The turf
Taking control
Robin Oakley
When I asked the Prime Minister how he felt about squaring up to Vladimir Putin, given that his host last weekend had spent most of his career not in democratic politics but as a KGB spook, he thought for a moment and then commented that Boris Yeltsin's anointed successor had clearly learned something from the experience, since this was the first of his overseas trips that had not leaked in advance. And thus it was that I found myself at short notice last Saturday not at Sandown but in St Peters- burg, reporting on his endeavours.
It is a wonderful place, Russia's most European city. But for all the splendour of the Winter Palace, the onion domes and minarets, the statues of galloping con- querors and the sun glinting off the ice floes floating down the river, St Petersburg has its limitations on a pre-Cheltenham Festival Saturday. Racing opportunities in a watery city five degrees below are limited. I espied no Sergei Ladbrokes or Josef Corals in which one might have checked up on the ante-post market. Indeed, I espied very little at all and was left reflecting instead on the British government's belated and welcome decision to take a hefty step back from its involvement in the world of racing by selling off the Tote, scrapping the Levy Board and leaving the British Horseracing Board to come up with its own plans for future funding of the industry.
At long last racing is being given a strong measure of control over its own destiny. But if that is going to ease ministers' prob- lems in one small area of government it is certainly going to tax the ingenuity of an industry which has become a byword for bitchy division, fragmented thinking and the collective burying of heads in the fibre- sand. One racing wag told me recently the slightly seedy story of the three male rab- bits who escaped from the smoking experi- mentation laboratory. On the first day they found a field of carrots, gorged themselves silly and slept comfortably under a hedge. On the second day they found a field of does and pleasured themselves and the ladies until they could take no more. Once again they slept in comfort. Waking up on the third day they ruminated what to do. One decided he was going back to the field of carrots. The second opted for the field of does. When they asked their travelling companion for his plans he declared, 'Oh, I think I'll pop back to the lab for a fag.' Racing, fortunately, does not have the option of going back to the past. Change is now the only option.
There is some time to think. The price for the Tote will not be settled until legisla- tion is being prepared. With an election probable in 2001 we will almost certainly have to wait until 2002 for that. But the pri- orities are surely becoming clear already. First, the Tote must be allowed to retain its monopoly of pool betting. The bookies, God bless them, were given their bonanza in 1960, when the establishment of a Tote monopoly might have given us a much more prosperous industry.
Second, the Chancellor and other minis- ters involved must show some restraint. If they set too high a price on the Tote sell- off to a racing industry trust it will be com- mercially crippled by interest charges from the start. Fortunately, such an outcome is more likely after an election than in the run-up to one.
Third, an industry which is used to split- ting selfishly into its trade association groups such as the owners, the breeders, the Jockey Club, the courses, the trainers and so on must learn to agree on present- ing a united front to government. The planned Tote sale to a racing trust consor- tium has come about only because the Tote and the BHB were able to get their act together for a joint submission to ministers. Racing's revenue stream in the future is likely to depend on the sale of the rights to live pictures and to information about run- ners and riders. The BHB needs to be rep- resented in any deals done on either.
Finally, the industry and the government have to find ways of monitoring and con- trolling the ever more sophisticated forms of betting. That can be done only by co- operation. And if ministers want to ensure the survival of the industry in the meantime and to curb the increase in offshore, unreg- ulated betting then they have to look at reductions in betting duty.
The final thought is that the key figure in the realisation of all this is one Peter Savill. Clear of vision, the chairman of the BHB has a reputation as a short-tempered, undiplomatic one-man-bander, as confiding to colleagues about his game plans as is the average squirrel about its winter nut sup- ply. But Mr Savill has been handed the key role in forging racing's future by the Home Office and he is probably the one man in racing with both the balls and the brains needed to do the job. He seems to be changing his front-running style for some- thing subtler, saying that he will not be shouting from the rooftops or pushing peo7 ple into corners any more. That is good news. All of us interested in seeing how racing will find the money to support the sport when the Levy Board income of £60 million-plus a year disappears will wish all the luck in the world to the new, cuddly and co-operative Peter Savill.
Robin Oakley is political editor of the BBC.
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