at last, quotas is the answer, too much clout, in my opinion & the p.m. and the w.e.f..

​Finally, trainers are coming together to ask questions of the B.H.A.’s leadership and governance of our sport. Ralph Beckett even made the point that, in a time of near-emergency, the in-coming (but not until the summer) new chair of the B.H.A., Lord Charles Allen (anyone remember the ventriloquist Ray Allen and his sidekick Lord Charles – might be related, who knows) who has no first-hand knowledge of the sport, will be foraging around in the dark for six-months until he achieves a slight grasp on what the sport is all about. I paraphrase and extend my own views on the matter. Ralph Beckett, as you will be aware, is far more diplomatic than I could ever be.
Trainers, given they have responsibility not only for the equine stars upon which our sport is borne, but also stable-staff and owners, while also supporting their local economies, want a bigger share of the governance pie. And quite rightly. In an impromptu vote prompted by William Haggas, those attending yesterdays meeting of the Trainers Association, made their view plain that racecourses held the reins of power, not the B.H.A..
Trainers must continue to push to have their voices heard by the B.H.A. 

Mr. John Hall of Birmingham, in a letter in today’s Racing Post, suggests, as many do, that the influence Willie Mullins now has on our sport is bad for our sport. I do not necessarily agree that Willie Mullins’ success is having a bad influence, it does, though, pose questions that need to be debated.
Restricting, as Mr.Hall suggests, any one trainer to a set number of horses they could run in any one race would have knock-on effects, as clearly demonstrated last week at Cheltenham, in field sizes and competitiveness. Given the many problems horse racing must navigate its way through, such as under-staffing, though not at Closutton, and prize-money, there would be an advantage to the sport if a cap was imposed on the number of horses any one trainer can have at his or her disposal. This would entail, say if the cap was put at 100 or 125, that the excess would have to go to trainers with less than the capped number, as would the staff laid-off due to the cap. More and better-quality horses and staff would be spread over a larger number of trainers. Of course, Ireland would have to cooperate with Britain to see this happen, and then there would be the restraint of trade aspect to grapple with.

No one ever mentions the over-arching clout the Jockey Club Estates has over the sport. In owning, amongst other racecourses in their portfolio, Aintree, Cheltenham, Epsom, Kempton and Sandown, they possess the majority of the sport’s crown jewels, the Aintree National, the Cheltenham Festival, the Derby and Oaks, the King George and the Eclipse. When Dan Skelton proposed the attractive idea of staging the Aintree National Festival  as the last meeting of the season, allowing a six or seven-week period between Britain’s two major racing festivals, the Jockey Club basically said ‘No’, without any regard to debating the matter. It is their ball and they decide the rules. It is as if they believe they own the sport, which they do not. Dan Skelton’s proposal should be debated by all of the sport’s stakeholders and if the majority believe it an idea worth pursuing, the B.H.A. should simply impose the change on Jockey Club Estates.

Uttoxeter, and its young clerk of the course, have come under fire for describing the going last Saturday as good-to-soft when the times for the races suggested it was nearer heavy, with flack also coming their way for not changing the going description during the meeting. The clerk of the course took the decision to water the course to ensure soft-ground and once the ground began to cut-up during the day that water no doubt rose to near the surface, making the churned-up ground soft, perhaps even heavy.
The point I wish to make is this: when I was a lad, a long long time ago, clerks were almost always ex-army men nearing retirement age. This ex-army jobs for the boys then changed to older men of great experience of managing soil and grass. These days, the clerks tend to be young, barely out of university-age, and they are, seemingly, learning on the job, gaining experience through making mistakes and doing the job better next time. These young people also do not seem to stay at one course for a long period of time. Just my opinion, of course, as it is my opinion that pundits who criticise going descriptions and so on should remember the mistakes they made on the long road to expertise.

The final piece in Lee Mottershead’s look into how British racing benefits both the local economies, as well as the National Exchequer, is a broad sweep of the interactions between horse racing and politics. Without in anyway being critical of a tour-de-force of journalistic writing, what Lee made no comment on, in line with everyone else who writes on this subject, is that our Prime Minister is more aligned to the policies of the W.E.F. (he has openly admitted he prefers what goes on at Davos to Westminster) than what is good for Britain and its people. If anyone cares to research the W.E.F.’s ‘Great Reset’ you will discover that the end-game is that people all over the world will live in mega-cities where everything one needs will be within fifteen-minutes of where they live, and that the countryside will be left to nature to manage, with people excluded. How will racecourses fit into that prospect?
This is why the government has no need to include racing in its ‘plans for national growth’. Do not fool yourselves that Starmer has any interest in our sport. It is his wife who has the interest. Starmer just tags along when it is convenient to him for the photo-opportunities an appearance in public affords him.