premier racing.

​I dislike the word ‘premierisation’ and have taken the unilateral decision to replace it with the term ‘premier racing’. ‘Premierisation’ suggests separation crossed with improvement and as my fear of the smaller racecourses being classed as ‘lesser beings’ is yet to prove founded in fact and horse racing in its entirety is still as far from being turned into a winning machine as it was on December 31st, I shall decline to use ‘premierisation’ as if it is the small m messiah the sport in this country has cried out for, for as long as my fading memory allows.
Since Peter Saville came into the open with his plan to save racing’s future, and certainly on the day the B.H.A. announced the 2-year trial of the concept, my thoughts have swung between hating the idea and thinking it might be the first steps along the right road. As with all B.H.A. directives, it hasn’t started very well, with few runners at the inaugural ‘Premier racing day at Cheltenham and the abandonment of due to the vagaries of the British winter weather. 
To my mind, the concept of premier racing would have been given a more coherent start if it had been delayed to March and applied only to race-meetings where genuine premier races are held. With all due respect to salt of the earth Plumpton, the meeting yesterday, albeit with greater prize-money than in years previously, did not attract a single horse of premier standard. In truth, it was standard Plumpton fare semi-pumped-up to be something it wasn’t, premier. With the possible exception of Cheltenham’s trials day and Newbury’s big meeting in February (Denman, Game Spirit, the handicap hurdle), there is no meeting between now and the Festival which might termed premier fare. There will plenty of good, honest racing on practically every Saturday that winter allows to be staged, of course, but I would argue that the word ‘premier’ should not be attached to meetings and races that fail to attract the very best in the sport.
I am now of the opinion that all the B.H.A. are doing with premier racing is plumping pillows to make the drawing room look smarter to the eye than it actually is in reality. Premier racing will not, even though benefits might come from it, mask ordinariness or the need for that ordinariness to be funded so that the bottom of the pyramid is maintained to allow it to prop-up the higher echelons of the sport. Healthy plants have a healthy root system, never forget.
Associating horse racing with other sports and trying to define a golden highway to a similar funding stream and status is sheer folly. The Premier League has only 20 participants, with a wide gulf between the top half-dozen and the rest. Football is also a sport played and watched in practically every country around the world. While flat racing takes place on every non-frozen continent to one extent or another, National Hunt racing only has three strongholds, Britain, Ireland and France.
I have come to the conclusion that while the concept of premier racing has potential, the scope it has been given is too broad, with too much wishful thinking attached. The genuine premier races and meeting should be given a boost in prize-money to keep them on a par with similar races and meetings in countries funded far more sensibly than in Britain or Ireland and with budgets that will allow for promotion and marketing to get the word out to not only the sporting public but the world at large. Horse racing should be seen by the public as a good day out for all the family. We will only get youngsters through the gate in hand with their parents.
Instead of throwing the kitchen sink at the problem of getting bums on seats, a more directed approach, at least in the first year, would prove more effective, I believe. Big-up the big meetings, the premier days of the sport. Have the vision to attract 100,000 to Epsom on Derby Day and promote it as the ‘peoples’ day out’, with no or less emphasis on it being a ‘toffs benefit do’.
Let me give the example of Newcastle’s Northumberland Plate. I hope Newcastle on the day is to be given premier status. Yet in truth the only race of the entire meeting worthy of the badge of honour is the Plate. On the day, instead of this nonsense ‘golden exclusion zone’, with only two Premier race-meetings and one other allowed, with all other meetings starting either mid-morning or early evening, why not a race-meeting wide hiatus for an hour so the racing and sporting public can focus solely on the Plate? Have the ambition to grow the Plate into a British version of the Melbourne Cup.
To my mind, money will be wasted over the next two-years in an attempt to persuade the public that races and meetings are premier quality when in fact they are second or third division fare. This Saturday we have the Warwick Classic, a long-distance chase of dubious quality, with little hope of a single runner that might fight a good fight in a genuine premier race. In itself, the Warwick Classic is fine race and deserves its place as the main race of the day. But it is not a premier race and no amount of money spent in prize-money or marketing will make it so and I cannot see punters lumping greater amounts of money on the race than they normally might do simply on the basis the B.H.A. have tagged the day a premier day.
There are genuine premier days in British racing, we all know the names of the races and the racecourses where they are traditionally held, and that is where the focus should be during the two-years of this cross-your-fingers trial. Luton versus Burnley is not a premier game in the Premiership, whereas Manchester City versus Liverpool is a premier day.