​I am a critic of the B.H.A. To my mind, others might disagree, they are too reactive when a strong governing body should be proactive, leading from the front and coming-up with their own concepts for growing the sport and securing its future. It is my firm belief, accepting as I do that a core number of employees should have business and accounting credentials, that the head of the organisation and the key advisors should all have hands-on experience of either horses or administration of some aspect of the sport. Horse racing is a sport/industry with a multitude of nuance and no length of time is enough to be able to understand the intricacies and history of the sport. As anyone at the top table of the sport will tell you, there is always something new to learn from horses and the training and caring of them.
But kudos should be given where kudos is deserved and I was pleased to learn that though they have left the door open – sitting on the fence is a key component of employment with the B.H.A. – thus far the Racing League has not been given any dates in the racing calendar for next season.
I disliked the concept of the Racing League from the moment it was given space by the Racing Post and in its watered-down form this summer I disliked it even more. We were promised teams sponsored by big-name companies not usually associated with horse racing. We didn’t get them; we got pretend teams sponsored by no one. We were promised razzmatazz and new bums on seats and received not much of anything. We were promised terrestrial television and got Sky.
It was suggested this was the perfect format to trial ‘whip-less’ races, the one redeeming element of the scheme, at least to my mind, and, no doubt vetoed by the jockeys, this too came to nothing.
We were promised grand theatre and what was presented to the racing public was a puppet show.
Of course, trainers, jockeys and owners were in favour, though only because of the enhanced prize-money of offer, which of course not even a cynic like me could criticise. Every race-meeting should have similar prize-money. It is embarrassing that British horse racing, the home of many of the world’s greatest horse races, is so demeaned by its level of prize-money.
Yet even if the Racing League were to become a runaway success, apart from the series itself and the enhanced prize-money, how can this idea take the sport forward? How can five or six Thursday evening fixtures swell attendance at race-meetings from January through to December? How can this concept revitalise the sport and help to secure its future?
Is the idea to turn horse racing into a team sport, open only to the select few, twelve-months of the year?
Last week I exchanged a couple of e-mails with Charlie Fellows, one of the Racing League’s chief supporters. I doubt if I dented his enthusiasm for the Racing League and he certainly did not warm my cockles with his vision for the Racing League. I may have upset him by suggesting the R.L. was just opportunism on the part of the participants and was more about putting extra cash in their pockets, which is perfectly valid during the times we live in, rather than winning the hearts and minds of the public.
I suggested the Racing League would serve the sport to greater effect if the ‘teams’, as pretend as they are, were to raise money for eight different charities, for example, from within the sport, the R.o.R and more public charities like Child-Line and Age Concern, demonstrating that this a sport with a big heart. In his e-mail, Charlie failed to make any mention of the charity idea, which I took as indication that charity and the R.L. are not and will not be compatible bedfellows.
The original concept of the R.L. came out of Formula 1, with aspirations expressed to capture in equine form the excitement and team loyalties of a sport that itself is in decline and having to copy aspects of other motor-sports to halt the haemorrhaging of interest.
As I said to Charlie Fellows, if we can’t get new bums of seats through Royal Ascot and the Cheltenham Festival, racing on a Thursday night sure ain’t going to make many inroads. I also said that if enhanced prize-money can be achieved for the R.L., why can’t it be achieved for race-meetings already scheduled for next season?
The Racing League, I continue to believe, has no place in the racing calendar. That does not mean, though, that innovation cannot be pursued, new ideas suggested and tried. But what is needed, as the majority suggested, is less meetings, and a root and branch overhaul of a calendar not much changed since the obese Queen Anne took that coach ride on Ascot Heath in 1711. 
Two suggestions I am bold enough to put forward are – during the summer months one day every fortnight without any flat racing, with N.H. and Irish racing filling the void on the selected day. And less, far less, all-weather racing during the summer months. I have other ideas, none of which, I suspect, Charlie would approve of.

