Timeform’s Chasers & Hurdlers annual provides the usual raft of talking points and strong opinions on the jumping scene, including a forceful argument against more restrictions on the use of the whip.
"Misuse of the whip (padded nowadays so it cannot hurt significantly) is emphatically not a welfare issue in racing, 99% of all runners compete without a whip offence of any sort taking place," says Timeform.
"The whip has always been part of the game and it has the effect, through sound and contact, of heightening the flight response in the thoroughbred and making a horse run faster – the aim of the sport, after all, is to find the best horses – and the whip also plays a vital part in ensuring the safety of horse and rider, an important justification for retaining the whip on welfare grounds alone."
Chasers & Hurdlers points out that whip offences were at an all-time low in 2019 (410 cases), with four out of five of the cases involving use of the whip above the permitted level.
"The specifying of a numerical limit has been at the root of the problem with the rules," says Timeform. "Incorrect use of the whip, rather than how many times it is used, should be at the heart of them."
Timeform also thinks the rules should be clearly drawn to allow an assessment of public perception to be made by the stewards, saying that if whip use looks bad, it should be penalised for damaging the image of racing. There should be a crackdown on using the whip above shoulder height, for example.
Timeform is against changing the rules to allow use of the whip only for ‘correction’ and not for ‘encouragement’.
"How would the stewards decide (and the public understand) which is which, such a change would simply swap one set of problems for another," says Timeform.
The Chasers & Hurdlers annual provides a Timeform rating and individual commentary for every one of the horses that ran over jumps or in National Hunt Flat races in Britain in the 2019/20 season. The 8,166 individual entries make up a fully comprehensive A to Z, with the 1,024 closely-printed and lavishly-illustrated pages also including the best of the Irish not seen out in Britain.
The aim with Chasers & Hurdlers is twofold: to produce something of value for readers in the new season and also to provide an accurate and authoritative record that will bring the 2019/20 season vividly back to life in years to come. As usual, the top horses are dealt with in greater detail and are given extended entries in the form of Timeform essays which are often used to comment on racing’s most important issues.
In the wide-ranging essay on Gold Cup winner Al Boum Photo, Chasers & Hurdlers defends the staging of the Cheltenham Festival and condemns misguided media stories which brought it to the forefront in the blame game over the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"Taken as a whole, Gloucestershire’s sixteen hospitals had fewer confirmed cases than some surrounding areas and Ireland’s chief medical officer issued a statement saying that there had been no evidence of a link between people who attended the Festival and clusters of cases in Ireland," says Timeform.
Cheltenham gets no support, however, from Chasers & Hurdlers over the prospect of a fifth day at the Festival which is given short shrift in the essay on Benie Des Dieux, with Timeform saying that the good horses are already too spread out at the meeting in its current format.
Flaws in the BHA's handicapping appeals process are exposed in the essay on Dame De Compagnie, the shambolic starts to some of the big races over jumps are described as "a scandalous state of affairs" in the entry on Not So Sleepy, while Cheltenham is urged in the essay on Simply The Betts to review its policy of narrowing the width of the New Course to preserve ground for the Festival – "Patiently-ridden horses run the risk of being disadvantaged almost as much as those drawn high in sprint races at tight Flat tracks such as Chester."
The aim of the Timeform essays is to entertain as well as to inform and readers will find plenty of interesting historical references, some of them stretching back to the ‘golden age’ of steeplechasing in the sixties (the essay on Al Boum Photo says that Timeform’s rating of Arkle – 212, the highest ever given – should not be used as a stick with which to beat jumping’s modern champions whose ratings are achieved in level-weights Grade 1 conditions events rather than in big handicaps giving lumps of weight away).
As well as recounting Cyrname’s epic victory over Altior, which ended that horse’s 19-race winning run, a jumping record, Chasers & Hurdlers believes the Henderson stable may have a "new Altior", while the authors of the book are most looking forward to the reappearance of a horse they say "looks to have everything needed to develop into one of the greats’ of the sport."
There’s something for everyone in Chasers & Hurdlers, which is available from Timeform, Halifax, West Yorkshire HX1 1XF or from timeform.com/shop at the price of £75 (postage free in the UK).