Keep on living in the real world

It's been a wet week.  Much worse in other parts of the country, of course, but it's been wet enough here.  We've had the best part of an inch this weekend and I think we have now reached the point that we won't enjoy dry conditions around the stable for another six months or so.  It isn't cold yet, but that will come.  Winter's not too bad once one gets there, not least because by the time we get Christmas out of the way we've already reached the stage where the days are slowly starting to lengthen again; but it's the getting used to it, to the wet and then the cold, that's a struggle.  And that's what we're doing now.

It'll be heavy at Yarmouth tomorrow, when we'll have our first runner since The Simple Truth finished a long way behind the extremely promising Kinross in a novice race at Newmarket eight days ago (as seen in the first photograph).  That might be a pity.  I've been waiting all year to run Das Kapital (seen here on Railway Land yesterday and in the third photograph on Long Hill on Thursday) on ground with a bit of cut in it, and now we've got that I'm worrying that we'll have too much cut!  His best form has been when the ground is good or a bit softer, but he ran very badly on his only previous attempt on heavy ground.  But that was at Catterick and he seems to prefer bigger, more spacious courses, so perhaps he would not have run well at Catterick whatever the going.  Anyway, we'll find out tomorrow.  There's definitely a race in him, but whether it will come on heavy ground remains to be seen.

We are midway through Tattersalls' October Yearling Sale.  The figures from Book One look very healthy, with Sheikh Mohammed and Sheikh Hamdan leading the charge in spending mind-boggling sums.  There were plenty of other big spenders, with something like 50 yearlings heading for the USA, helped in part by the Brexit-induced devaluation of the sterling.  I imagine, though, that this week's figures will present a very different picture.  I'm not sure that many people have grasped the full extent of the forthcoming downturn in racing's economy; but, as this week's sale will show, there are problems enough already.

There was one week late in spring when we had twin announcements of a likely £17 million shortfall in the levy for the year plus the likelihood of 600 betting shop closures for one bookmaking chain alone.  I believe that each shop pays approximately £30,000 (to the racecourses, as far as I understand things) per year.  So that's an £18,000,000 reduction in 'racing's' income, on top of the £17,000,000 levy shortfall.  Sobering figures.  In most instances, an £18,000,000 reduction in sales would merely be a gross loss rather than a net loss, because one's expenditure would drop by a sum not too far short of that figure; in this case, though, the races are still being filmed and the programmes made, so there is no reduction in expenditure, and the net loss is the same as the gross loss.  More than sobering.

We'll just have to see how things work out, but it is not going be easy for any part of the racing set-up to readjust to the more straitened circumstances.  This was mentioned on Luck On Sunday this morning, with Chelmsford having joined the courses who have issued a warning that they will have to make cuts where they can.  What can we do about any of this?  Hard to say.  I suppose we'll just have to make sure that we live in the real world.  We didn't see the real world at Tattersalls last week, but I fear that we'll see it there this week, in the second half if not the first.