I look forward to this time of year; season of mists and mellow fruitfulness and Keats other ode rhyming to autumn. The turf flat narrative draws to its conclusion. We discover the top 2-year-olds, both colt and filly, horses to disregard for the Derby and Oaks when they are three. Who had Adayar and Snowfall on their radar last March? The jockeys championship will be resolved in six-weeks, though why when the season will still have another month or so to run is beyond me. Makes no sense and devalues the prize, to my mind. The champion jockey should be the jockey who rides the most winners during, as it is this year, the 2021 season, not just that part that started on a random date and finishes likewise. The uselessness of the process of determining the jockeys’ championship is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the trainers’ title is not decided until the last day of the season, the battle having started on the first day of the turf season.
If ‘Champions Day’ were to be staged on the last day of the season it would provide a fitting and spectacular conclusion. But no, the B.H.A. has to complicate matters and leave itself open to criticism. The sport, too, is open to ridicule – try explaining to a non-racing man or woman how we decide the jockeys’ championship and why every race before the start-date and every race after the end-date count for absolutely nothing.
And we also have on the horizon, the Cambridgeshire Handicap, this coming Saturday and in a few weeks the Cesarewitch, the two best handicaps of the whole season, or at least my favourite handicaps of the season. The two big Newmarket handicaps resemble horse racing as it has been down through the centuries, even if at the dawn of the sport Newmarket Heath played host to Match races, one owner betting against another to see who had the best or fastest thoroughbred. No malnourished four-stone wet-through apprentices, of course, as was the case during the early decades of the 1900’s, though also very little over-weight. But still a grand and colourful cavalry charge.
Most followers of the sport may need reminding that back in the day, and for good long period of its history, the Cambridgeshire was one of the most prestigious and sought-after races of the season, with classic winners turning out and not always carrying top weight. This year, as a sort of throwback to the grand old days, the favourite is a former ante-post favourite for the Epsom Derby, Uncle Bryn, trained by John Gosden and his lookalike and soundalike son Thady. If only Aidan O’Brien had the foresight to have aimed Mother Earth at the race.

This time of year is the time of the owners open days at the top National Hunt stables. Nicky Henderson kicked things off over the weekend and the front page of today’s Racing Post was adorned by a photograph of the Seven Barrows mighty threesome, Altior, Sprinter Sacre and the poor fellow that must follow in their hoof-prints, Shishkin. I doubt if any trainer has had three better 2-mile chasers in the whole history of the sport, that is as long as Shishkin doesn’t fluff his lines, of course.
Let’s hope fate is kind to both horse and trainer and at some point during the season, hopefully at Cheltenham in March, Shishkin will face-up to the Closutton pairing of Energumene and Chacon Pour Soi, though the latter may prove to be one of those great horses that was never great at Cheltenham.
Now, I have one bit of advice for Nicky Henderson and I hope he listens carefully and acts on my advice as it may prevent a repeat of the ‘Altior’ catastrophe of 2-seasons ago. During this season, please Nicky, run Shishkin over 2-½-miles just to get it over and done with. If he wins, which he should do, it will make plans for future seasons less stressful and if he gets beat, you’ll know to stick to 2-miles for the foreseeable future. If you had run Altior over further than 2-miles the season before his unfortunate clash with Cyrname, you might not have run at Ascot and his final seasons might have been more fruitful. But hindsight is a beautiful and annoying thing, isn’t it?

We are all aware that our sport is deplorably governed and regulated. If anyone thinks otherwise just research average prize-money and the universal criticism on the subject. To compound their inability to see the wood for the trees, the B.H.A. has published a race calendar for next season that has come in for condemnation from all sectors of the industry.
To add to my poor opinion of the B.H.A., I find it baffling that no one from the sport’s governing body recognised the opportunity to survey the many thousands of people to attend the Henry Cecil Open Weekend and to ask their opinions on what they like and dislike about the sport and how they believe the sport can be improved upon to benefit spectators; such a study might have opened eyes and provided data and insights unconsidered by professionals working within the industry.
