twixmas, the new lion & early closing.

​I learned today from Tom Ellis’s Editor’s Choice piece which us Ultimate Members receive in our inbox, that the period between Boxing Day and New Year’s Day is now referred to as Twixmas. I like it and hope the term will receive both public and official recognition.
Of course, there is now a call to make use of this long period of holiday-time to help boost attendance at racecourse by somehow improving the fare on offer and interconnecting one day and one meeting in a chain of festive happiness. 
Unfortunately, as with many of my own ideas for revival and survival, the truth is stark – there just are not enough top-class or even horses for the races we already have during the Twixmas period, to have anything other than ‘ordinary fare’, outside of Kempton and Chepstow, of course, and would require money the sport does not have and someone with a magic wand to produce out of the ether a hundred racehorses idly standing by for a suitable race to come their way.
I would go as far as to say unless we let go half-a-dozen meetings before the Twixmas holiday, and perhaps a similar number in the first weeks of the New Year, there is hardly enough horses in training to make competitive the festive race-meetings we already have. At the moment, sadly, less would be more, rather than ‘if more is good for you, even more must be better’.

Another nail in racing’s coffin – wish I could stop being so pessimistic – is the news that we will not be seeing a jockey wearing the black colours and silver D Y on a racecourse anytime soon. Darren Yates will be leaving the sport when all his horses are sold, the departure, I believe, has started with the sell of The New Lion to J.P. McManus. 
How many more long-standing owners will have to hang-up their racing colours before the lethargic B.H.A. start listening to the reasons put forward by people like Darren Yates for abandoning the sport. If a large number of owners are unhappy, the sport is in dire trouble.
Think about this: what happens when J.P. McManus is no longer around to prop-up the sport in Britain and Ireland? Yes, I dare say his family will continue to have horses in training but no offence intended, will any one of them be a replica of J.P. himself? It is imperative the B.H.A. engage with racehorse owners and bring about change as a result. If owners do not feel respected when at a race-meeting, the sport can only suffer.
As is usually the case when J.P. buys a horse, The New Lion will stay with the Skeltons’. They, though, are not winners in this matter as they may have kept the most promising horse they have ever had but they have lost an owner, as has the sport.

Ascot have plumped-up the prize money for the King George and Queen Elizabeth Stakes – why not shorten it to the Queen Elizabeth Stakes? – and will refund all entry fees to the owners of the horses that run on the day. A good move, I dare say, though that comes to £18,000 per runner, would any owner with a horse good enough to run in a Group 1 feel the loss of 18-grand and would it make the difference between running at Ascot or going for a softer target elsewhere? I doubt it. Pot-hunting is endemic in British racing, I am afraid, and not only at the Cheltenham Festival. In this one regard, owners have become spoilt.
Ascot have also taken the bold move to have four of the races at Royal Ascot become 6-day entry, rather than early entry, the Prince of Wales Stakes amongst them. Early entry is an anachronism, both a vestige of days long gone and a money-gathering exercise on behalf of the racecourse. The important races need the best horses turning-up on the day, not just those entered months, and sometimes months and months, before the day of the actual race. 
To take the K.G. & Q.E. for example. To run in that race, from initial entry fees to the final fee to run in the race, costs an owner £18,000. Why not scratch all but one of the entry stages and charge an owner £20,000 to stay in the race at the five-day declaration stage. Why must owners be forced to waste large sums of money through the season having horses entered for races, especially two-year-old races, on the off-chance they might be a) in form when the race finally comes around b) sound and healthy or c) proven good enough? 
Cut financial waste and give owners one less reason for leaving the sport.