THE DEATH-KNELL OF THE GREATEST SPORT IS SOUNDED.

​Horse racing as we know it is on its last legs. It’s official. The history and tradition of the sport rendered pointless and obscure by a former chairman of a failing English football league club and endorsed by powers-that-be in whose hands we place the dignity and future of our sport. Hail Jeremy Wray! The saviour of our sport!
Let me be plain. There is no requirement for me to pen a balanced piece of writing on this subject or any other.  I am not employed by anyone. I am not a journalist. This website is my plaything. I believe in a fair and open society and in the democratic right to free speech. If I were all-powerful I would erase Jeremy Wray and his damned awful Championship Horse Racing from the racing Earth.
As I have campaigned (modestly, I admit) for hand and heel races for professional riders to be trialled I should be thrilled to see the concept embraced by the powers-that-be. I am not. Trials should be conducted in quiet backwaters not in front of television cameras and with huge prize money on offer, and should not be used to sanitise and bring credence to a flawed concept. As I have written many times, if we are to persuade more people to our sport we must go some way to eliminating aspects they find distasteful. The whip is a prime example of what animal-lovers dislike about our sport. Jeremy Wray has no concern for horse welfare, though, he made that plain when he first introduced chr by declaring the horse should not be the prominent feature of the sport but the jockey. ‘The horse, in many ways, is just the engine a jockey uses’, I think were his words. It certainly was his sentiment.
I suspect Jeremy Wray is yet to be told that horses are not even vaguely similar to motor-bikes or Formula 1 racing cars. Someone should give him a heads-up as reality is going to be a great kick-up the ass when he realises there are no slick or full-wet horseshoes that can be affixed to the feet of a horse.
When this stupid idea was proposed ten or twelve teams were proposed. Now we are down to four, comprising a squad of thirty horses per team, with four jockeys per team. Which means sixteen jockeys will trouser both the riding fee and percentage of prize money, allowing already wealthy jockeys to get richer and the jockeys who would really benefit from this influx of new money will have to spectate as horses they normally ride earn money for the likes of Moore, Buick, Doyle, Spencer, Dettori, etc. The rich get richer when Jeremy Wray is the quick-fix fitter!
I doubt if any of these races will take place at all-weather tracks, which means every race and every meeting will be subject to the variances of the British weather. This year it has been unusually hot, with firm ground prevailing. Next summer it might be a summer of rain. As chr races will be staged at night the ground could very easily be wetter or firmer than when declarations close. Trainers are averse to running a firm ground horse on soft ground, as they are running a soft ground horse on firm. Will there be reserves? Will trainers be fined for taking out a horse because of the ground? Will they be fined for doing so? Will the welfare of the horse take prominence over the expediency of the event?
Formula 1 could not exist without multiple sponsorship or without the financial clout of major car manufacturers. Are we expecting the horse-kingdoms of Dubai and Qatar to underwrite this (mis)adventure? Will bookmakers be allowed to have teams of their own? Will jockeys be expected to ride out to the line on a horse hating the ground or is feared injured or feeling not right in some way? Will jockeys be fined or suspended for not riding out to the line? What will happen to the format if one of the lucky sixteen picks up a ban and is off-games? And Formula 1 is broadcast at weekends, not in the backwater of a minor I.T.V. channel. £4.8million is a beautiful amount of money to be coming to the sport yet sponsors are not fairy-godmothers, they will expect a dividend, they will want a lot of buck for their dough. Will they get it on a Thursday night on Channel invisible? Anyone who is a devotee of the soaps will not change their viewing just to watch something that is hyped as similar to Formula 1 but is actually nothing at all like it. At the end of the day the viewers, be they a racing enthusiast or a newcomer to the sport, will be watching a horse race very similar to any other horse race. And are we expected to believe that spectators will form allegiances to teams or to a certain jockey? People who spectate also bet and they will put their money on the horse they think most likely to win and that will scupper ‘allegiance’ in one foul swoop.
I like and admire John Gosden. I know he has the good of the sport at heart. When he speaks, I listen. In that he is very much like Michael Johnson, one of the great athletes and sporting commentators. When John Gosden says of chr: ‘the most creative and positive racing sponsorship opportunity I have seen’, he may be correct. But it is all pie-in-the-sky. This 4.8 million quid sponsorship is being sanctioned for one small and very wealthy section of the sport. They may say this is for horses below group and listed class and will give the small owner a chance of a big pot but if there is a Team Godolphin they will have a one in four chance of winning every single race in the 48-race series. And, of course, the 120 horses that will make up the four teams will be largely unavailable for races outside of chr. And where will this new concept take the sport? If it is successful, god-forbid, will horse racing become Formula 1 style twenty-four-seven?
I dislike Jeremy Wray, even though I have never met him. I suspect Swindon Town must be better off without him. This is very much his venture. It is all over everything he says to the press. When he says ‘this will be entertainment-focused horseracing’ what he is saying is that other forms of horse racing, horse racing we know and love, lacks entertainment and is past its sell-by date. Chr will not, long-term, help horse racing survive, it will kill it. Formula 1 is a twenty-race series staged around the world. It is not a day-to-day routine. For those who work in horse racing it is not so much a job as life itself and every one of racing’s workforce deserve a slice of the 4.8-million quid, not just the lucky few.
What Jeremy Wray and the powers-that-be propose is like growing trees upside down so people can enjoy the complex root-structure; it is like changing football by doing away with the referee and goalkeepers; it is like making tennis more interesting by having a sloping court. It is change for the sake of change, and I dare say the bank balance of its leading advocate.
If the powers-that-be go ahead with this ludicrous idea I will not be tuning in. Will you?