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Pointless Political Correctness and National Hunt Racing
At last. A rare incidence of sanity has broken out at the British Horseracing Board. Not content with tackling the major issues of the day concerning the racing industry they, instead, focussed on petty political correctness policing.
You see, according to the BHB the term National Hunt is an out-of-date reference to Jumps racing (as they would have preferred it to be called). The BHB claim that calling the racing National Hunt gives the public am impression that a fox is let loose at Cheltenham and the ungodly are then set off in pursuit.
And, if you believe that then there are fairies at the bottom of my garden.
They further go onto say that this 'confusion' is preventing people attending the big jumps festivals such as Cheltenham. Actually we at UK Horse Racing think that the only thing which is stopping newcomers to the sport are the two facts that accomodation needs to be booked the year before and that the Cheltenham Festival is sold out.
It really has to be wondered where the leaders of this sport actually live. Does their post sort code contain an address for this planet? We would imagine that the most people who want to go National Hunt rating for the first time would have read a novel from either Dick Francis, John Francombe or Jenny Pitman and, therefore, would have got an idea as to what goes on on a racecourse. If they potential racegoer hasn't read these fine works then surely they would have seen The Grand National once or twice in their lives and all without a single fox in sight.
And this is before we get into the tules and traditions of National Hunt races. For example look at the conditions of entry for some of the foxhunter chases; the horse in question has to have been on a number of actual hunts that year. The term National Hunt isn't used lightly; the links between actual hunting and racing are there.
Why do they have fences and the like in National Hunt races? Simple because when Reynard is given chase he tends to run through fields surrounded by fences and gates and the hunters have to get over them.
There is little or no point in trying to sanitise the name name of the sport; we all know where National Hunt racing came from and there's no need to pretend otherwise. It's not as if there are more important issues in racing to sort out first, is it?