Champ or Chump?

Whilst watching Sea the Stars sweep to an unprecedented treble of the 2,000 guineas, the Epsom Derby and most recently, the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, all sorts of superlatives were being uttered by the commentator and those with any ounce of horse racing knowledge.

'Fantastic'. 'A great in the world of sport'. 'A true champion'.

These words made we wonder: Why do we adore and admire racehorses so much, even though they are so far removed from ourselves as human beings? The nation collectively wept when terrace favourite Desert Orchid died in 2006, as it did when the brilliant Best Mate passed away in 2005, right at the peak of it's powers. Horses, on the face of it, share very little of our human characteristics, but then again, so do cars, and nobody could claim to feel an attachment to the Mclaren that Lewis Hamilton raced to victory in last season.

When one thinks of brilliant sportsmen and women, and the reasons we love them, it is hard to place them in the same category as a horse. We loved Brian Clough for his unpredictability, and the spell he held over a room of journalists, or the way he admirably tried to do the impossible; make the Leeds United team of 1973 loveable; just like him. We loved Andrew 'Freddie' Flintoff for his normality, and the true belief that he was simply like one of us, in addition to his fantastic cricketing ability. Admittedly, 'Fred' may not have been as technically sound as Ponting, or Lara, or even Strauss, but his endearing personality more than made up for it. (I use the past tense fully aware that Flintoff still feels he has a career to fulfill; alas, without test cricket, he will never win our affection like he did in 2005). Sometimes we love sportsmen or women for a moment of brilliance, or being in the right place at the right time. We will always love Jonny Wilkinson for that drop-kick in 2003. Stuart Pearce will always have a place in our hearts for his penalty kick in 1996, and the way we saw how much it meant to him, despite his relatively ordinary international career following that.

But horses cannot, it seems to those not 'in the know', show these emotions. We cannot see the temperament of Clough in a horse, or the passion of Pearce. We certainly cannot see in a horse what we see in Flintoff- a bit of ourselves (although Ruud van Nistelrooy may disagree). Perhaps that is the reason. Maybe I have been looking too deeply. It could quite conceivably be that the reason we adore racehorses is that it gives us a chance to escape from being human. It is back to the primitiveness of Darwinism, of survival of the fittest. A striker subconsciously knows that if he misses a chance in a match, there will be one coming soon afterwards. A cricketer knows that if he throws away his wicket, there will be at least four or five more ODIs to come, probably in as many days. A horse would not know this.

This is the romantic view, anyway. Of course, it could just as easily be that the reason we love Sea the Stars, Arkle, Best Mate or Desert Orchid is that we had £20 riding on it, and the horse losing is too much to bear.