On the high and heady days, such as Denman gave us last weekend, it is easy to be seduced by the virtues of British racing and to ignore its real and present dangers. As a salutary reminder, consider this coincidence - there is another horse called Denman; he is owned by Sheikh Mohammed and races in Australia.
This Denman is a group-class Flat horse, highly unlikely to follow his heroic namesake over jumps. But he would have to travel to do so, now that Australia’s withering jumping programme has been given the last rites. And, as his owner is ruler of a country that appears to be going spectacularly bust, might he anyway be in for a change of colours?
There initially seemed no link between the financial crisis in Dubai and the imminent termination of jump racing in Victoria. One story made the front pages, the other a few paragraphs in the trade press. Neither posed obvious threats to the racing we enjoy in Britain.
John Ferguson, Sheikh Mohammed’s bloodstock advisor, went so far as to defuse any fears about his client’s racing commitments. “It is a private interest and nothing to do with the UAE government,” he said. “Separate in every way,” he added for emphasis.
As for the Australian decision, taken on horse welfare grounds and implemented next year, the inclination this side of the world will be to shrug sadly while pointing out that the strength of the jumping code resides here and that its future in Britain, Ireland and France is secure.
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Both may prove to be dangerous assumptions. If the fantasy that underpins Dubai has truly been exploded, and its debts cannot be met, it surely beggars belief that the ruling family can continue to lavish untold millions on a hobby?
For that is what the Maktoums’ racing empire is - one vast self-indulgence, hugely beneficial to the workforce and cashflow of the equine industries but ultimately unsustainable if hard times bring rigour to the mathematics.
The Godolphin operation is just the headline item. Sheikh Mohammed owns 4,000 horses, worldwide, along with great swathes of property for studs and training establishments. The annual wage bill is dizzying - and that is before we get started on his investment in bloodstock.
The Maktoums were responsible for a third of the turnover at the leading yearling sales recently. They do not stint, either, on their purchases of stallions and had an eye-watering offer for Sea The Stars rejected. Such sums will be morally questionable now.
In their homeland, the pressing concern, racing-wise, must be to protect the forthcoming launch of the new racecourse at Meydan, which has cost £1.5 billion and will host the World Cup meeting in March. Back here, all those who are employed by the Maktoums, or have made comfortable livings from their racing obsession, must be mightily anxious.
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Some of us have little sympathy for the exposing of Dubai as the artificial playground it always seemed, a folly built on sand. But the consequences have mighty tentacles and they will stretch deep into British racing. The recession has already claimed some high-profile owners who tried vainly to keep their racing and business lives separate. The Maktoums may have no greater immunity.
Flat racing, already under critical scrutiny, is further imperilled by the Dubai dilemma. Lest jumping folk get carried away with their boom times, however, it would be wise to acknowledge that Australia’s banishment of the sport cannot be viewed as merely someone else’s problem.
The ban was supported by the Victorian government, whose racing minister Rob Hulls explained: “There has been a large number of deaths and falls over the last few years.” Unsurprisingly, animal welfare groups also celebrated the news they had been crusading for.
Such is the love of jumping in these islands that we take for granted the risk factor. Falls come with the territory and the attrition rate, while regrettable, is limited by a welfare regime of wise minds that the Australians would do well to consult.
This, however, has never appeased the more militant animal rights groups. Encouraged by the Australian action, they can be expected to mount fresh assaults on the legitimacy and morality of the racing that is warming us through this winter. The authorities must be prepared with persuasive answers.
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Handicappers get the blame for many ills of racing, usually from disgruntled trainers and often unfairly. But there is one area in which they are addressing their duties so literally that a vital area of jump racing is being undermined.
The sole blot on a golden landscape at Newbury’s three-day meeting was the small fields for two valuable novice chases - so small, and so valuable, that Stephen Higgins, managing director of the Berkshire course, has threatened to drop them next year.
In a way, you can see Higgins’s point. Racecourses are averse to four-runner races, especially for pots of more than £30,000. They believe the betting public is deterred, the viewing crowd disinterested and the sponsors disillusioned.
I am personally unsure that any of this is entirely true if the horses involved are compelling but the perception is unfavourable and something must be done. Primarily, all concerned must acknowledge the reason for such puny fields, which is a terror of the handicapper.
Each of the Newbury novices included a horse with a daunting rating over hurdles. Pettitfour was 155 over the smaller obstacles and Punchestowns 171. The problem is that such marks automatically become the handicappers’ starting point when they graduate to fences.
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Say your horse is rated 125 and you are beaten two lengths by Punchestowns. The chances are your handicap mark will be fired through the roof and it will henceforth be virtually impossible to win a race. What incentive is that to take part?
Paul Nicholls, the champion trainer, suggests that no horse should be given a steeplechase mark until it has run three times over fences. It is a sensible proposal. Something, certainly, must be urgently agreed between trainers, race planners and handicappers. Losing such races is unacceptable.
Even a concerted campaign in the trade press failed to correct the annual affront that is Tony McCoy’s exclusion from Sports Personality of the Year reckoning. As he drove to Folkestone yesterday in his seven-days-a-week obsession to improve on the indelible history he has made, and the unfailingly ambassadorial impression he leaves, McCoy will have been wearily unsurprised. He probably knows what he has to do to get on the shortlist. Unfair and illogical though it is, he simply has to win the Grand National.