as if racing didn't have enough troubles!

​Is there anyone at the B.H.A. working on plans, hypothetical or theoretical, to initiate or form a solution to the nose-grinding problem of pathetic levels of prize money in British racing? Has anyone at the B.H.A. actually noticed that prize money is now at a level well below amounts offered in the sixties and seventies? £1-million prize fund for the Epsom Derby and aspirations for a similar sum to transform the Ebor into a European Melbourne Cup blind no one to the paucity on offer day in and day out. Very soon someone at the B.H.A. or one of the heads of its affiliated stakeholders will say something similar to ‘if they cannot afford bread, let them eat cake’.
Today’s headline on the front page of the Racing Post should have made B.H.A. board members sit up straight and take notice, that is if any of them read the Racing’s industry newspaper, as expensive as it is. I would wager a small note that the Racing Post is out-numbered at High Holborn by copies of the Guardian, Times and Telegraph.
Rising fuel and horse-feed prices are forcing trainers to set-up emergency meetings with their accountants. The jockeys have already been awarded a hike in their riding fees to take into account of the rising cost of --- well, everything. This is now beyond all humour. Trainers need owners, owners need jockeys, jockeys need stable staff – everyone needs everyone else in this sport, and though not all participants can afford fancy cars and large houses, those luxuries are only for those at sharp end of the sport, the jockeys at the wrong end of the pyramid barely make any profit at all.
Jockeys can, obviously, car-share to the races, dividing the cost of fuel between them, especially those who live in Lambourn, Newmarket, Malton, etc, and arrangements can be made to pick up jockeys at service stations on the motorway, as always has been the case, who do not live locally to the major training areas. Yet other than that, there is little jockeys can do to save on expenses. Mind you, they do choose on occasion to give up food, so that’s a saving.
Trainers cannot skimp on the quality and volume of food they feed the horses under their care. They could grow carrots on any unused ground, to supplement rations – carrot-tops are particularly good for cleansing the blood, for instance. And they could get inventive. Stinging nettles are both painful to handle and are an eyesore, yet did you know there is more vitamin C in nettles, and by a long way, than in an orange. I would not be at all surprised if young shoots cannot be made palatable for horses to eat and digest.
Anyone with an ‘ancient’ stable management book - mine is by Horace Hayes – will discover that in the days before horses had only horse-nuts shovelled into their manger, they were fed a variety of foods, and I suspect many a Derby and Grand National winner were fuelled by such alternative foodstuffs. Rice, Beans, Peas, Linseed cake, Rye, Millet, Brewers Grains, coconut meal, root vegetables, including pumpkins, all of which, save the root vegetables, have similar levels of Nitro-genous matter, carbo-hydrates, fat, ash and woody fibre, as oats and barley.
Owners, too, could save on expenses by foregoing one or two half-million-pound purchases at the sales and instead invest in an arable farm and grow their own hay, oats, barley, to supply to their trainers in lieu of training expenses.
The B.H.A. could re-organise the racing calendar to take into account the rising cost of fuel. Instead of racecourses holding one-day of racing, it could be extended to three-days, allowing owners, trainers, jockeys etc, to cut their car journeys down from five, six or seven trips per week to three or less. And cut the number of race-meetings. It might be a three-day meeting at Perth and a similar 3-day meeting at Newton Abbot. Then 3-days at Exeter and 3 at Wetherby. A rolling programme of 2, 3 and 4-day per jumps and flat.
Jockeys might save on both fuel and hotel bills if they exchanged their big saloons and purchased fancy camper-vans. Married jockeys could even take the wife and kids with them on occasion.
This might seem pie-in-the-sky, a silly reaction to a very serious problem. But to survive inflationary times people need to improvise. Yet in a regulated environment like the racing industry, it is those at the top who must lead the way, who must recognise the seriousness of the situation and rip-up the rule-book and apply the spirit and not the long-written letter of the law.
Stark times allow for change, to view the whole picture as if it sits across from you at the dining table. It is ugly to look at, yet no one must lose focus. This ugly reality, brought into sharp relief by the failings of others and not by you or anyone else connected to you, could be soon whistling a death dirge for the sport unless it can be defeated. This is racing’s moment to unite, to march in step, to mould economy and thrift into a survival strategy that might see the sport through this most testing of times. It might pay dividends if jockeys, trainers and owners, took a step back in time to help perpetuate a future for the sport.