The bee remains in the bonnet

Umm - well, the chess. Honours even, as Squeak and I ended up winning four games each of the eight we played together this week. That meant that I won the second session 3:2, but it contained a result of which I'm not proud, as in the first game I succumbed to the four-move checkmate. That makes me sound like a really bad player, but that's not the case, as we're both adequate: it was an aberration, as I obviously hadn't got myself into 'the zone' at that stage. But you can be sure that, temporary though the aberration was, our little friend won't let me forget about it. He's still talking about the previous time I fell into that trap, and that must be six years ago.

Squeak being here meant that we enjoyed a nice dinner in 'The Wellington' on Tuesday evening. The excellent former landlord, MIck Wallace, along with his wife Sally, meant that it became firmly established over the years as our favourite, and it's still nice under the new landlord Keith. One bonus of going there was that I bumped into two of the town's nicest men, Jack Banks and Stuart Jackson. Stuart takes Jack there fairly regularly for an early-evening drink. I was delighted to catch them. It was the first time I'd seen Jack since his stroke last winter; it's certainly hit him, but he's a tough, brave man, and evidently still able to enjoy life. Stuart can take a lot of credit for this, as I understand that he's been a true friend to Jack throughout, and I was equally pleased to see him, the first time I'd done so since the retirement of his former employer Geoff Huffer, for whom he used to ride Cockney Rebel most days.

The previous evening we'd enjoyed a Pedigree Club meeting at Ruth Harrison's house. There was an unusually large turn-out, prompted by the fact that Sir Mark Prescott kindly addressed the gathering. I'm afraid that I failed completely in my task of trying to steer him in the theoretically correct direction (ie onto the subject of pedigrees) but of course that turned out for the best: given free rein, he is the most entertaining raconteur you could find. And racont he did, at great length. It's rare to see him taken by surprise, but he did look slightly taken aback afterwards when I told him that Squeak (whose first employer he was) had beaten me at chess that day. Bon mot of the evening had then to be his reply to my information, "Squeak was in your yard on Sunday evening. He called in to catch up with some of his former colleagues. He asked Colin Nutter if you were around, and Colin said, 'He's in the office, but I'd advice you not to go in there to see him". Sir Mark's concise response to this was, "That was good advice"!

On the subject of advice, or opinions, I feel I ought to expand a bit on my already-expansive statements about the current vogue for saying that prize money levels are of no relevance to owners or to the health of racing. Since my last ramblings around this subject, Alastair Down has joined Nic Coward in expounding this view. Paul Dixon and Sue Scargill make typically cogent cases on the subject in today's Racing Post, but I'd like to chime in once again.

Basically, for racing to exist in anything like its present form, there has to be prize money. If there was none, the amount of horses in training would drop by, I'd say, at least 90%. That is beyond dispute. If it was otherwise, the levy negotiations would be solely 'racing' saying to the bookmakers: "It costs x to pay the salaries of the officials required to stage the meetings and y to pay the courses to open for the day, so work out among yourself how you are going to pay x plus y". But racing would just grind to a halt, which nobody wants, so there has to be a z component of the levy to make up prize money. So what is a suitable value for z? Well, Nic Coward and Alastair Down think that a token figure is acceptable, reasoning that owning horses is a rich man's pasttime for which one should not expect to be paid. I don't think that, nowadays, that view is valid, and I shall explain why.

Racing is no longer an amateur pasttime. It has become business, in the sense that it is nowadays run for the benefit of several ancilliary industries who depend on its widespread flourishing for their survival. In addition to the trainers and jockeys who depend on people continuing to own and race horses, we have the sport's bureaucracy (a multi-million pound business, of which Nic Coward is just one well-paid beneficiary), the racing press (nowadays a massive body of people, of which Alastair Down is just one well-paid beneficiary), racecourse owning (which has in the majority of cases ceased to be something which happens for the benefit of the sport, and is now the domain of plcs whose purpose is to make money from the sport) and the betting industry. Racing is run for the betting industry: virtually every regulation exists to make it an attractive betting medium for punters. It is no longer simply a case of people owning their horses and having fun with them: it is a case of people owning horses and being told when, where and how they can run them so that these dependent industries can prosper on the back of them. It is just not acceptable, for a variety of reasons, for anyone in any of these industries - be it trainer, jockey, pressman, bookmaker or, particularly, bureaucrat - to say, "I acknowledge that I make my (often extremely good) living and lead my (often extremely good) life only because people pay very large sums to own racehorses, but at the same time I feel that there is no obligation for us to try to limit the extent to which they subsidise me: if they are stupid enough to do so, then that's their problem. Just so long as they keep shelling out so that I can pocket my salary and enjoy my life".

