Dominic Beirne

This year’s Satsuki Sho was run on a surface so quick that the horses coming from the back were in trouble almost from the outset. That much is true. But I do not accept the idea that this automatically makes it a bad surface, or somehow bad for the sport. In most sports, elite competition is staged on the best surface available. Track and field is an obvious example. The point is not to make conditions difficult for their own sake, but to provide a safe, well-prepared surface on which performance can be judged properly. I think racing should be seen in much the same way. In JRA racing, fast times do not simply mean the turf has been made harder. If you look at the broader trend over the last few decades, the picture is more complicated than that. The turf has in fact tended to become softer, yet average times have still come down. So the old story — fast times must mean hard ground — is too crude to explain what is happening. What has really changed is the quality of the surface itself. JRA has spent years taking unevenness out of the turf, because that unevenness is one of the things that can cause injury and one of the things that stops horses from giving their true running. The grass holds up better than it used to. The maintenance is better than it used to be. The result is a surface that is safer, cleaner, and more consistent — and yes, that also means horses can keep rolling at high speed. If anything, the side that has not fully caught up is the human one. Training has to change. Riding has to change. Even the kind of horse people should value has to change. From a breeding standpoint, I see that as a positive, not a negative. I am not saying every race has to be run on this kind of ground. Deep, holding turf has its own drama, and as both sport and gambling it can be great fun. But fast ground by itself is not something I regard as unhealthy or unsporting. In many cases, it is simply what happens when safety, turf science, and course management are taken seriously. 📷kontena