For instance, does anyone within the B.H.A. read the letters’ column of the Racing Post? They should. Here’s why. In Sunday’s Racing Post letters’ column, a regular racegoer complained about the way he was treated by officials at Newbury. The B.H.A., in my opinion, should contact this man and take note of his complaint and then go to Newbury and carry out an investigation. This man suggested he might take his custom to different sporting venues in the future. This man is important to the sport, we cannot afford to lose his like.
And although Mr. Glyn Linder is so wide of the mark with his comment on only allowing jockeys to ride at one meeting a day – he called it ‘ridiculous’- I thought to dismiss him as so far out of touch with modern-day reality to be not worth bothering with. But he is in fact a racehorse owner and as such his criticism of the racing calendar and prize money merits the attention of the B.H.A. He, too, is important to the sport’s future. He is an owner and the sport needs him in the same way every door needs a lintel.
​

​There will be 4 fewer race meetings in 2022. Phew! I thought the upward spiral would never end. Though, as it is becoming in this world-wide governmental era of confused restriction of civil liberties, the number 1,482 is not set in stone. There is wiggle-room, apparently, for extra Sunday Series meetings and the nonsensical Racing League is still to be accommodated. So, four fewer may come 5 extra. Or 6. Or 7.
Everyone is happy except the National Association of Stable Staff. They are cross, very cross. George McGrath, head man of the N.A.S.S., is livid as the fixture list compliers, which is everyone, seemingly, except the N.A.S.S., have completely ignored any concerns for the welfare of the sport’s core workers, those men and women who look after the horses.
To look at the fixture list you would think the sport was booming. Which according to all concerned it is not. It is flat-lining; in need of an infusion of money and to some extent fresh ideas.
The Sunday Series, which in some corners of the industry is referred to as a success, is a case in point. The inflated prize money can only be beneficial but why start these meetings halfway through the afternoon, which allows for a last race around 7 o’clock. Stable staff have to be out-of-bed at daybreak, anyone leading up at a Sunday Series meeting who lives 3 or 4-hours from the racecourse will not arrive home and in their beds much before midnight. Trainers do not carry the number of employees to allow staff who had gone racing the previous day much of a lie-in. The biggest no-no to me about the Sunday Series is the requirement to start so late in the day for it to have any chance of achieving the goals of its sponsor and I.T.V.
If the mental well-being of jockeys is important, then what about stable staff?
Racecourses are a business and they must make a profit and as racing is their core business, they must have fixtures to get bums on seats and the cash coming in. In fact, everyone involved in racing must make money for the whole carnival to go round and round. But as has been the case for 200-years, stable staff are overlooked; taken for granted as if they remained servants of old.
Money, by the way, though helpful to staff with families to feed and house, is not the whole answer. Money does not rest tired bodies. Money does not quell the turmoil of mental decline. Working with horses is a privilege and has rewards far beyond a weekly wage but it is hard work. And in many ways, it is harder today than it was back in the time when stable staff were treated exactly like servants. 
Back in the days of Matt Peacock and John Porter, when the working day extended to any hour the ‘guvnor’ dictated, a groom was only expected to care for two horses maximum and the day’s chores were measured out throughout the day. The only rush and harry was when the ‘guvnor’ came round at night to inspect every horse, every stable, every curry-comb. Nowadays grooms can have six-horses to ‘brush-over’ at evening stables and the working day is regulated by employment law. It’s go go go from dawn to dusk with a few hours down-time, if they are lucky, in the early afternoon. Take three people away to go racing and the remaining staff may well be doubling-up, doing other peoples horses as well as their own.
The sport cannot risk losing staff of any calibre, let alone the really good ones.
‘Best Turned Out’ awards, although filled with best intentions, are no reward for the majority who have worked just as hard as the winner. To my mind everyone who leads up a horse should be earning a set amount. Instead of £200 for ‘best-turned-out’, for example, give everyone leading up £30 minimum. Not out of the pockets of trainers but out of a central fund accumulated from an extra £2 on what owners pay in entry fees and from sponsors. Factor in stable staff when prize money is being allocated for any race. For leading up in the Derby and such races, the lead-up fee should reflect the importance of the race.
