It's was a turbulent weekend for the sport and our columnist is left with two key questions which different people will answer in different ways.
Tommo points the way as storm clouds gather again
It’s been one of those turbulent spells that has you thinking when you ought to be sleeping.
And, at least from this corner, the midnight wrangling boils down to a couple of key questions that different people will answer in different ways:
How many storms can you weather?
And where is the line that makes you ask whether this addictive game takes too high a toll?
Leading owners Andy and Gemma Brown – weary of seeing promising horses killed in action – have crossed the line in deciding to sell up and head for calmer waters with their young family.
But, despite the loss of their high-class prospect Hermes Allen at Sandown over the weekend, the heavy-hitting British trio of John Hales, Sir Alex Ferguson and Ged Mason are going full steam ahead in search of a jumping star to light up their later years.
That resilience is why Caldwell Potter – a full brother to the ill-fated Mighty Potter – left Gordon Elliott for Paul Nicholls for a record €740,000 on Monday.
That resilience is why the northern duo of David Armstrong and Lee Westwood will reflect and bounce back after seeing their young hopeful Getagin come to grief when about to make it two from two at Musselburgh on Sunday.
And that same resilience is why Brian Acheson will keep flying the Robcour flag despite losing Absolute Notions on the same card.
But what sort of resilience do you need when your dad suffers life-changing injuries in a fall on the Flat after surviving more than 20 hard years in the jumps game?
And what can you say to the family of a 25-year-old lad who gets killed chasing his dream in a Sunday point-to-point?
Only those closest to Graham Lee and Keagan Kirkby will know the answer to those grim questions but, for those who take the risks and those who merely observe from a safe distance, those silent, nagging riddles hang in the air.
How many storms can you weather?
When do you start to wonder whether this addictive game takes too high a toll?
And who’d have thought that Derek ‘Tommo’ Thompson might be the voice we all needed in troubled times?
The former Channel 4 and current Zack FM frontman, having seen Nicholls in tears after learning of the death of a hugely popular team member on Sunday, hit the nail on the head in Tweeting that “at a time when the concept of humanity and kindness is poor in so many, it is the horses that guide us back to the basic principles.”
Humanity and kindness were in short supply in one nasty corner of the internet as news of Keagan Kirkby’s tragic death filtered through but that’s the virtual world some of us choose to waste time in.
Back in an unforgiving world where mortal risk is ever present, the pursuit of a dream that a horse like Caldwell Potter might be a champion and the fear of what could befall him in the heat of battle lie at opposite ends of the same stormy spectrum.
But, as dark clouds hover, a sympathy for and understanding of both those positions is not so much a useful North Star. It’s surely a basic principle.
