THIS SPORTING LIFE

SPORTING LIFE…

England’s painful loss of the World T20 final to the West Indies, from a seemingly impregnable position, was extraordinary. Fascinating, though, that the great onslaught of four sixes to win the game came from one Carlos Brathwaite. That’s not a misprint, but a well-known Caribbean surname, at least in Barbados. Pleasingly, Carlos is indeed a Bajan, and no doubt there are people in West London who will claim him as kin. Last year I buried a dear old member of St.Peter’s called Joyce Braithwaite, but when she had been on the sick list, I had found my colleague Fr.Frank correcting her surname to “Brathwaite”; when challenged, he had told me, “She’s from Barbados, the surname is Brathwaite!” So, one day when I was taking her communion, I asked Joyce about it. Which was it? I asked. So she told me, “Back in Barbados, I was Brathwaite, but when I came to England they wrote it down as Braithwaite, so that’s what I’ve been. I don’t care!” I suspect she was less bothered because there had once been a Mr Brathwaite (long gone). This is a reminder of the time before surnames settled down, when spellings were much more free. The only Brathwaite in the Dictionary of National Biography is a seventeenth century poet, one Richard Brathwaite (apparently the author of the bit of verse which historians cite about the Puritan in Banbury who hanged his cat on Monday for killing a mouse on Sunday). I suspect that historians of Barbados would be able to tell us that some Brathwaite was a plantation owner in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, because of course that is where so many Caribbean surnames came from. Slaves were given the surname of their owner. Slave-names they're sometimes called. I’ve never met a Caribbean Everett, and I rather hope I don’t.

THE GRAND NATIONAL

One of the more irritating features of the lead-up to this year’s Grand National was the repeated assertion from seemingly intelligent people that this was the best field ever in the race. No. It. Wasn’t. I suppose you can say it was the field with the narrowest range of weights, and therefore was composed of 39 horses of a closer standard than ever before, and that the top weights were good horses, so the race was generally of quite a high standard. But the best? No. Certainly not. For one thing, that narrow range of quality is partly the result of restricting the number of runners to forty (sixty-six is the record) and also of lowering the top weight to 11 stone 10 pounds. I agree there were two good horses at the top of the handicap, in Many Clouds (past National winner, and Hennessy Gold Cup) and Silviniaco Conti (twice King George winner), and fair enough, Pineau de Re, past winner, didn’t get a run. But Pineau de Re didn’t get in because he’s no good; he never was. And frankly, a race won by a maiden, with a thirteen-year old in third, doesn’t actually look like the best ever (even if Rule The World was a very high-class maiden). Not the best ever, definitely. Not even the best in my lifetime: in that category I think I’d vote for 1973 or 1975.

Obviously 1973 was Crisp (won a Queen Mother Champion Chase, placed in a Gold Cup) and Red Rum (not yet a triple National winner), but the field also included a dual Gold Cup winner in L’Escargot (who finished third), and Gold Cup-placed and Hennessy-winning Spanish Steps (fourth) and a Whitbread winner in Grey Sombrero. Red Rum won in record time, as well. Arguably, though, 1975 was better, when L’Escargot beat Red Rum (by now a dual National winner, and winner of a Scottish National) with Spanish Steps third, and another former Gold Cup (and King George) winner The Dikler fifth. Also in the field that day were Royal Relief (Queen Mother Champion Chase) and April Seventh (Hennessy Gold Cup), not to mention future National and Scottish National winners in Rag Trade and Barona. So I think that’s a bit thicker in quality than last Saturday.

But in truth the best ever has to have been 1934, the year that Golden Miller won. Golden Miller won five Cheltenham Gold Cups, but hated Aintree. In 1934 he came to Aintree having already won three Gold Cups, the last a fortnight earlier, and he wasn’t even top weight! That was Gregalach, the winner in 1929 and second in 1931, who carried 12 stone 7 pounds. Also giving Golden Miller weight was the magnificent Thomond II, with whom he had regular duels, who had been second in the 1933 Gold Cup. Nor was Golden Miller favourite, that was the previous year’s runner-up, Really True. Also in the field were the 1932 winner Forbra, and Delaneige, fourth in 1933 after running third in the Gold Cup. Back in the thirties the jumping calendar was very different, and the National was so much more valuable than any other race that the best horses did tend to compete in a way they haven’t done in modern times. It’s hard to compare achievements, but that field looks very strong, and the best horses came home in front, in record time. It’s worth pointing out that the fences were a lot harder back then, tougher than in the 1970s, and a world away from today.

My particular beef about the Grand National is that the race has been fundamentally altered by making the course easier, in the interest of safety. Ironically more horses were killed after the safety modifications, because making the fences easier meant that the horses went faster, and as so often, speed kills. There have also been more collisions, because there is no longer a clear easy way and a difficult way to approach the fences. The spectacle remains the same, forty horses jumping slightly outlandish obstacles, but because jumping is no longer the most important factor, the race has become much more open, and much more ordinary. Prior to the modifications of the last few years you could normally narrow down the possible winners to a short list of good jumpers who were genuine stayers.

What am I to say about the Grand National and animal cruelty? Well, I am sickened by the sight of a horse being killed, but it doesn’t only happen there. And the fact is that the horses race and jump because it is in their nature; inasmuch as it isn’t anthropomorphising, it is plain that (at least some) horses jump because they enjoy it. You only had to watch Hadrian’s Approach on Saturday, who had decanted his jockey at the first fence but carried on, having a whale of a time, jumping the fences when he could have run round them, to see the truth of that. So banning horse racing is not so obviously good for horses’ welfare, when they enjoy it. And if it didn’t exist, would the horses exist? No, plainly not. Is existence better than non-existence? Yes, manifestly. But, obviously, humans have a grave responsibility for the way we treat other sentient creatures which are under our control. I don’t think though, that we need say that it’s immoral to use animals for something as trivial as sport. Not least because those animals have a good life as their object, unlike those farm animals whose death is their object. We don’t have to eat meat, we choose to, and so I don’t think we can be too pious about animals in sport.