The turf
The great divide
Robin Oakley
It was the master of Warren Place who began it all. Henry Cecil, from a stable where you suspect that most of the horses too, given half a chance, would wear Gucci loafers and Hermes head collars, com- plained that there is far too much racing in Britain and that it was breeding mediocrity, weakening and bringing down the racing industry. Rod Fabricius, clerk of the course at Goodwood, intensified the argument by complaining that the fixture list had swollen excessively in the past decade and that racing was spreading its product too widely. He pointed out that during Good- wood's five-day festival meeting ten years ago there were 22 other meetings, with just two in the same catchment area. This year there were 29 other meetings during Glori- ous Goodwood, six of them in places com- peting for customers. Nudged along by the Sporting Life with something more than hands and heels, the `too much racing' debate has proceeded in stable yards, parade rings and racecourse bars up and down the land. For the most part the responses have depended on whether you are in a yard where the own- ers drink Bellinis and holiday in Mustique or whether your stable familiars bury their face in a Guinness glass and take their leisure on the Costa Brava.
Many races are restricted to horses with- in a particular range of handicap ratings and so the top trainers, with yards full of equine Porsches, ask, `Where on earth do I find a race for all the horses I have rated at 90-plus?' They mutter that if they had a yard full of very moderate nags rated at 40- 50 they could find opportunities to race them three afternoons a week, and in the evenings and on some Sundays as well They want less racing with bigger prizes. `All very well for them,' say the smaller fry. 'But our owners can only afford moder- ate horses and there must be moderate races for them to win. And if there were not plenty of moderate horses swelling the racecards what would happen to the vol- ume of betting and the rake-off from it however skimpy, on which everybody la racing depends?'
Both camps have a point. You can sym- pathise with Luca Cuman's complaint from one of the best addresses in Newmarket that three quarters of the racing calendar is made up of races which his horses are too good to enter and that it is bad for racing's image for it to appear a mediocre sport. In a world of increasing leisure, racing has to compete with many other glamorous inducements for people to part with their spending money and, if punters acquire the impression that racing is second rate, then they will go hang-gliding, play golf or save up for the next Pavarotti concert instead. But smaller trainers say that if a race produces plenty of runners and a good fin- ish most people are not bothered too much about the calibre of the racing. If there is a cutback in the racing programme, they say, then the number of opportunities for small owners will decline and that cannot be good. As Derek Haydn Jones put it, 'There are a lot of mediocre horses in training owned by people who really love racing but simply cannot afford anything better.'
The extra meetings have come about partly because courses press for more: they can only generate revenue on racing days. Bookmakers too called for more racing to increase their turnover at slacker times and were accommodated by racing authorities keen to increase levy income. The present structure which the bigger trainers resent came about partly because they were not content to leave the cheaper maiden races on the less-fashionable tracks to the small- er yards but sent their higher-grade horses along to boost their win totals.
There is now too much racing. You need only to look at the whey-faced jockeys on the weighing-room steps as they head off for another motorway slog to the next meeting to confirm it. It has become impossible for anybody but full-time pro- fessionals to keep up with the form book.
But I have much sympathy for the fix- ture-framers at the BHB who have to bal- ance the conflicting interests and I remain resistant to the calls for less racing. For racing to mean anything it must be a spec- tator sport, not a private club, and I fear that an early victim of the 'too much rac- ing' lobby would be the Sunday and evening meetings which are bringing in a new kind of spectator. We might lose, too, some of the smaller tracks. But adjust- ments could be made. Although a jumping enthusiast I would shed no tears over the end of summer jumping. There should be fewer flat races in July and August on bak- ing ground and more in early autumn. And perhaps a bigger differential between the prizes for winning a 0-60 handicap and those for winning better-class races.
Perhaps the answer in the end will be some kind of premier league, with top courses staging prestige racing getting extra dollops of levy money and smaller courses left largely to survive on their own, offering lesser facilities but extra fun. I won't expect Ascot when I go to Brighton or to Catter- ick. But I shall still go. In the meantime, racing should stop squabbling about who gets which slice of prize-money cake and concentrate on getting a bigger cake.
Robin Oakley is political editor of the BBC.
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