boycotts: are they all they are cracked-up to be?

​I understand and sympathise with the militants wanting to force ARC, and very soon it will be all the racecourses not owned by them, to return prize money to the levels of the past twelve months. For the long-term future of the sport a solution to this problem must be found and found sooner rather than later. I just cannot believe, though, that boycotts are the best strategy for establishing a harmonious conclusion to the problem.
In my previous piece on this website I made the point that the solution is to make the present funding system more fit for purpose and to come up with alternative funding streams. I proposed one in particular, though cleverer people, people like Ralph Beckett and Martin Cruddance should be able to put their better education to good use and develop a strategy tinged with less naivety than my well-meant contribution to the debate.
The people who should not be vilified, as seems will be the case if the thoughts of racing professionals on WhatsApp remain potent in the real world, are the jockeys, trainers, owners and stable staff who shun the boycott, especially those who put on the show at Lingfield tomorrow. If it is acceptable that ARC must make their business profitable, and racehorse trainers likewise, why should it be wrong for jockeys underused by trainers to take advantage of the situation. I bet you all the tea I drink in a year that the Good Friday meeting is not targeted. Can’t see Frankie, Ryan, Jolly G and others foregoing the big money of that day to make their point! Perhaps they should?
Everyone agrees that prize money in this country is embarrassingly low when compared to other countries round the world. There is also too much racing altogether in this country, something everyone except bookmakers also agree on. And this reflects harder on the journeyman jockey lucky to get a ride a day and the small trainer having to work every daylight hour just to stay financially afloat. If Ralph Beckett gets all high and mighty with people for refusing to back his boycott, he should think about spending a day working in their shoes, working to their profit and loss margins. Yes, if the boycott succeeds in improving prize money in theory everyone wins. But racing is not an equal playing ground. The real winners will be the owners and trainers at Ralph Beckett’s level and above. They are the trainers who scoop up the majority of the level 4, 5 and 6 races, the races that this dispute is all about.
Tomorrow Danny Brock will earn a decent pay packet. He has six rides and the prospect of at least a couple of winners. As he said, he is not playing scab but earning money for his children and wife, perhaps earning enough so that this month’s mortgage payment does not amount to a family whip-round. Good luck to him. Good luck, also, to Ralph Beckett and his campaign for better prize money.
 
I am rather old, too close to hearing the ominous thump of a pension book falling through the letterbox than I care to admit to. For twenty-odd years I worked with racehorses and for the twenty-odd, and more, years since hardly a day has past when the thought of returning to that lifestyle has not wandered through my head with the same seductive temptation as a lottery win, sex and the fantasy of a big buck’s publishing deal.
In fact, to be truthful, for six weeks about ten years ago I did actually grasp the nettle and worked for a trainer close, about twenty miles away, to where I live. The reason the adventure only lasted for a short period of time was no one’s fault, not even mine. I cannot say it was a success, though it was certainly enjoyable.
The first surprise was how inflexible my body had become. I used to be able to vault on to a horse with alacrity but twenty years after my prime my body had become as rigid as a tree-trunk and not once in that period was I able to get on a horse without using a mounting-block of some description. The second surprise was how things had changed over the time I had been away. The working day was more regimented than I remembered, with a lot more rush and tear about the day. There was a clocking on time and a clocking off time, with overtime payed if extra hours were required. Something the trainer in question was very keen to avoid.
To have taken advantage of my strengths, the trainer should not have relied on me as a rider but used me far more as a stableman or yardman. That, I am sure, would have come about, and if it had I suspect I would still be there, ever reliable, always willing. But in a freak accident I rather badly broke my leg. No one’s fault, though on reflection I should not have been told to take this particular horse round the roads on his own, as all the other staff acknowledged. Though horse and rider did arrive safely back at the yard. It was getting off a horse standing perfectly still, landing on uneven ground, where my left leg broke in two places. The only broken bone of my entire life.
Do I have regrets? No, only disappointment that fate chose to be so unkind to me.
Even now I cannot but think, in a limited capacity, I would not be of some help in an understaffed racing yard. Unfortunately, there is no one other than my last racing employer in my local vicinity to take advantage of this willing and very fit for his age old ‘un.