Fix the Jumps Programme

Grasshopper

Grasshopper

Senior Jockey
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Nov 14, 2006
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Been exchanging messages with a couple of horse-racing pals on this topic - prompted by recent debates, plus the 2-runner fiasco that is the £14K novice race at Exeter tomorrow.

I've defended the Jumps programme over the years - mainly with my old TRF sparring partner James Knight on Twitter - but this season has shown there is clearly an issue - and not all of it can be blamed on unseasonably dry conditions. The flaws in the programme should largely be self-evident, so I'm going to focus instead on the improvements I would make, once the BHA put me in charge of fu*cking everything. I'll assume for the purposes of this exercise that the money can be found to support the changes, and that I am utterly ambivalent to the wailing and gnashing of teeth across all sectors of the industry. This is a dictatorship - not a democracy.

2m Chasers

Grade 1 WFA/Penalties Chase at the Cheltenham October meeting. Get the season going with a bang.
Grade 1 WFA/Penalties Chase at Sandown's December meeting (Tingle Creek).
No more Grade 1 WFA/Penalties Chases until the Cheltenham Festival.

Grade 1 no ceiling Handicap Chase (Clarence House) at Ascot January meeting.
Grade 2 no ceiling Handicap Chase (Desert Orchid) at Kempton Christmas meeting.
Grade 2 no ceiling Handicap Chase (Game Spirit) at Newbury February meeting.

All other Grade 2 (e.g. Peterborough Chase) and Grade 3 chases to be run as no ceiling handicaps, and move to other tracks if currently run at Grade 1 courses. All will act as qualifiers for the Ryanair Chase.



2m4f Chasers

No Grade 1 WFA/Penalty Chases over this trip until the Ryanair.
Ryanair Chase - retain G1 status
Melling Chase - retain G1 status
A horse must finish in the first five in a qualifying handicap, to run in the Ryanair and/or Melling - including Irish runners.

Qualifying handicaps
Any 2m handicap chase - G1 - G3
Any 3m handicap chase - G1 - G3
Old Roan - promote to G1 (October)
Paddy Power Gold Cup - promote to G1 (November)
1965 Ascot Chase - move to Long Walk meeting and promote to G1 (December)
December Gold Cup - move to Cheltenham Trials meeting and promote to G1 (January)


I'll have a think about the staying races after I've had a lie down.
 
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Yes.....the pre-Festival conditions races anyway e.g. Ascot Chase. They'll be run as handicaps.
 
Good piece by Kevin Blake yesterday on the attheraces website (https://www.attheraces.com/blogs/kevin-blake/13-February-2023/mending-british-national-hunt-racing), regarding (some of) the problems with the Jumps pattern. One element he focuses on, which I touch on above, are the litany of Graded options for top-class horses, which allow them to avoid running in handicaps.

He, like me, is an advocate of drastically cutting-back on the Graded programme, with a view to compelling top horses to contest more handicaps. The problem is; how do you go about achieving that, as the obvious downside is top horses being limited to 2-3 runs a season, and only going for those Graded races which are available to them.

In short, how do you go about making handicaps more attractive to top-class horses? My approach is pretty radical, and therefore probably completely unworkable, but I offer it for scrutiny and comment.

Firstly, I should make it clear that I'm talking about handicaps with no ratings ceiling i.e. those that are intended to encourage the top horses to run. The entire Jumps handicap programme doesn't need pulled apart, and I'm therefore ignoring those and focusing only on getting more top horses into handicaps.

For me, prize-money is key, and in order to make handicaps attractive to top horses, we need to ensure that we have a series of races with not only major prize-money, but a different way of distributing that prize-money.

A 160+ rated chaser is unlikely to take-up an engagement where he's having to give lumps of weight away, if the prize awaiting him is £4K for finishing fourth. We therefore need to look at distribution, which is where the 'radical' part comes in.

Let's say we have a Premium Handicap Chase with a prize-fund of £250K (broadly the value of the Hennessy). This is how I would split that prize-money:

Finishing position
Winner - £90K (currently £142K)
Second - £40K (currently £52K)
Third - £25K (currently £26K)
Fourth - £15K (currently £13K)

That takes £170K out of the prize-pool, leaving £80K to be redistributed, as follows:

Best at weights
Winner - £40K
Second - £25K
Third - £10K
Fourth - £5K

Obviously, the numbers above are bit off the top of my head, but the important part for me is that this would give highly-rated/weighted horses, an additional incentive to run, because they'd be gunning for a decent 'consolation prize', on top of the main pot. Administration of the prize-money distribution would perhaps be a small overhead, but if the BHA have something a little more complex than a 1970's Texas Instruments calculator at their disposal, it shouldn't be an undue burden.

If you created three such 'Premium Handicap' races a season over 2m and 3m, and threw the right races out of the Pattern to replace them, then I think it would improve things massively.

