when i win the euro-lottery!

​I am not, I admit, the most charitable of people. I should donate more to the rehabilitation of racehorses charities and to the Injured Jockeys Fund. As is said, every little helps, and perhaps giving more should become my New Year’s Resolution. In fact, yes, I will donate more and more often to the animal charities of my choice. Yes, definitely. My Christmas resolution for the coming year.
What I would really like to do, and this, because of the long-odds against it ever becoming a reality, is more of a dream than an aspiration or ambition, would be to donate the largest proportion of any mega winnings from a Euro Lottery Draw to horse racing. I’m talking about the winning numbers that amount to one-hundred-million and upwards. You know, amounts that are obscene when others win them but might be not quite enough if you win yourself.
I would have horses in training, of course. Mainly jumpers but a few for the flat as well, though because of my age and my concern for how they would be looked-after after my death, I would limit my excess and put in place a trust fund for their after-racing lives. My main contribution to the sport, if the B.H.A. and racecourses allowed my indulgence and did not put obstacles and objections in my path, would be to raise the lowest levels of prize money on a day-to-day level.
I do have two pet projects I would insist on adding to the race calendar and would guarantee funding for three-years, hoping that during this period the races would prove their attraction to the public and trainers so that further sponsorship might be easily found in later years. The first of the omissions from the race calendar, as I believe, is a Ladies Race with a value of a £200,000 to the winner, making it the most valuable race of its kind in the world, run over a mile-and-a-quarter, restricted to professional female jockeys.
Of course, such a race is not as necessary as it was when I first thought of the idea but still worth pursuing as it will become the race all professional female jockeys around the world will want to win as, even now, the odds are stacked against the female jockeys winning or even featuring in, any of the classic races in any of the recognised racing jurisdictions.  A ‘Ladies Race’ worth six-figures to the winner, will allow female jockeys the opportunity to get on a far higher class of horse than, outside of Holly Doyle, is ever likely to come their way.
I dare say there are rules and regulations that will make bringing such a race to reality an uphill task, after-all, I am not suggesting a ‘Ladies Race’ should be either listed or Group class and definitely not a handicap but a weight-for-age conditions race on one of the less high-profile Saturdays during the summer months. I am though a stubborn man and will make it a non-negotiable condition of my largess that such a race comes speedily to fruition in the form I have outlined.
My second pet-project, and also its implementation will be conditional upon my grand gesture being honoured, is a 4-mile Champion Chase. I have long-argued that it is perverse, that a sport that has as its core steeplechases over what we term marathon distances, yet does not have a championship race over a similar distance. The National Hunt season has at the top of its sporting pyramid the Grand National, with the Welsh, Scottish and Irish versions centrepieces of the calendar in those countries, added to which both the British and Irish race programme has in its jewelled crown county and regional ‘Nationals’. It is absurd the 4-mile chaser does not have a championship race to align it with the 2-mile chaser, the 2-mile and 3-mile hurdler and the slightly less prestigious 2-and-a-half-mile chaser.
If the B.H.A. were to defer to my bounteous stipulations, I would then hand over a cheque for one-million-quid to improve levels of prize-money at the very bottom end of the racing pyramid. You cannot, as seems to be the thinking at the B.H.A., grow the sport organically from the top downwards. For good, sustained growth, the plant must have solid foundations, a healthy root structure. The one-horse owner, the small family partnership, the small breeder, are being left for dead, considered inconsequential to the survival of the sport, at least in Britain. There is an elitist leaning towards a ‘Premiership’ of racing, with little or no concern for the country racecourse, the small trainer/owner/breeder, historically the bedrock of the sport. I dream of righting the terrible wrong.
I am no mathematician; I have little idea how far a hundred-million will stretch and for how many years. Yet my dream should be the mirrored aspiration of racing’s movers and shakers, not the invention of more and more valuable races that only stretches to breaking point the quality of horses eligible for such races, rendering such races as uncompetitive and merely trials for races in the future . At the very least, the B.H.A. should have the aspiration for every meeting to have a highlighted race. It need only be worth ten or twelve grand but every card should have a main race of the day.
My dream is to raise the poorest level of prize money by four to five-thousand pounds. That’s all. If I ever won one-hundred-and-sixty-million pound that is what I would do with the money. I would try to save my sport. Oh, a more obtuse condition I would impose on the B.H.A. – I would insist on hand and heels racecourse trials to be implemented for professional jockeys, as some apprentice races are presently restricted. Just for the data and input it would provide as that too might help our sport to survive for another fifty-years.