they bleated last year. No it ain't....), where races are contested between a mixture of the summer jumpers who by which stage aren't as fresh as they were, plus the first few of the autumn campaigners among whom are plenty still in need of their first race or two. It makes for some pretty muddling racing, all in all.
Secondly, as the summer fixtures are left behind and more courses recommence racing, you would hope the racing calendar represented this by introducing a gradually increasing number of jumps meetings as the month wore on, building up to around mid-October when most courses are racing again. Not a bit of it. Just 18 jumps meetings will have taken place this September by its close, compared to 22 in August and 19 in July. One week of the month is, of course, given over as a Flat-only week as some kind of holiday to jumps stable staff, but why this is deemed to be any more appropriate a time of year than, say, June or July, is something I cannot fathom.
Thirdly, as the courses holding meetings in September do not have to follow the strictures applied in June and July meetings to guarantee safe jumping ground (no firmer than firm and certainly watered if in danger of riding faster), there aren't half a number of dodgy surfaces in operation. I took in both Uttoxeter Sunday meetings at this time last year; notwithstanding the less than successful drainage work which had been undertaken which had caused the dolling off of several obstacles, the going was on the rough side of good to firm to say the least on both occasions.
Things have finally improved a bit this week, with the last two days of racing at Perth until the spring yesterday and today, Fontwell also racing today (and with more than one steeplechase this time, unlike their shameful card from earlier in the month), a Worcester meeting tomorrow and of course the big televised meeting at Rasen on Saturday. Notwithstanding this, however, there is a disparity about the month which makes for some less than wholly satisfactory racing, and is something which I wouldn't have thought especially hard to remedy if the will was there.
There are several reasons for this. First of all, it occupies that curious transition period between the official summer jumping season (which officially always finishes with the meetings before Bangor's July Friday meeting, no matter what anyone on C4 might try to tell you during the coverage from Rasen this coming weekend. "The big climax to the summer jumping season", they bleated last year. No it ain't....), where races are contested between a mixture of the summer jumpers who by which stage aren't as fresh as they were, plus the first few of the autumn campaigners among whom are plenty still in need of their first race or two. It makes for some pretty muddling racing, all in all.
Secondly, as the summer fixtures are left behind and more courses recommence racing, you would hope the racing calendar represented this by introducing a gradually increasing number of jumps meetings as the month wore on, building up to around mid-October when most courses are racing again. Not a bit of it. Just 18 jumps meetings will have taken place this September by its close, compared to 22 in August and 19 in July. One week of the month is, of course, given over as a Flat-only week as some kind of holiday to jumps stable staff, but why this is deemed to be any more appropriate a time of year than, say, June or July, is something I cannot fathom.
Thirdly, as the courses holding meetings in September do not have to follow the strictures applied in June and July meetings to guarantee safe jumping ground (no firmer than firm and certainly watered if in danger of riding faster), there aren't half a number of dodgy surfaces in operation. I took in both Uttoxeter Sunday meetings at this time last year; notwithstanding the less than successful drainage work which had been undertaken which had caused the dolling off of several obstacles, the going was on the rough side of good to firm to say the least on both occasions.
Things have finally improved a bit this week, with the last two days of racing at Perth until the spring yesterday and today, Fontwell also racing today (and with more than one steeplechase this time, unlike their shameful card from earlier in the month), a Worcester meeting tomorrow and of course the big televised meeting at Rasen on Saturday. Notwithstanding this, however, there is a disparity about the month which makes for some less than wholly satisfactory racing, and is something which I wouldn't have thought especially hard to remedy if the will was there.
posted by Jeremy Grayson @ 1:15 PM
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