Steve Jones: “A British ‘Dublin Festival’ can’t be the answer”

IT'S not so much papering over the cracks, it’s more like slapping on some unnecessary, ill-fitting woodchip that does little to enhance the wall.

The idea that a British version of the Dublin Racing Festival would help solve the Irish-trained horses’ domination of the Cheltenham Festival is fanciful to put it mildly.

This is the first offering from a think tank set up to try to unravel why jump racing’s biggest meeting was such a mismatch with British-trained runners winning just five of the 28 races during the annual four-day bonanza.

If this opening shot from the Quality Jump Racing Review Group is anything to go by, they’ve got about as many answers as the rest of us.

It smacks of feeling they have to come up with something, anything, to try to level the balance before the equine Irish invasion into the Cotswolds in just over six months.

Personally, I’ve not seen anything written in print or broadcast over the airwaves that can explain why Irish-trained horses have become so dominant in recent years.

Most of the theories can be picked apart in less time than it takes the runners in the Supreme to get to the first hurdle. And that means proposed solutions are unlikely to have any positive impact.

The notion that the creation of a new two-day meeting of Cheltenham trials roughly five weeks before jump racing’s all-important Festival will serve as a better preparation than is already available just doesn’t make sense.

The argument is that the racing will be more competitive, pitching genuine Cheltenham championship contenders against each other before they take on the Irish.

Newbury has been put forward as a potential venue but it already holds popular Cheltenham trials in the Game Spirit and the Denman Chase, among others.

Native River used the Denman as his warm-up race before winning the 2018 Cheltenham Gold Cup and Altior landed the Game Spirit in the same year on his way to victory in the Champion Chase.

The only way to make those races more competitive is to cull other potential stepping stones to the Cheltenham Festival like the Cotswold Chase.

A Unibet Champion Hurdle trial could be added to the Newbury card but where would that leave Wincanton’s Unibet Kingwell Hurdle, the Contenders Hurdle at Sandown or Haydock’s Unibet Champion Hurdle Trial?

Three is already probably too many with the lack of top-level two-mile hurdlers in Britain in recent years.

It takes a pretty decent imagination to think squeezing those three races into one and moving to Newbury is suddenly going to transform the division back to the golden age of hurdling when the likes of Night Nurse, Sea Pigeon and Birds Nest locked horns.

It’s the same in every division – the stayers, the novices, the mares – all these trial races already exist and there’s a case for saying we need less of them not more.

Moving them to one meeting will have no impact on the performances of British horses at Cheltenham.

Some would argue that it could even be a negative. I’m sure there are many trainers who would actively avoid the prospect of a hard race little more than a month before the all-important showdowns.

It’s not going to be easy for British trainers to reverse the Irish domination of jump racing.

If anyone has an evidence-based theory as to why it has got to this point, they should send their answers on a postcard to the BHA’s London offices.

I can’t imagine the postman is going to be off work with a bad back anytime soon.