Also, it might help the problem of length of time staff are away from home if some meetings were restricted to horses trained within a certain distance of the racecourse. This would be a good suggestion for Sunday racing and late-night Saturday fixtures. This is a challenging issue, no doubt, but in drawing up a fixture list that crams in meetings on weekends and allows evening fixtures to go on deep into the dark, the B.H.A. have completely ignored the concerns of the N.A.S.S. and that is blinkered thinking. If we must have 1,482 meetings, and counting, in 2022, put a bit of blue sky thinking into the process to sweeten the pill for those at the blunt end of the sport. Without stable staff, this sport will be deep in the mire.

​The best aspect to come out of the weekend’s racing was the quote by Ger Lyons, replicated, I am pleased to report, by other racing folk in recent weeks, by the excellent David Jennings in Sunday’s Racing Post (Sept 12th). ‘As I keep saying to anybody who will listen to me, stop worrying about the people who don’t want to come. Worry about the people who are here. The people outside will see how much we’re all enjoying it. Eventually the penny will drop and they’ll want to join us.”
This is very much the right attitude, not that nothing should be done to encourage new people to race meetings. ‘The Racing League’ will not achieve greater racecourse attendance as the teams involved are all pretend and not actual real-life associations people can attach themselves to. The participants may enjoy the greater levels of prize money, though it begs the question why similar levels couldn’t be achieved for the same meetings without the racing league involvement. The same can be said about the Sky Bet Sunday Series.
As I have said many times; if you want to drive new people to the racecourse, the sport should fund free coach trips from local towns and cities to local racecourses and then to have people on-course to welcome and guide them through ‘a day at the races’. 
There is no silver bullet for growing the appeal of horse racing to the general public, especially as there is so much variety of sporting entertainment these days. ‘From small acorns do great oak trees grow’ should be the motto. And those people who think what we call ‘class racing’ will attract the non-race goer, that is a fallacy. If that were true point-to-points would have no future. Mainly old horses, no great quality of jockeyship, a race environment with practically no facilities and no hiding place from the elements, yet point-to-points thrive.
A day at Bath, Redcar, Fontwell or Hexham, any racecourse, in the fresh air, the sun, hopefully, shining, should be an appealing venue for a family day out. What people come for, in my opinion, is to see the horses and to, crossed fingers, win some money off the bookmakers. Slowly, racecourses are getting there. Creches, swings and roundabouts for the kids, market stalls for shoppers, entertainment outside of the racing, picnic areas. Horse racing should not be packaged as a betting medium. The racecourse has to be a fun-for-all-ages venue. The quality of horse will be lost on the majority. A seller that has a three-way finish is just as great a race as the Derby or Cheltenham Gold Cup to those not 100% invested in the sport. There is too much upper-crust snobbishness in the folds of racing. The sport has to be more inclusive, with all aspects exclusivity consigned to the waste bin.
Anyone new to the sport at Doncaster on Saturday or Leopardstown over the weekend must have been enthused by the atmosphere created by top-quality horses running for big prizes deeply coveted by owner, trainer and stable staff alike and will undoubtedly have noticed the difference over a day at Bath or Sligo but will that stop them going to local venues in the future? At the end of the day a horse is a horse, a horse race is a horse race. It is our perception that makes the difference.
Racing professionals will not like me saying it and will doubtless argue heatedly against me but what puts a lot of people off going racing, or even watching it on television, is the over-use or use of the whip. I do not live in a racing environment. To be a racing enthusiast is an odd interest in the eyes of the many when football, rugby, cricket or golf is there to be enjoyed. To be of the opinion that to ban the whip is to give in to an ignorant crowd that will never accept the sport anyway is to enforce the critic’s belief that horse racing is all about winning at all costs. It is a false perception that must be remedied or else our future might be as limited as hare coursing.
Study racing from the nineteen-fifties, sixties and even seventies. Look at the whip actions of the time. Lester winning the Derby on The Minstrel. Compared to jockeys of today, the jockeys of yesteryear look ugly, ferocious, even. Not all but some, as anything went in those times. Today, it cannot be all about winning. Though, of course, it can and will be. It is the style of winning that must change. The jockey must adapt to the times we live in. 
