Senior handicapper Noel O’Brien warns against kneejerk reaction

Despite just two runners contesting Sunday’s Grade One Navan Novice Hurdle, the latest in a series of small fields in Ireland’s top-flight jumps races this season, the country’s senior National Hunt handicapper has warned against a kneejerk reaction to the sport’s pattern system.

The seven Grade One races run over jumps so far this season in Ireland have attracted just 37 runners in total, with some containing long odds-on favourites.

However, the problem was emphasised more than ever at the weekend when a final declared field of four was halved by the subsequent defection of the Noel Meade-trained pair Apache Stronghold and Very Wood, the latter a Gigginstown Stud-owned horse who was taken out when officially reported to be off his feed.

That left Briar Hill to beat another Gigginstown representative, Azorian, in a match-race for a €70,000 prize-fund.

In the same period that Ireland has had seven Grade One races, there have been just four in Britain, and there have been claims that the pattern system, which divides the top-end races into various categories of Grade One, Two, Three and Listed, is too big for the horse population in this country and allows top horses to avoid each other.

Hasty judgments
However, the Turf Club's senior handicapper, Noel O'Brien, warned against hasty judgments yesterday and described this season as an "anomaly" in terms of numbers of runners in fields. "I've certainly never seen anything like it, but there is a danger in overreacting. This season, I hope, is something of a one-off. It must be galling for many people, particularly sponsors, to see just two runners in a race, but I think sometimes we can get too preoccupied with numbers.

“For instance, is it better to have an eight-runner race where four of them are 100/1 shots and have no chance, or a four-runner race where those four are good horses? I think that Navan race, if all four had lined up, would have been a very interesting race,” he said.

O’Brien added that the pattern system is under constant review but said it serves a function and no hasty changes can be made to it.

“The criteria in judging a race involve a rating based on the first four horses, over a three-year period. Obviously, two-runner races make things more difficult but it is built in to the system that one bad year doesn’t change things. Now if a race isn’t performing after a second year, a racecourse is sent an official warning – like a yellow card – and it is up to the executive to get on to trainers to maybe support the race better,” said O’Brien.