No, that isn't good enough. I regard the people who own horses in this stable and in this country as the most important people in British racing, and I have no time for anyone who draws his living from racing who says otherwise. Without them, none of us could lead the life which we do. And I say that while not earning anything from racing, so how people like Alastair Down and Nic Coward, who are both becoming very rich at racing's expense - thanks to owners funding the sport - can say otherwise is beyond me.

So where does that leave us? What is a suitable level of return? We have large industries - press, administration, racecourses, betting - all dependent for their prosperity on a large band of what we have to call voluntary helpers, ie the owners who pay to provide the horses without which everything would grind to a halt. In a modern environment, is it right that these voluntary helpers don't even receive their expenses for turning up - even running third in a low-grade race nowadays doesn't usually pay the horse's costs (transport plus jockey's fee plus entry fee) for the day, never mind the week or month? In any other form of big business, if the voluntary helpers on whom the whole business depended asked not to be out of pocket for the day and were told, "Look, be grateful for what you've got. Don't forget: you're doing this because you enjoy it and nobody forces you to do it", this would seem odd. In other countries, things like raceday costs are covered by appearance money for each horse. But that, of course, only covers the costs of the outing so, if there were no prize money on top to provide the hope of defraying part of the huge expense of buying the horse and then training him throughout the year, very few people would own horses in training. All countries recognise this, and all provide prize money to a greater or lesser level. What is the appropriate level? There is no correct answer, but Britain is falling farther and farther down the world's table of outgoing:return ratio, and to say that that doesn't matter - that owners are owning horses voluntarily because they enjoy it, so they have no right to expect a subsidy - is just plain stupid. It is the owners who subsidise everyone else, and not vice versa. Anyone who draws their living solely because racing continues to be subsidised by owners should recognise this. Furthermore, anyone who cares for racing should want it to flourish by international comparisons. The days of British racing being the best because it's British are gone forever. British racing is no longer the best in the world, and it will continue to slip as the value of its races drops further unless that decline is arrested. We've been very lucky in that we've had an extra prop from the Maktoums, but it's foolhardy to base one's assumptions that all's well and good because they are going to keep large volumes of nice horses in Britain for our entertainment indefinitely. This is just basic common sense. Nobody expects owners to make money - I always advise potential owners to budget as if they are going to earn no prize money - but all who make their living from racing, as well as all who merely enjoy the show, will be the loser if the economics of the sport in this country continue to decline so that, while owners' costs continue to rise, their potential for having a meaningful partial defraying of those costs continues to drop. That's not altruism: it's educated self-interest, and if Nic Coward and Alastair Down are so stupid or pig-headed that they can't see it then they have no business to be doing the jobs for which they are so well paid.

I'm afraid that Alastair has a very strange way of looking at things sometimes. He wrote disparagingly a couple of weeks ago about people supposedly running no-hopers at the Cheltenham Festival and "wasting our money". Leaving aside the fact that having a runner at the Cheltenham Festival is such a popular thing to do that nearly all the races are heavily oversubscribed so that it is now almost impossible to run a no-hoper there, what is the "wasting OUR money" about? How would they be wasting anyone's money but their own? If the also-rans didn't run at the Festival, the meeting would fade away: it is only a big, popular betting jamboree because the fields are so strong, numerically as well as regards quality. The also-rans play their role just as much as the winners. And has he any idea of how much it costs to run a horse there? There was a bit of a stink by the press a couple of years ago when photographers were asked to pay admission, along the lines of 'The meeting needs photographers, so why should they pay to get in?', which completely missed the point that the horses, the most vital component without whom there would be no Festival, have to pay to be there. The entry fees are large, and then the owner has to pay to have the horse transported there, pay the jockey, pay to have the horse plated in advance, pay for the weeks and months of training beforehand required to have the horse fit enough to go ...

I'm sorry if I've gone on too much, but this is important. Even the bookmakers who pay the levy recognise that prize money is essential for racing to exist at all, never mind exist to anything like the standard which we have come to enjoy, to depend on and to take for granted - so for racing's leader to approach the matter by saying that prize money plummeting doesn't matter should be a sackable offence. And if the Racing Post is going to pay its main writer to echo that view, and then publish the articles, then it should be ashamed of itself. It depends on racehorse owners continuing to pay the vast majority of the expenses for putting on the show which we all enjoy, and from which so many people (including the paper's owners and employees) make money, and it should not be ignoring this fact.

To finish on a lighter note, hats off to Brian McMath (pictured) for winning a maiden race on the Flat the other day with a six-year-old by the National Hunt sire Overbury. I see the horse is owned by her (I think it was a mare) breeder, so that was a very happy result. Brian doesn't work with promising material, so that was a great effort, as was the third place of his runner at Huntingdon a few days later. Brian rides out all morning every day, often on some horses who wouldn't be nice for someone my age to ride, never mind someone a few years older, and he genuinely deserves some happy results.