THAT old line that makes fun of the expectation of finding talent to be replicated across an entire family came to mind last week.

Elvis had a brother, it goes, but he couldn’t sing a note.

In racing we regularily depend on looking for family traits and ability. It’s what people seek from breeding sheds to sales rings. A pedigree of winners.

Last Saturday we had that family connection in action and one where the younger brother finally got his share of appreciation.

Douvan was brilliant twice at Cheltenham. He was hugely talented. His brother on that basis, made £570,000 at the sales, a crazy price for a jumping horse.

But Jonbon might well now be better than his illustrious brother. With 17 wins and £1,113,787 to his name, he deserves a great deal of appreciation.

If you love what the jumping horse can do, he was a joy to watch at Ascot.

It’s about time his ability got praise, rather than looking for ways to criticise him.

You can’t really crab his 2022 Supreme Novices’ second to Constitution Hill, and his January 2024 defeat at the track by Elixir De Nutz came via a really bad mistake. So it just leaves his defeat by El Fabiolo to omit as one that doesn’t look so good now.

Once upon a time, horses were popular for their efforts rather than forever having holes picked in their form, the Champion Chase winner One Man being one. His Gold Cup defeats never diminished his popularity, nor did the fact that Viking Flagship lost a few Champion Chases diminish his popularity.

Everyone thought Galileo was a freak, until his dam Urban Sea produced Sea The Stars. They all deserve applause.

Who knows, a Champion Chase for Jonbon could see him get the reception he deserves, but he looks sure to win a host of top races over the next seasons. Enjoy him for what he is.

THE case is made elsewhere in this paper that the profile of the Irish Derby can be revived by reducing its distance to 10 furlongs.

But I’m not so sure that chopping two furlongs off, setting it up as a three-year-old mid-season alternative to the Eclipse, would necessarily be the solution.

No one can argue that it has not declined as a public attraction race. There have been some poor renewals in the last 10 years, often won by a lesser spotted Ballydoyle inmate.

This season’s winner Los Angeles goes into the ‘good horse but not a real star’ category. It was considered a decent renewal, bringing the second and third from Epsom. And the race attracted the Derby winner and star three-year-old Auguste Rodin in 2023.

The 10-furlong Prix du Jockey Club and Eclipse surround it, as mid-summer middle distance Group 1s, and have become the focus of attention in the argument. But it’s not simply a case of ‘chop it and they will come’.

City Of Troy went to the Eclipse. Two Prix du Jockey Club winners in St Mark’s Basilica (2021) and Vadeni (2022) also went to Sandown. Going back 20 years, for really top colts an Eclipse win would always be much more valuable - it was for Sea The Stars, even if he was originally intended to run at the Curragh.

The main issue with dropping the distance is ‘Are the horses there?’ And there are two conundrums there. Not only does the Eclipse offers a future stallion more to his CV by beating his elders, but why would a Guineas-winning three-year-old like Paddington attempt a step up in distance at the Curragh, when the St James’s Palace is there a week before it?

General trend

The desire is to attract more French runners, but the recent general trend with top three-year-olds in France has been, following the Prix du Jockey Club, rest for the summer, comeback in autumn and aim for the Arc.

The modern three-year-old colt races less frequenly and has bigger prizes in the autumn than 30 years ago. The great old summer treble of ‘Derby, Derby, King George’ is not desirable now. Of the winners in France, Sottsass (2019) didn’t reappear until the Prix Neil in September, the same path taken as 2024 winner Look De Vega. St Mark’s Basilica and Vadeni went to the Eclipse. Mishriff (2020) and Ace Impact (2023) waited for the Prix Guillaume d’Ornano at Deauville in August to reappear and the Arc was the big target for the last two winners.

In world-wide top race rankings, other nations - for the most part through vastly superior prize money - are attracting better horses and moving way up the lists. There are four Australian races in the world’s top 10.

The Irish Derby was joint 59th, the Tattersalls Irish 2000 Guineas, won by a subsequent Group 1 winner, coming in joint 89th! It shared that position with the Doncaster St Leger. The Irish St Leger was joint 46th.

Irish racing can do better for its summer highlight, but it might take more work than reducing the distance.