it is all relative, isn't it?

​Sometimes bemoaning is justified. Prize money is always held up as the one aspect of the sport that needs to be improved. And this at a time when £1-million handicaps are about to be initiated.
Anyone researching racing results from ‘bygone days’, the twenties, thirties, forties, ect, will no doubt cast a wry smile at the value of the smallest of races. The novice hurdles, the two-year-old maidens, the selling handicaps, and not only at the country courses. Yet a race valued at £200 in 1937 would in today’s money be worth £13,200-odd to the winner. Would there be any complaints about prize money if the smallest valued races started at £13,000?
Interestingly, the Derby of that year was worth not much over £10,000 to the winner, which in today’s money compares very favourably with what Coolmore picked up this year. £10,000 in 1937 equates to £625,000, or round about, today.
The other big money pots in 1937 were, not surprisingly, the 2,000 Guineas, the St.Leger and the Eclipse, which had a first prize only slightly below the Epsom Derby. The next two most valuable races in the 1937 calendar were the 1,000 Guineas and the Ascot Gold Cup. The next biggest pot will have everyone scratching their heads as it is a race that has disappeared from the race programme. The National Breeders’ Produce Stakes was traditionally run on the Eclipse card at Sandown and was worth in 1937 over £6,000 to the winner. That is £375,000 in today’s money. It would be interesting to know the conditions of the race. Is there a two-year-old race of an equivalent amount to the winner run in Britain today?
As a slight aside: anyone who is a regular visitor to horseracingmatters will be aware that I have advocated for sometime that the Eclipse should be promoted to classic status and be restricted to three-year-olds and the St.Leger demoted from classic status and transformed into the richest race in the country, opened-up to allow older horses to run in it, keeping it at its traditional distance and allowing it to become an alternative to the Arc. In today’s racing world the Eclipse is best suited as a classic, making the Triple Crown a more viable option.
But to return to yesteryear: there is the idea that innovation and new methods are a thing of the modern-day trainer, Martin Pipe, for instance, a man who even now when in retirement remains of the mindset that the job of training horses can always be improved, that horses can always be made happier.
Cecil Boyd-Rochfort, the stepfather of Henry Cecil, was always on the look-out for new and better ways to keep his horses healthy and happy. He placed a high priority of feed and water, watering his horses mainly on rain-water which was stored in tanks at the rear of the stables, with an elaborate filtering system to keep it pure. An obvious route for any trainer to take, if you think about it. Rainwater is free and when given the option a horse will always drink from a pond even if there is piped water at its disposal.
He disliked what was, for the times, the tried and tested physicking as a method of removing worms from the stomach of horses and when he witnessed how the Americans went about the business he began to ‘worm’ his horses in a similar way. He was also one of the first trainers to import his oats from Canada or Australia, examining each load before it was taken from the lorry. He also got Alfalfa hay from California. All this before the outbreak of the 2nd World War.
He was also responsible, when he had his ‘stud manager’s hat on’, for the routine of turning stallions out to grass for a few hours every day to help settle their minds. Perhaps this routine is taken for granted at all studs nowadays but before Boyd-Rochfort came along stallions would spend their day in their stables, without any access to freedom.
I have to say I am nostalgic for the stable husbandry of Boyd-Rochfort’s era, even if it was many year’s before my birth. As someone with both an aversion to uniform and livery I would have objected to the clothes stableman were expected to wear, not to mention to my lifelong dedication to the maxim ‘I shave once a week whether I need to or not’, which would not have worn well with Cecil Boyd-Rochfort or any of his contemporaries.
Horse racing in Boyd-Rochfort’s era had a revered place in British society, with the Epsom Derby of such importance in the calendar that Parliament would close business for the afternoon so that Members with an interest in racing could get to the course in good time.
I doubt if ‘those were the days’ for those participating at the time, as I am inclined to imagine but in recollecting and researching racing’s history, I do get a sense of some kind of magic that over the years has been lost, never to be regained. Which sort of makes me sad.