PAT HEALY: Brand Ambassador Pat Healy again discusses the pertinent issue of removing fences which arose once more at the weekend, and shares his thoughts on Ben Harvey’s ban after winning at Cheltenham on Friday.

HRI awards

I tuned into the HRI Awards on Tuesday evening on Racing TV which was brilliantly hosted by Gary O’Brien. A great amount of credit must go to the HRI team for putting together the event as I’m sure it required a huge amount of planning, especially in these unprecedented times. It was a fantastic show to watch, and to see the likes of Tony Mullins getting so emotional at winning an award for Princess Zoe was fantastic too. Both Gary and Jane Mangan did a superb job of hosting it, and all the winners were worthy and are fantastic ambassadors for Irish racing.

Sun rears its head again

We had another issue with the sun at Naas on Monday. They took the two hurdles in the straight out in order to make it safe for racing, but there is still plenty of grumbling about it being done. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, it’s not the clerk of the course’s job to come up with a solution, it’s the role of the respective associations to sit down and discuss a method or system that suits all parties. It’s not the clerk of the course’s fault and he shouldn’t be forced to put the safety of jockeys at risk.

It’s not just in Ireland that the problem exists. We saw it at Cheltenham over the weekend, but instead of taking the wings of the final hurdle down, they left them up and the field had to manoeuvre around them. There doesn’t seem much point in that. Surely it would have worked better for them to remove the wings and let them gallop the whole way up the home straight without having to “chicane” around the wings. I suppose there lies the issue and although I don’t know as well how things work in England, I feel strongly that here at home both the Jockeys and Trainers Associations really need to sit down and sort out the issue with missing out jumps where everyone is in a happy place for when the situation arises again.

Ben Harvey

It was great to see 20-year-old Ben Harvey win the Cross Country race at Cheltenham last Friday. You obviously have to be delighted for him given he’s still so young and starting out on his riding career. It will be fantastic for his CV to ride such a high-profile winner so early on and I’m sure he’ll kick on from here. He’s learning as he goes and riding against the legends that are Jamie Codd, Barry O’Neill and Derek O’Connor in the point-to-point game, will provide him with a valuable education. He’s a name I’m sure we’ll be hearing plenty more about.

It was a bit of a shame to see him fined and banned as heavily as he was, and you could argue the stewards were a bit harsh with their punishment. I think when you are dealing with young kids starting out they could perhaps have been a bit more lenient, by all means fine him but dishing out 11 days for me just doesn’t sit well. I would argue that giving Ben 11 days when he reported that his mount was both willing and responding to his riding is way over the top.

Mick Winters

Mick is box office and always has been. We all saw what a brilliant character he is at Cheltenham and I can tell you that, having known him for 40 years, he’s always been a gas man and mighty craic as he showed on Saturday. He’s a top-class trainer too you know and you don’t win two Galway Hurdles or train a mare of the calibre of Missunited unless you’ve got serious training skills. He knows the game inside-out and it was fantastic to see him train a big Saturday Cheltenham winner with Chatham Street Lad.

He’s always been good to me and is always the first one who tells me he’s looking forward to our Listowel Cheltenham Festival preview where he is a regular on the panel. He’s a mighty character and alongside his wife Patricia, they are a great team and brilliant for racing.