prize-money at royal ascot is not racing's most pressing problem.

​Ascot’s racing director, Nick Smith, is whining about the lack of foreign runners, especially from Hong Kong and Japan, at Royal Ascot this year, citing the poorer levels of prize-money for the middle-distance races when compared to countries overseas as the main reason. I would contend British and Irish racing have more pressing problems than prize money at the higher echelons of the sport.
While it adds interest to races like the Prince of Wales Stakes and the Queen Anne to have horses from the former colonies and Japan competing, extra money given to already well-endowed races would be better used to plump up prize money for the lesser races either at Royal Ascot or at its non-Royal meetings.
Also, given the financial pressures on even the trainers at the top of their profession, at this moment in time big prize-money needs to be staying in this country. Indeed, I would suggest Nick Smith would be better advised to ensure all races run at Ascot have prize money worth winning, rather than hoping to seduce overseas connections into sending their top horses to mop-up British Group 1’s, leaving the home trainers with crumbs of comfort. If races with £750,000 prize pots do not attract horses from around the word, especially given the prestige of winning at the Royal meeting, adding a quarter or half-a-million isn’t going to change trainers and owners minds as the pool of top-class horses around the world remains quite small.
As far as I am concerned, Royal Ascot is about competitive racing and even when stretched to five-days, that is exactly what is served-up year on year.

Nobody has made mention of this but then nobody who writes about racing shares my fascination with events that are hard to explain without veering into paranormal reasoning. The world works in mysterious ways, with coincidental events just that, coincidence. There was the woman who came across a young boy on the ground and gasping for breath. Using her medical skills learned on a first responder course, she is attributed with saving his life. Fast forward eight-years and that same woman while dining out at a restaurant got food stuck in her throat and a waiter using the Heimlich procedure saved her from choking to death. That waiter was the boy she saved using the same procedure. Coincidence? The stars aligning?
Last Friday at Epsom, Dermot Weld won the Oaks, two-days later a race was run in memorial to Pat Smullen, for so long Weld’s stable jockey. On the Saturday at Tramore, Pat’s daughter Hannah won her first race on a horse owned by her mother. I thought it a good news story. A story only the gods could have designed.

I have written to Tom Sammes, general manager at Epsom, on the topic of what to do about the lack of interest in the racecourse by locals and how to get the Derby back to where it once was in peoples’ perception. I outlined my thoughts in a previous blog and will not belabour the subject. I dare say my ideas will prove impractical, if only financially, though I hope it stimulates Tom Sammes brain into improving upon my suggestions. What I do hope to receive is a reply, as Jon Pullen at Cheltenham did, even if he politely poured tepid waters on the very best of my thoughts. Suleka Varma, on the other hand, at Aintree did not reply and no, as you might think given my criticism of her, I was not at all rude to her as I was trying to be helpful and supportive. Politeness costs nothing, especially if the reply comes by e-mail, as my mother used to say. Not that there was such a concept as e-mail back in the 1960’s. Not that she sent an e-mail during her 86-years of life.
What I did say to Tom Sammes was not to think of the Derby meeting as equivalent to Aintree or Cheltenham but to consider the attributes of the Punchestown and Galway festivals to make the Derby meeting unique. I have suggested a return to 3-days, with apprentice and amateur Derbies added to the mix, as well as the most valuable race in the world restricted to professional female riders. I wait with baited breath for his reply to either fall on the doormat or through my e-box.