THIS card took place on quite desperate ground and Soll’s winning time in the inaugural 32RedSport.com Veterans Handicap Chase Final was nearly 52 seconds slower than average.

Yet it was a riveting contest, thoroughly appreciated by a National Hunt audience which, if truth be known, would probably not cross the road to watch a five-furlong sprint.

Yet the climax, with the 7/1 joint-favourite sticking his head out up the hill and keeping on with dogged determination to deny Aachen in the dying strides, proved controversial.

Just as Paddy Brennan incurred the wrath of the stewards when getting Cue Card home the previous week, so Tom Scudamore picked up a seven-day ban and a £1,150 fine for his efforts on the winner, who was deemed to have been struck 14 times.

Frankly, it is hard not to sympathise with Scudamore. Soll is a remarkable old character at 11, trained to perfection by David Pipe to be a leading contender in marathon chases when the emphasis is on stamina, not speed. It may have been only a head last week, but he was always just getting there and would not have won under the firmest hands and heels driving.

This is what Soll does. He gets himself a bit behind, then stays on, and on, and on. Helped by ultra-testing ground, he gets there in the end, indicating that the four and a half miles at Aintree might well suit. Which it does, to a degree, but the ground dries out and he cannot quite go with faster horses. Therefore, the very attractive purse on offer here - very nearly £62,000 - was simply unmissable.

“It’s ridiculous,” Scudamore said of the dual punishment. “You cannot have more or less the same rule for riding in a three-mile chase on heavy ground as a six-furlong flat race on summer ground, the difference being just one smack with the whip.

“As jockeys, we certainly do not go out to abuse horses. Soll has responded to all the driving. He ran all the way and I did not feel as if I was hard on him.”

The jockey would have the support of many onlookers and not just favourite backers. There was, perhaps, a difference between last week and the King George in that the Sandown race was played out almost in slow-motion, with an inevitable outcome as long as Scudamore kept doing what he was obliged to do, closing the gap slowly but surely.

furious set-to

By contrast, Cue Card and Vautour were locked in battle from some way out, no quarter asked or given in a furious set-to where it was very hard indeed to imagine the whip rules being given any sort of consideration.

Tellingly, Paddy Brennan on the winner, having been fined £4,200 and stood down for 11 days, did not refer to the punishment at all, which tends to support the view that, when the prize and prestige are pitched high enough, ‘win at all costs and argue later’ does indeed apply.

It remains the view of this observer, with experience of racecourses and, perhaps more importantly, betting offices over a 50-year period, that disqualifying the horse is barely an option.

Try to imagine the mood in a crowded bookmaker’s outlet in London or Dublin half-way through a busy Saturday afternoon steadily going the bookmakers’ way if a 6/4 favourite in a big race were thrown out. It simply does not bear thinking about.

Scudamore spoke well and honestly, while Charlie Deutsch on runner-up Aachen, also Aintree bound, accepted his caution with good grace.

It is good to know that the BHA will again be looking at the penalty structures for whip offences as a matter of some urgency. Theirs is a thankless task because there is no apparent solution acceptable to all parties.