value for money.

​My views on the thorny old issue of prize money will no doubt be controversial and perhaps few will support me in my argument, yet I believe the levels of prize money at the premier flat meetings contribute to sport’s reputation as being elitist and a game for the nobs.
Increased prize money is of course vital if we want to encourage more people to take up ownership of racehorses. It is also vital, perhaps more so, to increase prize money so that trainers, jockeys and stable staff are better remunerated for their supreme efforts. And though all-round prize money is on the up it is more on the up at the premier race meeting than at the bread and butter meetings where an increase might be of greater benefit to the sport. And that is the nub of my concern. It is all very well the powers-that-be claiming an annual increase in prize money of whatever percentage but if the majority of that increase goes into the pot at places like Ascot, Goodwood and York, whereas a much smaller annual increase goes to Chepstow, Yarmouth and Hamilton, it devalues the achievement.
The level of prize money at Goodwood last week verged on the ridiculous. Can anyone put their hand on the heart and say the increase in prize money contributed to better racing, more horses from abroad or an all-round better quality of horse? I dare say winning owners thought the prize money fully justified, yet in the main the big fat cheques went the way of owners for whom six-figure amounts of money can be found stuffed in shoeboxes under the bed.
I am not so naïve as to believe that the ruling families of Dubai and Qatar can race their huge strings of horses simply for the pleasure of seeing their names on race-cards. Their need to balance the books is no different to the owner with one home-bred in training. Through their breeding operations owners such as Sheikh Hamdan and Prince Khalid Abdullah employ many hundreds of people, all of whom expect a pay-cheque at the end of the month. Without such generous and prolific owners’ flat racing would be greatly diminished. Yet they do not operate solely at the premier end of the sport, they too compete for £3,000 at Chepstow, Yarmouth and Hamilton. They too would benefit if no race in Great Britain, jumping or on the flat, could be valued at less than £5,000.
£1-million Sussex Stakes also do nothing to advance the public perception of horse racing as a sport for the working class, which is ridiculous as horse racing is very much a working man’s sport. In stable-yards, on racecourses, in betting shops, the worker bees are perhaps to a man and woman from working-class backgrounds. Most trainers, too. If I were to find the Queen’s Rolls Royce broken down on a B road somewhere and she accepted a lift home we could talk, as equals, almost, about racing until I dropped her outside whatever castle she was staying at.
A £1-million Sussex Stakes will attract the same runners as a £500,000 Sussex Stakes. There is a little matter of value for money and I don’t believe for one moment that a £1-million Sussex Stakes is value for its enhanced prize money. Whereas £1-million spread across all those £3,000 races would most definitely provide value for money.
Although I am fully in favour of giving prominence to the staying races in this country and have long advocated a British international handicap to rival the Melbourne Cup, with the Ebor the obvious race to upgrade, I do not see the value in York and Newmarket going tit for tat to provide a staying race with a £1-million prize pot. The Cesarewitch will, I suspect, become a completely different type of race to the traditional Cesarewitch, with classy three-year-olds laid out for the race and the good old stagers for whom the Cesarewitch is their best chance of winning a valuable pot unable to even get into the race. Money is not always the answer, especially when there is no problem to be solved. How will it benefit the sport if the top breeding operations, Coolmore, Darley etc, regularly farm the top handicaps, which they will if they have £1-million in prize money, as well as the classic races?
I am ignorant of the way the wheels of corporate business works. Or indeed the corporate arm of Middle Eastern countries work. Why is five days on the Sussex Downs worth x-millions to Qatar and yet the flying of its national flag at every race meeting in the country would be not worth bothering about. Has anyone from the B.H.B. gone to the equestrian federations of, Kuwait, Burundi, Malaysia or Liechenstein, for example, and asked what is it worth to have the national flag of their country flying tall and proud at every race-meeting in Britain for a year. £1-million, perhaps?