02/01/2024
On New Years Day, the BHA introduced Premier Racing at Cheltenham for it's first meeting.
This is how I understand the situation to be, I may be wrong in my surmising, I do get emails about it all but quite frankly, I am too busy to read them properly and I know there's no point in me shouting my mouth off as nothing ever gets done to help us lot...
Apparently the aim is to showcase British Racing in between the hours of 2 and 4 pm at weekends, with huge prize money, in an attempt to get more people racing.
This is the Racing Post's write up on it...
https://www.racingpost.com/news/britain/premier-racing-begins-on-new-years-day-at-cheltenham-heres-everything-you-need-to-know-aoI5Y0n6u9Wx/
In order to do this, they have taken prize money from races during the week, thus making the paltry sum we were already racing for, even lower.
Yesterday at Cheltenham there were only 47 runners across the card, for around 200k...
Yet we are struggling to find races for average horses that pay any more than £4k to the winner, with £250 for 4th...The entry fees end up over £50 a horse, transport £1.10 a mile upwards, jockey fees £196 and then there's the overtime for the staff...
I have just received an email to tell me that to reregister my colours for another year is £162.60, nothing changes, just another charge. That's every owner in the country being charged for their colours to stay theirs.
Weatherby's charge us £15 a month per account to "manage" the account we use for racing, they are the only bank allowed to have racing accounts. A captive audience...
fair play going on from me saying it was 25 a month, weathebys called me to say that had charged me 25 per month in error and it was actually only 15 to manage partnership accounts and they have refunded me the difference, every little helps. Thank you.
The BHA charges for naming horses, setting up ownerships and partnerships are ridiculous.
Then you have the racecourses earning media right money and not disclosing what they earn, which means we have no idea how much money they have to add to prize money after the levy funding. I believe the levy is 10% of gambling profit, however it's a grey area with off shore bookmakers...
The media rights are from allowing the racing at each course be viewed all over the world at any time of day or night, which means those countries can gamble on our racing, brining in lots of money for the countries who are paying for the media rights. You would think they pay well for that wouldn't you? Noone knows...
So the levy comes from the gambling, which was around 100million for the first time last year, however the racecourses are expected to add to the levy and increase prize money, which some do well and some don't.
However rightly or wrongly the government has introduced affordability checks, which means the big owners and gamblers are dropping away and it's harder and harder for people to gamble. Which means less money coming into the levy.
The lack of transparency from the racecourses re their media rights money are the problem at the moment. I was spoken to by someone high up in the BHA a couple of years ago and they asked me to shout about it as their hands were tied.
I did do a blog but it makes no difference as there are no rules to make them disclose their incomes.
So what can we do as trainers and owners? Is it even up to us to take action? The National Trainers Federation are fighting the good fight on our behalf but it's a very slow process with a lot of roadblocks in their way.
The last time the trainers boycotted a race meeting, against Arc racing (who own a lot of the courses), I was one of the ones to say no, it was badly organised and I felt very bullied by the flat trainers who were organising it, I refused to be pushed around by a complete t**t. So I told them to f**k off.
However now I think is the time we need to seriously think about the future of racing, it is hanging in the balance with many of us really struggling to keep going. There have been quite a few trainers who have packed up as a result of a lack of lower level owners coming into the sport, due to the rising costs and s**t prize money and who can blame them.
If racing continues to focus on those who can spend £300k plus on a horse to win a £5k race, what chance to the rest of us have? If the powers that be continue to focus their efforts on the "big" races, they run the risk of missing the collapse of the bottom of the industry.
Us at the bottom, employ staff, use farriers, vets, feed merchants, pay the ridiculous charges they impose and generally support racing from the bottom up.
If the trainers and owners spoke with their actions and striked, would it make a difference? I don't know but maybe the situation is coming and maybe something has to be done. I don't know what the answers are but it needs addressing somehow.
Anyway here's a picture of Pattern Cutter, just after we got him, a lovely horse who will win his races, in the right grade during the summer. It's horses like him and trainers like me and my brilliant staff who are fighting for Racing to have a better reputation and image, showing we are horse people.
I think racing should be focusing on showing horse welfare and the smaller owners and their stories, show how accessible it is to the smaller owner, how well the horses are looked after, even if they can only win an average race. How much we are doing for these beautiful creatures both in and out of racing.
Yes we still have a ways to go, but to keep racing looking like an elitist sport, surely makes more of a divide?
We love our horses and do this job for just that, but we can't survive on fresh air, it is not a hobby, it's our job and the powers that be are slowly making it impossible to continue for horses like this lad a people like us.
Answers on a postcard guys, I would be interested in hearing what you would do to help the industry, as none of us can do any worse than those who are in charge at the moment...
