the year may have changed but the problem remains the same.

​I would like to introduce you to a book published in 1968, and when reading this remember that in 1968 Lester Piggott won the Epsom Derby on Sir Ivor and Brian Flecther the Aintree Grand National on Red Alligator, it was that long ago, titled ‘The Spoilsports. What’s wrong with British racing’. The author was Tim Fitzgeorge-Parker, a former trainer who on not renewing his training licence turned his hand to journalism. The foreword of the book was penned by Paddy Prendergast, champion trainer both in his native Ireland and as the conquering hero in Britain during the middle-sixties.
56-years ago, Fitzgeorge-Parker’s opening sentence of the opening chapter echoes down the ages. ‘Britain is no longer a first-class racing nation.’
As Paddy Prendergast said in his foreword to the book. ‘I have known Tim for many years. He has unequalled experience of racing and breeding in all its various aspects. He is never afraid to express his opinions and while I would not go along with all of them, I do know that he has the welfare of racing at heart.’
I was 14 back in 1968 and had no idea the rot had already set in. I must have thought it the golden era, what with Lester ruling the roost on the flat and National Hunt still competitive in that time between Arkle and Red Rum. Yet to quote from Fitzgeorge-Parker’s opening paragraph. ‘Since 1947, British racing, once both the mine and crucible of the thoroughbred horse, sport of the rich, recreation of the rest, long recognised as such by successive governments, has been slipping towards disaster. Throughout the rest of the world the racing and breeding industries have never been more prosperous, particularly in France and the United States, with Japan, perhaps rather surprisingly, challenging for the lead; yet in Britain, racing is struggling for survival.’
In the second paragraph, Fitzgeorge-Parker quotes Geoff Watson, then the private trainer to the Rothschilds in Chantilly. ‘I’d rather have swamp fever than the kinds you have in England – dope fever and old tradition fever.’ At the time French racing was hidebound by an outbreak of swamp fever. He continued. ‘There are just two things wrong with British racing. Bookmakers and peers.’
In 1968, Fitzgeorge-Parker recognised that a lack of funding for the sport was driving it down to the also-rans of world horse-racing. We may have solved the ‘peer’ problem, with most of the aristocracy of this country no longer involved in the sport in any major way due to financial restraints, yet the bookmaker problem remains, and it was bookmakers that Fitzgeorge-Parker considered the greatest ill of the sport.
Of course, times have changed. The Tote no longer exists; Fitzgeorge-Parker’s lifeline for the sport. And the facts he quotes to support his stance are perhaps no longer quite as relevant today as they were in 1968. In 1965, he said, the Pari-Mutuel in France ‘yielded sixty-two million pounds to the state and forty-two million pounds to French racing.’ Yet in Britain, where betting turnover was three-times greater, only three-million was received from the betting levy.’
Of course, when it comes to prize-money, France now lags behind other countries in the world to the same extent as British racing, with Asia, the Middle-East, Australia and the U.S. making European prize-money look puny and increasingly commercially unviable to the major owning and breeding operations. Britain’s funding stream is different to all those countries just listed and though it does not yield the extra-millions needed for our sport to keep in touching distance with these other countries, we stick with it because, as journalists continue to argue, ‘that boat has sailed’, meaning the successful-all-over-the-world method of funding prize-money and infrastructure through betting, with the preference, seemingly, to retain the atmosphere of the betting jungle on course. 
In 1968, the Jockey Club ruled the sport. It was much maligned, considered a dinosaur refusing to evolve into the modern age. Yet is the sport any healthier under the governance of the British Horseracing Authority? Has anything really changed in 56-years?
I would encourage any reader of this out-of-the-way blog to seek out a copy of ‘The Spoilsports’ as, though it makes sombre reading, it will bring into stark relief how the sport has been allowed to stagnate for so many decades.