LOOK AFTER THE PENNIES AND THE POUNDS WILL LOOK AFTER THEMSELVES.

I have argued previously that there are now more than enough graded races throughout the National Hunt season and I have also made the argument for allocating greater amounts of prize money to racing’s everyday fare. To my mind, and to the owners of horses of lesser ability housed in any trainer’s yard in the country, Leicester or Plumpton on a Monday is every bit as essential to the vitality and health of the sport as Newbury or Sandown on a Saturday. For betting turnover I suspect the week-day fare is more than just of tick-over importance.
What is often overlooked by those people who champion the principle of ‘better quality racing is that racing is not only a sport but an industry in which many thousands of people derive a living and the ‘better quality’ races are in the main irrelevant to the majority of racing’s dependents. It would help every one of the smaller racecourses if once a season they received funding for a significant race or meeting. In Ireland courses of the statue of Roscommon and Tramore have a festival meeting, no doubt allied to a date in the calendar of historic value to the locality. A similar initiative in this country can only be of help to the racecourses that are the load-bearers of the sport.
Also, and I have argued this point for several decades, for the sake of the sport’s integrity it might be a good initiative if on a weekly basis there were races restricted to jockeys who have not ridden say 25 winners in a calendar year or a said number for that season. If one of these races were staged in the north, in the midlands and in the south per week those jockeys struggling to make ends meet would receive the opportunity to demonstrate their talent and to prop up their income. These races have no need of sponsors, no increase in normal prize levels and would take a very small amount from the income of the top jockeys.
It would also not inconvenience the sport if there were races occasionally for trainers who have not trained a certain amount of winners in a calendar year, or indeed the occasional race for those horses who barely scrape an official rating.
The problem I have with the term ‘better quality racing’ is that people are usually referring to races that attract horses of the calibre of Un De Sceaux or Buveur d’Air, horses who because of their reputations scare off any possible opposition as there is so much choice for trainers these days that the good horses can be kept apart until Cheltenham.  Yet on any day of the week, at any racecourse, you could witness a rousing finish or a multiple photo-finish in a 7-furlong seller or class 4 handicap. Un De Sceaux is quality but you cannot argue that his races are defined by drama and an exciting finish.
As the upcoming Dublin Festival proves, at this time of year you can throw a shed-load of money at a meeting and yet for many different reasons the crowd-pulling superstars will be absent due to the greater importance of the Cheltenham Festival. No matter how worthy an initiative the Dublin Festival is in real terms only a 2-day trials day for the Cheltenham Festival. And the succeeding weeks in Ireland may seem a little thin with all the races that were the highlights of February now compressed into a single meeting.
If the straight long line of ordinary fare that is the foundation of the racing pyramid is not robust and secure the succeeding stories up to the summit will crack and crumble and instead of having a smooth-sided structure that shines for all to see it will become a stepped pyramid overgrown at its roots. If the sport does not do all in its power to help and protect the Monday racecourses, the journeyman jockey, the small trainer, one-horse owner and racegoers who attend in the rain and cold, the view from the summit might not always be as dazzling as it presently appears to be.
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