WHEN publishing the official marks for Cheltenham’s handicaps last week, Phil Smith went to the trouble of issuing a statement outlining the reasons why BHA handicappers keep their own performance figures for Irish jumps races, stating that there was “no semblance of any anti-Irish bias”, using the collective strike-rates for Irish versus British runners in jumps handicaps - viz. 11% v 10% for all handicaps, and 5.2% vs 4.8% for what Smith called the “four major festivals”, including Cheltenham and Aintree in the spring.

Smith uses the above figures to justify his handling of Irish runners in handicaps whereas his critics, notably Kevin Blake (late of this parish) use that very justification to conclude that he is deliberately biased against the Irish by artificially depressing their expected rate of success.