reflections on a quiet day.

​The Saturday after ‘Super Saturday’ always has the feel of after the Lord’s Mayor Show about it. After watching highly competitive racing from both Market Rasen and Newbury the idea came to me that the day might in future be celebrated as ‘Ordinary Fare Day,’ a day to celebrate the lower echelon of the sport, with every race on the day restricted to horses below top-grade handicappers, with one meeting designated a jockey-restricted meeting. Mad idea? Perhaps. It ties in, though, with my belief that every owner, trainer, jockey, horse, etc should be given every opportunity to be successful, if only for one day.
On that theme, inclusivity. There is no one sector of the sport that is more important than the other. Yes, without the owner, there is no employment for trainer, jockey, staff and no outlet for breeders. But without jockeys there is no one to ride the horses. Without stable staff there is no one to care for the horses. Without trainers, owners would have to do all the work themselves. Without farriers, horses would have to run without shoes. Without racecourses …. So on and so on.
In my perfect world the sport could do without, and be better for it, bookmakers and tipsters and the major racecourse owners who, to my mind, pick the pockets of the sport while trying to come across as benefactors. Ideally, in my perfect world, there would be a Tote-type monopoly and all racecourses would be independently owned. It is what it is, though. For the sport to thrive and survive all sectors must be considered indispensable, their voices heard, their problems solved. Arc, for instance, are not as important as they think they are, yet as owners of a great portion of our racecourses they must be made happy while at the same time being put in their place, which is as one evenly sliced part of the racing pie.
Increased prize money for owners. Lower entrance prices for spectators. Greater opportunities for jockeys and trainers alike, especially those who work at the lower grades of the sport, if only for the sake of the sport’s integrity, though I would like to think to allow them the opportunity to earn a higher salary. Less working hours and better pay for stable staff. A better funded after racing programme for those horses leaving the racing world, which is getting better, though I feel more should be done within the sport to raise the funds needed to meet the aspiration of ‘from birth to death.’
Less argument and more conciliation. The Sport First, should be the over-arching motto.

There is, 21/7/24, a really nice feature on trainer Brian Ellison in today’s Racing Post. What I liked most about the feature were the photographs. A wide-angled view of the obviously well-maintained turn-out paddocks at Spring Cottage Stables was one of those photographs where there was more to see the more you looked at it, and what I though unusual for a trainer’s feature, three photographs of the trainer in family-friendly intimate poses with his wife. A wife, incidentally, who once wrote to the Queen to suggest she might like to support northern racing by sending a horse to her husband to train. If we want to sell this sport to an apathetic public, for them to engage with jockeys and trainers, they need to step out of the shadows and show the viewer, reader and observer, snippets about their lives outside of the ‘day job.’  If the public are to ever take them to their hearts, they need to know them, to witness aspects of their lives and personality, that they can equate to, to recognises similarities between them and us.
Brian Ellison comes across as straight-as-a-die, the sort of trainer anyone tempted to get into racing should get in touch with.

No one, I notice, is suggesting the distance of the Irish Oaks should be shortened. That is odd, considering the hue and cry from some factions within Irish racing who believe the Irish Derby is a dead thing that can only be revived by reducing the race to 10-furlongs, a distance that is not a Derby distance. Yet as day follows night, shouldn’t those same people be arguing the Irish Oaks also be shortened to 10-furlongs, to keep it and the two main Irish classics in line with French racing? Yesterday’s Irish Oaks looked a fine race to me, with a competitive field and a good deserving winner. It might be an idea, before the loud minority voices get their way, to try running the Irish Derby on the same card as the Oaks. It would, at least, be run on a day when British racing is very ordinary for a Saturday.