Candidates for getting tossed (or replaced) are:

Over 2m
Schloer Chase
Desert Orchid Chase
Clarence House Chase
Game Spirit Chase

Over 3m
Betfair Chase
Many Clouds Chase
Cotswold Chase
Denman Chase

There may be better candidate races to bullet - happy to leave others to pitch their views.

The over-riding consideration is creating the incentive for the top horses to run, and for me, that is directly related to prize money and its current distribution. Again, you aren't going to run a good horse in a handicap to collect relative buttons for 3rd or 4th. But you might be inclined to run it, if you can collect a good lump for being best-at-weights as a consolation.


This all probably needs a lot more thought than I've given it here, to be honest, but as Blake says, something needs to be done, and pi*ssing-about round the edges as the BHA always do, isn't going to produce a fix.
 
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Great post but the key problem that occurs to me immediately is that the idea of “best at weights” is somewhat subjective


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Wouldn't address all the above, but seems to me that the root cause in the UK is the poor prize money,and it's taken as read that better purses attract better horses, but the BHA's meanderings promise little to alleviate this basic problem.
I've said it before (on here, to the Horseracing bettor's forum and the head honcho at theBHA) a simple 2p in the betting tax would fix the annual begging bowl for the levy, leave less work for Parliament and break the bookmaker's grip on our sport.
Why not?
 
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viking said:
Great post but the key problem that occurs to me immediately is that the idea of “best at weights” is somewhat subjective


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Click to expand...

Would be a simple measurement of lengths-beaten versus weight conceded, Vike. Would need to be simplified at 1lb-for-1length to be any way workable, and vagaries such as trip couldn't really be taken into account. It's somewhat crude, but it would at least provide clarity.

Example:
If Horse A is beaten 12L conceding 16lbs, he is best in at weights against the 'winner' by 4L.
But if Horse C is beaten 3L by Horse B whilst conceding 5lbs (i.e. 21lbs to the winner) to, he is better again at the weights by 2L.

You would just run the numbers through the entire field, and produce new placings.

It will look a pain in the tits at face value, but if you're only running these 'Premium Handicap' races a half-dozen or so times during a season, I can't see why it would be a major hardship.
 
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reet hard said:
Wouldn't address all the above, but seems to me that the root cause in the UK is the poor prize money,and it's taken as read that better purses attract better horses, but the BHA's meanderings promise little to alleviate this basic problem.
I've said it before (on here, to the Horseracing bettor's forum and the head honcho at theBHA) a simple 2p in the betting tax would fix the annual begging bowl for the levy, leave less work for Parliament and break the bookmaker's grip on our sport.
Why not?
Click to expand...

Would punters stand for it? They might decide to take their leisure money to sports which don't tax stakes or winnings e.g. football. Besides, I don't think prize-money is 100% of the problem - it's how it's used that's the problem, imo.

Trainers of top NH horses don't mind running for the prize-money already on offer in the Graded races - it's just that they have too many options these days, and it's too easy to swerve each other. It doesn't solve the fundamental problem of non-competitive racing. In an (my) ideal world, you would get rid of the softer Graded races, and recycle that prize-money into the Premium Handicaps.
 
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Grasshopper said:
Would punters stand for it? They might decide to take their leisure money to sports which don't tax stakes or winnings e.g. football. Besides, I don't think prize-money is 100% of the problem - it's how it's used that's the problem, imo.

Trainers of top NH horses don't mind running for the prize-money already on offer in the Graded races - it's just that they have too many options these days, and it's too easy to swerve each other. It doesn't solve the fundamental problem of non-competitive racing. In an (my) ideal world, you would get rid of the softer Graded races, and recycle that prize-money into the Premium Handicaps.
Click to expand...
Simple fix for that too.:)
Make all UK racing free to air. 7 days a week. all day exposure other sports can't compete with and punters would turn o racing in droves.
Fanciful, but has legs,imo.
 
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It's a decent idea, to be fair......though perhaps just as unlikely as me being allowed to set fire to the Programme book. :lol:
 
Don’t forget prestige. The very well heeled owners are probably more interested in getting the kudos of a Cheltenham win rather than an extra twenty grand of prize money. Not the case lower down the scale, of course, which imo is where more prize money needs to go.
 
As previously said, barjon, maybe owners would just stick to the remaining few Graded races in the programme. However, that would potentially mean going straight from (for example) the Tingle Creek to the QMCC, and such a campaign is more likely to compromise a horse's chance at the Festival than enhance it, imo.

Besides, we can't base the programme on the peccadilloes of a handful of wealthy-but-cautious owners. We should fix the programme, and then see if they fancy running.......and if they don't, maybe some of the less cautious-but-wealthy owners will take advantage.
 
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That’s true, grassy. I suppose the choice is whether you improve prize money from the top down or from from the bottom up. For in- depth health I’d favour the latter, but I suppose I have to accept that prestige is inextricably linked to prize money.
 
My insane ramblings aren't intended to affect the lower-rungs if racing's ladder, where more prize-money would always be more welcome.

It's really just an attempt to increase competition at the top-end, and find some way of incentivising owners to run their horses in such races.
 
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