Some horses will not win simply because the jockey will not be able to wield the whip. Other horses, though, will benefit from any stringent new rules as they will not be soured by the eight cracks of the whip presently deemed perfectly acceptable to everyone except those who might yet get the sport banned. There is a bigger picture here, and, yes, flat jockeys may have to lengthen their stirrup irons and learn a new art. But they will adapt, as they always have, and the true horseman will continue to be at the top of the game.

​As with any industry or sport, horse racing is both, we, enthusiasts and professionals alike, cannot pretend to not having amongst our membership the occasional bad apple. It has always been so; unfortunately, people being how they are, it will be so at the present moment and may continue to be so no matter how hard the sport attempts to stamp down on wrong-doers. But that doesn’t imply that there is no point in wasting resources attempting to weed-out the impure. 
On one day of his life, as far as we can be sure, Gordon Elliott’s behaviour was that of a juvenile; he was stupid and will live the rest of his life with a photograph of himself sitting astride a dead horse, a horse that died on his gallops, weighing heavy on his shoulders. He was not responsible for the death of this horse and no one has accused him of being implicit in the death of the horse. As far as I am aware Gordon Elliott has never knowingly caused suffering to any horse or animal. Indeed, his reputation before the date someone maliciously posted the infamous photograph on-line was of a man who went out of his way to ensure the horses in his care were as well looked-after as could be humanly achieved. He may have become wealthy through success but his success has been aided and achieved through lavishing money on Cullentra Stables and the horses housed there.
On Thursday of this week, it is reported, he will have his licence to train returned to him, his 6-month suspension from the sport served, served, I might add, with quiet dignity. It is reported in the early days of his suspension he was a broken man; he had let himself down, he had betrayed his staff, owners and family and he had caused irreparable short-term harm to the sport he cherishes at a time when the sporting spotlight was about to shine on the Cheltenham Festival. His staff stayed loyal, as did the majority of his owners. His friends ensured he received the therapy he needed to focus on the future and to start to rebuild his life and character.
There is speculation on how he will be received back into the fold. I suspect the majority of his peers will shake his hand and slap him on the shoulder. Every man and woman with a trainers’ licence have made a mistake in life, everyone of them will wish they had made a different decision in the aftermath of one of their horses being injured or killed. We are all human; all of us are frail in some respect or another.
Some people, obviously, will condemn him and turn their back on him. I suspect punters will cheer him to the echo when one of his horses returns him to the winners’ enclosure.
Let’s be clear. Gordon was in the wrong, he was justifiably punished. His punishment reflected the misdemeanour. I must repeat, though, that no horse suffered at his hands.
Stephen Mahon, in contrast, has blood on his hands. He was twice found guilty of causing suffering to horses in his care and yet at his appeal to his latest conviction the disciplinary panel reduced his punishment by six-months on what I consider a technicality. His four-year suspension was lowered to three-years, six-months.
It is my opinion that if Stephen Mahon could not be sanctioned with a life ban, for their crass dereliction of their duty to protect the reputation of the sport every member of the disciplinary panel that judged Mahon should be warned off the sport for life.
I’ll make no bones about it: Mahon should have received a life ban for his callous behaviour. No other punishment is true justice. He should have received a life-ban for his first, totally sickening, act of animal cruelty, the details of which are too upsetting to feature here. And yet the Irish Regulatory Board, the Irish Horseracing Authority, or even the Irish Trainers’ Federation, did not think his offence gross enough to warrant a life ban. The Trainers’ Federation, every man and woman, seemingly will be happy to have Mahon back amongst their number someday in the future.
Something is rotten in our kingdom when a trainer is more vilified for an act of juvenile stupidity than a trainer who causes suffering to a horse. Something is rotten in our kingdom when a life ban is not the go-to punishment for an act of intentional cruelty. At the very least the Irish Horseracing Authority should have turned their file on the Mahon case over to the police for them to pursue a legal investigation. My suspicion is they did not do this to save the sport from adverse publicity. If this is true, they were wrong-headed and guilty of bringing the sport into disrepute. The sport has to be seen as the ultimate protector of every horse within its jurisdiction. 
