my main gripe with the powers-that-be.

​If I do not always sing from the same hymn-sheet on racing matters as the majority of professionals, when it comes to prize money I am very much one of the choir. We pride ourselves on having the best racing in the world yet the powers-that-be seem perfectly content for prize money to have slipped to a standard that belittles the hard graft that trainers, jockeys and stable staff undertake for our sport to take place seven days a week.
In 1942 the Goole Plate at Pontefract was worth £299 to the winner.  In 1963 the Foxhill Cup Hunter’s Chase at Newbury was worth £1,000. To have kept pace with inflation the Goole Plate, if it were run last season, should have boasted a first prize of £13,250 and the Foxhill Cup Hunters Chase £19,696.
Too much consideration is given to the high echelon of the sport and too little consideration given to those who not only operate at the lower end of the racing market but actually keep the show on the road. It goes without saying that the status and world renown of the Cheltenham Festival, Royal Ascot, the Grand National meeting and Glorious Goodwood should be reflected in the size of the prize money on offer. Though pouring a £1-million into the Grand National or Epsom Derby does not attract a better quality of horse than if it were worth half that amount. Shovelling more and more money into the premier races is a futile exercise. Enough is always enough.
There is a good deal of focus on attracting new blood to the racecourse – it is the excuse for City Street Racing and Julian Wray’s unsavoury pie-in-the-sky Team Championship Racing with its ill-informed concept of the jockey being of greater significance than the horse – yet a more cost-effective way of achieving this noble quest would be to give away free tickets in the daily newspapers (as other attractions do) or make racecourse entry free and help market the information with free coach rides for those local to the individual racecourses. If the Cheltenham Festival, the Grand National, Royal Ascot or Glorious Goodwood fails to attract new custom then I cannot see how concepts that even divide diehard racing people can succeed.
Horse racing is seen by the public as a sport for nobs and the obscenely rich and shovelling bank vaults of prize money in their direction only confirms this deeply embedded, if ignorant, opinion.
What we should be doing is making it widely known that horse racing for the majority is a sport for the working and middle classes and that no one in racing nowadays tugs their forelock when in close proximity to their employer or ‘master’.
What this sport is desperate for – as everyone who works in racing is aware of – is for the very foundations of the sport to be made strong and sustainable. It is falsifying both the image and the facts to gloat about the benben at the top of the pyramid being as bright and as shiny as a golden future when the mighty stones that support the whole structure are slowly crumbling into the dirt of the present.
What bothers me is that there is no clearly stated aim by the powers-that-be to achieve the standard of prize money the sport and its devoted participants deserve. Races of the calibre of the Goole Plate today should be worth £13,250 to the winner, with the better class of races worth considerably more. If Julian Wray and his supporters truly cared about the long-term survival of the sport it is here that they should focus their attention. Horse Racing was not created in front of huge grandstands and conducted within white running rails but across country as entertainment first for the few and then for the locals to enjoy a day of frolic and fun. Without the solid foundations provided by those who own, train, ride and care-for the standard of horse that compete in the lowliest of races the whole structure of our sport will be undermined.
The powers-that-be, maybe because they are nobs themselves, are viewing horse racing from the wrong end of the telescope, which is why they are open to stupid concepts that will only reinforce the public’s perception of racing as being a sport for the aristocracy, mega-rich and whip wielding jockeys. They may suggest sympathy for those who must compete for derisory prize money and who subsidise the sport with bank loans, overdrafts and the sweat of honest toil, but in reality their main aim, as Gaye Kelleway recently suggested, is to ensure that the top twenty or so at the wealthy end of the sport continue to become ever richer.
Of course the obvious solution to poor prize money is to follow the lead of countries with organised racing and generate prize money out of the profits from betting revenue. But that would never do, would it?