the racing league.

​Richard Forristal writing in today’s (Sept 22nd) Racing Post echoed most of my thoughts regarding the Racing League, though he did so, obviously, far more eloquently and succinctly than I could ever achieve. To use a quote from his column, used on the front page of the paper, ‘A gimmick that celebrates mediocrity, its cheerleaders screaming for attention while the city around it burns’. A far better educated overview than one of my original comments ‘this is a kitten that needs drowning at birth’. That’s why he is paid handsomely for his thoughts, whilst I just prattle on in my own sweet time.
Anyone who thinks the Racing League is a step on the long road to survival of the sport should stick to watching and supporting mud wrestling, with or without the highly-skilled and doubtless poorly-paid scantily-clad young ladies for whom it is a breadwinner. And as for the comment from Jeremy Wray, the brains behind the team competition, and whose company/investors are still to make a profit from the Racing League – oh, yes, he’s not in it purely for the sake of the sport – ‘You never sit and say that’s the finished article – Twenty20 cricket evolved through several iterations before it got to where it is now’. Well, it may be doing well at the box-office but enthusiasts of the game believe in the long term it will kill off all serious aspects of the sport.
My view on the Racing League has not altered. Horse racing, outside a stable, a trainer and his owners and staff, is not a team game. Indeed, the whole concept of a team in horse racing is against the rules as every horse must run on its own merits and not impede other runners. With so much money up for grabs the temptation for a jockey to impede a competitor from another team in any manner that might escape the scrutiny of the stewards must be tantalising. Also, and this really sticks in my craw, the teams competing are fabrications, spurious, make believe and bogus. Team Wales and the West, for instance, that apparently won the event, have as little to do with the country of Wales and the part of England termed ‘the West’ as Swiss cheese, Wells Fargo or the Sargasso Sea.
Frankie Dettori rode for team Wales and the West. Jason Watson and Tom Marquand for Ireland. Some jockeys listed as team members didn’t turn up for a single ride throughout the contest. 
If the prize funds for the races in the Racing League were transferred to races already in the calendar field sizes would be similar. The comment by Andrew Dietz, the Racing Post’s defence correspondent, ‘Even the traditionalists must recognise that it provides incredibly competitive racing’, is not comparing the prize funds for the Racing League against similar races throughout the year of similar value.
The Racing League only proves how desperate the sport has become to remain relevant in today’s sporting landscape and how useless the B.H.A. and its tripartite partners have been over the past twenty-years at promoting and growing the sport, though the demise started way before the inception of the B.H.B., the forerunner of the B.H.A.
There is no way the Racing League can win new customers to the sport as the concept is so different to the traditional model. Let’s say, for example, Dai Jones, a true Welshman living in Devon, becomes a devoted fan of Team Wales and the West and for six fixtures he goes to every race meeting, backs every W and W runner. What’s he to do for the rest of the year. His ‘team’ disappears into the ether, the jockeys he has cheered on move on, they might not even be a part of the next R.L.. Dai might go to his local racecourse and find the racing different, alien to what he has come to enjoy. Even if the R.L. was to be a success and racing’s finances improve because of it, how do you transfer the concept to the day-to-day calendar. Do you eventually run the Derby as a team event, the Grand National, Royal Ascot, Cheltenham?
The purpose of the Racing League is to make money for Jeremy Wray and his company. End of.
I hated City Street Racing. I only dislike the Racing League. It is lurid in its concept; it will not fill racecourses because no one outside of the horses involved have any affiliation with the make-believe teams and any success it might breed cannot be transferred to the day-to-day of horse racing. Let it fade away in the same way all the teams disappeared after the last race at Newcastle.