If the sport only exists under public licence those with responsibility for the sport’s welfare and reputation must plug all the weak spots in its legislation with a strong moral code and steel-clad regulation. There should be only one outcome for anyone found guilty of causing deliberate or premeditated harm to a horse. No excuses. No wriggle-room.
I believe the sport can provide a vigorous defence against the majority of the ‘Panorama-like scandals’ that have rocked it during the decades of my life. The Stephen Mahon case, though, is indefensible on many levels, the worst of which is that the sport let him off lightly for crimes that should have led to trial and imprisonment. 
Or perhaps worst of all, the public might be led to believe that in horse racing cruelty is to be tolerated!

​In 1986 Huntingdon racecourse in the county of Cambridgeshire celebrated its centenary and in commemoration of the great achievement, so many racecourses had perished during the previous 100-years, Noel Hudson penned an account of what has become its first one-hundred years. In 2021, of course, the racecourse is 135 years young and I am glad to report going from strength-to-strength.
Although I cannot remember the year, though I suspect it was not far removed from the centenary year of the racecourse, though from the perspective of now, of course, the blurriness of memory suggests it might well have been in the dark days of the 1950’s, I can recollect a personal anecdote from a day at Huntingdon racecourse.
We had taken ‘our best horse’, you know one of those horses who would have a Gold Cup if it had been trained by Henderson (he was actually training back in the dark ages of this story) or any one of the top trainers, but who, after being the ‘best young horse to come out of East Anglia for many years’, not my words but the words of McKenzie or Selby of the point-to-point book, ran fairly moderately in a couple of early season novice chases, and we decided, trying manfully to appear more professional than we actually were, to return him to hurdles (he had won a selling hurdle at Huntingdon as a raw, almost unrideable 4-year-old) in a 3-mile hurdle at the same venue.
To cut a long story short, he finished second at fancy odds and would perhaps have won if I, man enough now to take the blame, had not given the rider, Gee Armitage, the implicit instruction not to use the whip as the horse took a dim view of being told what to do and generally contrived to embarrass those who loved him when a rider thought he or she was his master.
Just to make a disappointing day that little bit more annoying, in my capacity of navigator, I said turn left when I should have said right and for about twenty-miles we had no real idea where we were or how to correct the mistake.
Unusually for a book on horse racing, on the inside jacket cover there is a photograph of a Green Winged Orchid, a reference to the middle of the racecourse being designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest due to the many rare flowers and insects that call Waterloo Meadows home.
Noel Hudson’s book, for anyone who wishes to hunt it down, is titled ‘Catherine the Great to Wordsworth’, referencing the names of the first horse to win a race at Huntingdon and the last winner in the first 100-years of the course.
Though the course originated as a country racecourse catering only for local sportsman, it has become a racecourse very popular with the top trainers and Nicky Henderson never thinks twice about running a promising horse in a novice hurdle or chase. John Francome won the last of his 1,138 winners on April 8th, 1985 in the Brampton 4-year-old Hurdle.

And in its first 100-years of racing history many top-class horses have won at the course – Sir Ken, Clair Soleil, Larbawn, Hill House, What A Myth, Specify, old Vindicated won at the age of 17 and was sold at the subsequent auction, Playlord, Grand Canyon, Captain John, Wayward Lad – and the list goes on. Grittar was second in a handicap hurdle.
And yes, I know the following fact makes me out to be rather childish but of all the facts and local knowledge contained in this book what I will always remember, names being a bit of a curiosity to me, is the name of the solicitor who first drew up the deeds of the racecourse, Kenneth Hunnybun.
In the copy of the book I purchased from Ways of Newmarket, tucked into the inside cover, there is a letter, dated 7th March 1998, from E.W. de W. Waller, Sea Mills House, Ham, Berkeley, Glos, to a friend whose first name is Timothy. Although the letter is unremarkable, I would be pleased to return it to the either family if requested.

