First blood to Martin Pipe but poor quality surfaces led to demise of jumping

Friday's landmark first British all-weather Group 1 will take place 30 years to the day after a rather less celebrated initiative on a synthetic surface.

On November 1, 1989, Southwell staged the first all-weather jumps card, with the inaugural novice hurdle going the way of Zulu, who made all and strolled home alone to initiate a treble for Martin Pipe and Jonathan Lower, the aggregate winning margin of which was 50 lengths.

Just over a fortnight later Lingfield followed suit by staging a similar card, where the opening juvenile hurdle proved a rather more competitive affair as Ron Smyth's Irish Ditty, ridden by conditional Jonathan Leech, scored by just a short head.

Exciting finishes like Lingfield's proved not that common in all-weather jumps races, but that was not the new sport's main problem.

Viking Flagship: ran in an all-weather jumps race before rising up the ranksCredit: Abraham Dan

More problematic than the uncompetitive nature of the fare was the poor quality of the participants. While Viking Flagship and Run For Free both dipped their toe into it before rising to the top, all-weather jumping catered generally for hurdlers at the very bottom of the ratings band.

Equally problematic was that punters came to distrust all-weather jumping on integrity grounds, suspecting that the outcome of some races was predetermined.

The main reason the authorities pulled the plug on all-weather jumping after less than five years, however, was that artificial surfaces, which were then in their infancy, were proving too unforgiving for jumping.

War Beat, who was fatally injured at Lingfield on February 24, 1994, became the 13th horse to be killed in action in all-weather jumps races since the turn of the year. The BHB immediately announced that there would be no more all-weather jumping that season and nobody was surprised when it never resumed.

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