r.o.r, the kingman days & and hayley should be listened to.

​Caring about an issue is not the same as knowledge of the issue. I am indebted to a letter by Mr. Mark Albon in the Racing Post today on the subject of the R.o.R. charity, owners’ contributions and how the charity dispenses its grant money.
Since 2023, the year Mr. Albon chooses to use as the centrepiece of his letter, three of the big auction houses now contribute £12 per horse sold by them to R.o.R. Not that this new source of funding diminishes Mr. Albon’s point.
I was not aware that until recently owners contributed £1. 25 per race to R.o.R. and this has now been increased to £3 per race. Mr. Albon might have mentioned that owners were being ‘forced’, his word not mine, to pay an increase to R.o.R. at the same time as the charity will be receiving a huge boost to their funds.
To return to the year 2023. In that year, R.o.R. accounts stated the charity had a little over £4-million, of which £1.3-million came from owners’ contributions. The balance came from the Levy Board. Mr. Albon is not happy by the way R.o.R. funds is dispensed. According to Mr. Albon fifteen charities shared the majority of the grants, with one charity receiving £250,000. Leaving, again according to Mr. Albon, only £50,000 to be shared by other equine charities, many of whom are in desperate need of funding and yet received nothing.
Mr. Albon obviously has an axe to grind, though I do believe this issue should be investigated, if not by the B.H.A., then the Racing Post, as the industry newspaper, should take an interest in the matter. Mr. Albon has his own proposal to remedy the conflict and I will leave readers to go on the Racing Post website to read his letter to form an opinion on whether his ideas for reform are better than the present set-up.
My stance is that equine charities can never have enough funds and this sport should enable that by any way possible. I do not know whether jockeys mandatorily contribute to R.o.R. but I believe they should, if only a small percentage of either their riding fee or prize percentage is taken from them. I just hope there is no malpractice at play here and that going forward R.o.R. will consider helping all the smaller equine charities in this country. If the sport has a social licence for its continued existence, that licence must be doubly important when it comes to the aftercare of racehorses when they are removed from the racing environment.

When Kingman was defeated in the 2,000 Guineas, was his jockey sacked because of it? I believe James Doyle was the jockey that day and every day after the horse won the Irish 2,000 Guineas. Here is my point: Shoemark may, and it is only may as no one can say for sure what might have happened if the horse had been ridden differently, well regret the ride he gave Field of Gold that day, yet the man who will benefit from his mistake, if mistake it was, will be Colin Keane. He will not give Field of Gold a similar ride to the one Shoemark gave him, as indeed Shoemark would not do today at the Curragh, if he had been given a second chance. James Doyle became a great rider after winning the Irish 2,000 Guineas, sadly Shoemark is denied that opportunity.

Hayley Turner is correct. In not having an all-girls team in the Shergar Cup this season a whole lot of the fun of the competition will be squeezed out of it. I am sure I am not the only fan of the Shergar Cup who supported the girls’ team due to them being the ‘underdogs’ and the not so small consideration that some of them were on a better quality of horse than was normal for them. I wonder if Ascot would have taken the same decision if Hayley were still riding?