plethora.

​The dictionary definition of plethora is large, especially excessive. In medical terms it is a condition marked by ‘overfullness of blood’. In racing terms, I would suggest, it is a state of sameness. 
Today, June 18th, there are eight meetings in Britain and Ireland and tomorrow it is the same, though brightened by two jumps meetings at Cartmel and the main jumps card of the summer programme at Market Rasen, which I am greatly looking forward to.
Here is the thing, though, a plethora of race-meetings allows opportunities for the smaller owner, trainer, journeyman jockey and even those riders who might be a step on the ladder below journeyman. I moan about ‘Super Saturday’, though that is more about labelling the day ‘super’ when ‘Sameness Saturday’ might be more appropriate and given how I champion the proposition that everyone involved in the sport should be given the opportunity to earn an honest living, I need to rein in my cynicism and take notice of the trees that are central to the wonderful habitat that comprises the wood, nay forest, plantation or copse.
My argument for wanting everyone in the sport to be allowed to make a fair living is bound up with the issue of integrity and the prevention of corruption. The jockey or trainer who is struggling to keep financially afloat is far more open to corruption than the jockey or trainer whose bank balance is in the black. It is this that annoyed me when Tom Marquand moans to the press that it is ‘unfair that he is not allowed to ride at two meetings a day’. Yes, it might be a restraint on trade, but this perfectly sensible rule, perhaps the only a shaft of sensible thinking to come from the period of government restriction on our freedoms, has levelled the playing field to a degree amongst those lucky people with access to the weighing rooms of our racecourses. Tom, by dint of being one of our best, and perhaps most likeable, jockeys, can afford to buy himself a brand of car in the ‘super-car’ bracket, and those who can afford a high-powered Ferrari, Lotus or McClaren should remember that some of their colleagues do well to drive a second-hand Ford or Nissan and keep shoes on the feet of his or her children.
The plethora of class 5 and 6 handicaps that so many ‘experts’ seem to believe the sport could do without represent a real world fact – as with athletics, there are far fewer top-class or high-class ‘club’ runners than there are horses who will never be more than middle-of-the-road. And as I say quite frequently, it is ‘we’ who designate what an elite horse is and what constitutes a great race. I am quite sure everyday there are races up and down the country that will have as exciting a finish as anything that can be witnessed in a classic or Group 1.
If I were to be put in charge of this sport, to arrest the overall decline, I would go back to basics, to be in the ball-park of where we were when the sport was in its golden age. I would have less races, far fewer meetings and I would siphon prize-money away from the major races, perhaps capping all Grade 1’s at £100,000, and invest the surplus in the sort of races that will be run today and tomorrow. Invest in the foundations, as one would do when starting a new business. And I would grade jockeys and trainers, as we presently grade horses, and have class 5 and 6 handicaps ridden by jockeys with a similar grade and the same with trainers, thereby giving every jockey and small-time trainer every opportunity to make a fair living at the sport by levelling the playing field.