THE sight of just one horse being entered for a race is a disappointing one for all within point-to-pointing, most notably for the South Union Foxhounds committee, with somewhat ironically, Its Only Me, the sole entry for the adjacent maiden on their card at Kinsale this afternoon.

News of the first hunt race of the season attracting just one entry will undoubtedly lead to other committees getting nervous about the viability of any hunt races that they intend to run at their fixture this season, however, this undoubted disappointment must be put into context.

Backbone

Firstly, the hunt committee must be applauded for supporting hunt races at their hugely popular two-day spring fixture, as these races are the backbone of the sport’s heritage and the link between racing and the hunt.

This is the first time that this adjacent race has been run at their autumn fixture, a fixture which has not taken place since November 2013, and so handlers do not have an expectation of the race as part of their programme.

Unlike the spring hunt race, which was for horses aged five-year-old and up, the conditions of this race were tightened further to those six and up.

Most crucially, horses from seven hunts were eligible to be entered, however four of these hunts have not issued a single hunter certificate for a horse that was eligible for the race, with three also not producing horses that were eligible for the spring hunt race at the course.

In all, just seven horses were eligible to be entered for the race, and from these, four have never run before, with one further horse having not been seen since making his debut two and a half years ago.

Ready to run

Handlers will attest to the difficulty of ensuring a horse is ready to run for the first time at a particular fixture, especially one that is the opening meeting of their season, as this is on the Cork-Waterford circuit.

That leaves just two race tough horses eligible for the race, the group of horses which largely provide the bulk of horses for hunt races, and it was indeed the race’s sole entry which came from this category.

With such a limited pool of horses from which to pull entries from, disappointingly, this one horse entry cannot come as a surprise.

The next adjacent race of the season will take place next weekend, with an adjacent mares’ maiden at the Wexford Foxhounds’ new course in Knockmullen House.

Unlike the Kinsale race and its seven eligible horses, there are already 29 horses eligible for the Knockmullen House race, before those horses on this week’s hunter certificate list were also added.

Sacrifice

There is no question that those committees who elect to run a hunt race as part of their six-race programme, are more often than not, sacrificing potential additional entry revenue that may come their way from running other races.

This is why it has previously been suggested in this column that these hunt committees, should be given the opportunity to run confined or adjacent races as a seventh race with the support of additional HRI funding.

Hopefully this would encourage more committees to persevere with them and the valuable opportunities they provide, often for horse of a particular level to get competitive.

The current position that we are in with the number of horses for older maidens and winner races, is one where the attention given to race programming is of particular importance in order to ensure that there is a suitable balance between the scheduling of races and an adequate number of horses to compete in them.

This is not solely for hunt races, but a number of other race categories.