​The top trainers, flat or National Hunt, although they may use different training methods, seemingly have one thing in common – they know how to delegate. Although having faith in your staff is a successful formula for the likes of Paul Nicholls, Willie Mullins, Mark Johnston and William Haggas, delegating responsibilities is not achieving results for either the B.H.A. or its Irish equivalent the H.R.I.
Of course, we are not comparing like with like when we judge the B.H.A. against the H.R.I.. Horse Racing Ireland is a quasi or semi-state authority that is part-funded from government revenue and as a result are not 100% independent of thought or action. But in learning that the Irish Racehorse Trainers Association has bent the ear of Horse Racing Ireland to have 48-hour declarations changed back to 24-hour, only to discover their bread-and-butter patrons, the Association of Irish Racehorse Owners, quite like 48-hour declarations as this longer period gives them more time to plan ahead. How the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board find compromise in this debate is anyone’s guess. What it does highlight, is that as it is in Britain, Irish stakeholders also do not talk to each other.
Now, trainers and owners, as well as stable staff, bookmakers and racecourses, should have federations, associations or whatever you would like to call a union of like-minded souls, but when decisions have to be made that affects the whole of the sport, those paid to administer and regulate the sport should listen to everyone and then take the decisive action required. The buck, in all matters regarding the sport of horse racing, should stop with the people earning the big salaries. Delegation just does not cut the mustard, as is being proved on both sides of the Irish Sea.

Those invested in ‘The Racing League’ are putting on a brave face but the cold truth is there for all to see – it has limped into existence; it is a pale shadow of what they proposed and all the evidence suggests it will not achieve its goals of promoting the sport to a wider audience by getting a more diverse attendance at racecourses.
When first proposed, it was suggesting ‘The Racing League’ was to be based on Formula One in that people would come to support a team as is the case with motor racing. Of course, the big flaw they failed to appreciate is that Mercedes, Maclaren, Ferrari and others are established teams with a fan base grown on decades of racing. The teams in ‘The Racing League’ are not true teams but what is termed scratch-teams, as when you lined-up as a kid and the captains of the opposing teams took turns in picking those they wanted. Outside of race-weekends, Mercedes, Maclaren, Ferrari, still exist and on the roads of the world you will see Mercedes, Maclaren and Ferrari, road cars. Outside of the five Thursday evenings of ‘The Racing League’ the teams taking part do not exist and as such people are not going to invest their support in any one team. At the end of the day, a Thursday night ‘Racing League’ meeting is actually very little different from any other race-meeting, except, of course, that the top jockeys, for what ever reason, are giving ‘The Racing League’ a wide berth.

Apart from believing a few more conditions chases and hurdles would not go amiss throughout the season, especially in late October and through to mid-November, I think the B.H.A. were over dramatizing Ireland’s thumping of the British trainers at last season’s Cheltenham Festival. It was a mite bit humiliating and extraordinarily repetitive, I admit, but by meetings end I had come to the conclusion it was also laughable, something I perhaps will never witness again during what I have left of my lifetime. It’s a bit of knee-jerk reaction to suggest that B.H.A. handicappers re-evaluate the way they assess and reassess horses for handicaps, to give, it seems, British-trained horses a better chance of beating the Irish come next March.
And although a Dublin Racing Festival type event in this country would not go entirely amiss and though Newbury deserves such a high-profile event, as suggested by Paul Nicholls, I would prefer the 2-days shared between Cheltenham and Newbury – if only to protect the ground and if one track should be in jeopardy because of the weather, the other might be able to take both days – and to be staged on the same days as the Dublin Racing Festival to make the weekend a true racing highlight, the lamentations of officialdom does come across as self-pity and a bit if a conditioned response, especially as Cheltenham last season gave us a great narrative that spilled over from the racing pages to general sport and onto mainstream media.
Cheltenham is Cheltenham: it doesn’t matter who wins as the Irish are more our friends than our competitors. And didn’t we embrace Rachel Blackmore as one of us, even though she is definitely one of them?