Sir, - I am writing to you regarding a column in The Irish Field last month by Mark Boylan titled: “Frequent changes to feature-race titles does few favours for racing”.

I agree with the vast majority of Mark’s ideas and comments on this topic. However, when it comes to the section of the piece on “honouring the greats” in race titles, I was shocked to read one suggestion towards the bottom.

“Is there a more boring race name in the sport than the three-mile Long Distance Hurdle (Grade 2) at Newbury in December? It would be far more fitting to permanently rename it the Big Buck’s Hurdle, given his status in that division, and the fact he won this contest a record four consecutive times.”

As John McEnroe might say to an umpire, you cannot be serious!

How could you justify attaching one of the worst racehorse names in the history of National Hunt racing to the Long Distance Hurdle at Newbury?

I endured many sleepless nights during the racing career of Big Buck’s wondering about that appalling, ridiculous, illegal apostrophe.

How did it get there? What racing jurisdiction allowed the name? Why didn’t the Stewart Family get the name corrected? An example of this would be Aidan O’Brien’s 1999 Irish 2000 Guineas winner Saffron Walden, whose name was originally spelled Saffron Waldon in error but was later amended to match the name of the town in Essex.

Is proper English not important? I could go on…

Anyway, the thought of his name with the appalling apostrophe being attached permanently to a race at Newbury is beyond my comprehension. I was thrilled when his racing career came to an end. I’ve been attending that Newbury “Hennessy” meeting with a group from Clonmel Racecourse for many years and it never occurred to me for a moment that it was a boring title – never mind one of the more boring names in the race programme, as Mark suggests.

Anyway, thank you for reading my rant on the Big Buck’s apostrophe and I will continue to enjoy your articles every week. – Yours etc.,

FRANK SUTTON

Clonmel,

Co Tipperary.

Sir, - I have read with great interest recent articles expressing alarm, concern and - amazingly - surprise at the plight of the smaller Irish racehorse trainer, a breed now facing certain extinction. Sadly, this has not happened overnight and - as you will be aware - I, for many years, have expressed the opinion that a full independent review of the Irish horseracing programme and race structures was urgently required.

This remains to be the case.

While there is little doubt Horse Racing Ireland has sleep-walked into the current situation, albeit aided by an owners’ association and representative bodies with largely self-interest at heart, the current programme imbalance could be reversed by a variety of means.

Each and every one of these now needs to be evaluated by independent and impartial analysts and not those who have caused the problems in the first instance.

More claimers

Personally I believe a huge increase in the number of claiming races being staged and the introduction of different varieties of same (including optional claimers) would greatly assist in increasing liquidity in the lower end of the market and therefore give more opportunity (including potential sale) to the lesser horses.

You will be aware this is a cause we have championed for many years and, although we initially met fierce resistance from people with limited vision, the subsequent success of claiming races speaks for itself. More are urgently required in Ireland.

The entire structure of Irish racing finally needs to be looked at and the problems need to be addressed for once and for all. The time for constantly patching over the cracks in an industry where tens of millions of state funds are front-loaded into prize monies is over; too many individuals’ livelihoods are dependent on it.

Failing this, the continued demise of the smaller trainer will be inevitable and the nonsensical idea of attempting to frame races with conditions of confinement similar to “entries restricted to horses trained by individuals who only train a winner every Pancake Tuesday in a leap year” is absolutely folly. - Yours etc.,

JAMES MECALL

The Curragh,

Co Kildare.

Sir, - Over the last number of years a great amount of debate has been written and spoken in the media about the poor attendances at Irush racemeetings.

A number of reasons have been put forward as to why punters are not going racing like they used to in the past but very little has been said about the lack of young racegoers.

When I go racing it is quite obvious, looking around, that the crowd consists of mainly die-hard ‘golden oldies’, like myself.

Young people are the future of the sport but very few of them seem interested enough to make an effort to go out for a day’s racing. Mind you, you have to ask the question why would they bother going racing by either car or public transport, both costly these days.

With online bookmaker accounts, punters can bet in the comfort of their own home or walk around to the local bookmaker shop, with wall-to-wall betting screens, where not only can you bet on horses, but also on dogs, soccer, GAA, rugby, golf, et cetera.

Most of the young punters you find in betting shops have never set foot inside a racecourse and probably never will. There are too many other attractions competing for their leisure time and bookmakers are slowly sucking the life out of racing.

Hopefully someone will come up with an answer soon but I would not hold my breath. - Yours etc.,

DECLAN O’CONNELL

Newbridge,

Co Kildare.