lingfield's millions.

​This Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Lingfield stage the inaugural Winter Million meeting. The Saturday is flat racing, Friday and Sunday will be National Hunt. While Arc should be congratulated and encouraged for the advanced prize-money on offer over the 3-days and I hope the racing public fill the racecourse to bursting point, it has to be asked if racecourse owners should be allowed to parachute a meeting into the racing calendar without discussion, with no forethought to how it will impact on long-standing races before and after its own meeting.
Given the debate on whether Britain should have its own version of the Dublin Racing Festival, an innovation deemed a major driver in Irish domination of the Cheltenham Festival in recent years, though its favour is now tempered by trainers’ universal criticism of ground conditions at Leopardstown, it could be argued that if discussed with the B.H.A. a more favourable date could have been provided, with the Winter Million morphing into, in time, the British Winter Festival or at least part of it.
Remember, there are plans afoot to cut-back the number of condition chases and hurdles in the future to force trainers’ hand to run their better horses against each other in the established top races. The greatest beneficiary of this move, though he will be its greatest critic, will be Nicky Henderson, a man whose firepower frightens opposition into allowing his good young horses easy races that teach them very little. Chantry House is a prime example, whose inexperience of competitive racing was his undoing at Kempton in the King George.
If the Cotswold Chase and Denman Chase were usually over-subscribed, rather than only ever attracting four, five or six-runners per renewal, the conditions chase to be staged this weekend at Lingfield would be most welcome. But it now means that the same number of horses will be spread over three-races rather than two and that will be unhelpful to the cause for more competitive racing.
Don’t get me wrong. Lingfield deserve a top-quality meeting. Since the inception of all-weather racing, the reputation of the course has diminished in the same way as its Derby and Oaks trials, even though Lingfield has a similar configuration as Epsom. Lingfield and Arc’s other all-weather courses, if not yet this season, often ride to the rescue of the betting shops when flood, frost, snow or fog prevent other courses from racing. And the injection of prize-money over the 3 proposed days of the Winter Million is a godsend for a sport in dire need of new financial avenues.
I say ‘proposed’ 3-days as the nights in South-East England are about to get frosty and though the Saturday is safe, the 2-days of jump racing must be under threat of abandonment. I hope not. The sport does need this meeting to go ahead; to be successful. What is also needed is for Lingfield and the B.H.A. to sit down to see if in the future the Winter Million could play a part in a Britain’s version of the Dublin Racing Festival.
Although I am more in favour of Cheltenham’s Trials Day being Britain’s answer to the D.R.F., with the day extended to 8-races, with every race a trial for one of the major races at the Festival, I am influenced by the idea of a second-day, as Leopardstown is a two-day meeting, being staged at Lingfield. The racecourse deserves a day in the sun. The Winter Million does not need to be staged over 3-days. In fact, by staging a flat meeting on the Saturday of the Trials Day at Cheltenham, followed by a National Hunt meeting on the Sunday, this would meet their own criteria, as well as benefitting the sport, to greater effect than what is to happen this weekend. In some ways the Winter Million comes across as a bit of a maverick event, as welcome as it is.
And my proposal, a big day of all-weather racing on the day of Trials Day, would allow that Saturday an important meeting if, God forbid, the weather intervened at Cheltenham. Also, given how flexible all-weather can be, if Cheltenham were to be abandoned, is it not possible for the meeting to be transferred to Lingfield, with the flat meeting postponed until the Monday?
There is great potential in the Winter Million but for it to thrive, for it to be the engine that powers the sport forward, it needs to be integrated into the race programme where it will be most valuable to Lingfield and horse racing. The Cotswold and Denman Chases are important races, they must not be undermined by this innovation. The Racing Industry should not become a business run on similar lines to supermarkets. It has to be a ‘one for all, all for one’ ethos. ‘Jaw, jaw, is better than war, war’,’ as one of the sport’s former most famous owner said of another conflict.