CUTTING BACK TO THE OLD DEBATE

Rolf Johnson weighs up one of racing's perennial chestnuts

- Rolf Johnson

In my youth racing existed, unequivocally, for 'the improvement of the breed' confirmed by Hon and Right Hon owner-breeder non-negotiable diktats.

More often than not they were scions of the Jockey Club. Their heraldry was 'you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours' (Scalpas dorsum et tibi scalpere). Question: is there back-scratching going on between our current powers and France Galop over the fractious question of geldings?

It was a simpler age when; starting tapes let loose cavalry charges of 30 and more 'line up, non-triers to the rear'; you had to turn umpteen pages of racing in the papers to get to cricket and football; there was an enclosure called the Silver Ring where grown men feverishly waved white gloves 'right hand on left ear 6-4' - the tic tacs; Jimmy Quinn and Franny Norton hadn't finished their apprenticeships; oh yes, and the Jockey Club ruled your portrait didn't grace its halls unless you'd had 'a good War'. Improvement of the breed? Certainly: improvement of the human race? That could wait.

Geldings weren't bred, they were made. There were 'handicap kings', the likes of Reg Akehurst, George Todd, Jack Colling whose famed boast was "making the bookmakers squeal if I had a stable full of geldings". Reg and George were rather more taciturn regarding their prowess in getting geldings to go faster than it seemed nature had intended.

It's an exhausted debate about whether male racehorses relieved of their testicles should be allowed to participate in the best (another value judgment) races. But when other stale 'topics' have dried up, however temporarily, the morality of the gelding operation surfaces again.

Maybe they are easier to train they have nothing left to lose - but, like all intrusive operations (the wind ops debate is about to get up gelding's inner) the contention that these 'procedures' are less for the animal's welfare and more about improving performance has resurfaced.