New initiatives

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Colin Phillips

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On the Racing Post website this morning:

Radical proposals made to boost British racing

BY HOWARD WRIGHT01.01AM 11 AUG 2009

RADICAL proposals to take British racing to a new audience include new Flat-season championships, a team-based handicap series staged over six weeks in the summer and a jumps championship that involves qualifying races for the Cheltenham Festival.

The ideas , which could be in place in 2011, are among a raft of suggestions revealed on Tuesday. The plans are to be put forward for industry-wide discussion over thenext three months by the new Racing For Change project team.

Those identified by the Racing Post include:

*Flat championships that run from Newmarket's Craven meeting in mid-April to a concluding ‘champions day', possibly at Ascot, in late-September.

*A jumps equivalent that begins at Cheltenham's Open meeting in mid-November and reaches its climax on John Smith's National day.

*Readily identifiable premier fixtures on the Flat, adding to those already recognised as such, with a high level of minimum prize-money.

*More Group 1 events to be staged on Saturdays.

*A team-based series involving Flat handicaps to be staged over six summer Saturdays. There will be points for placings, but the make-up of teams to be nominated in advance - owners, trainers, jockeys, horses, sponsors, or a combination of each - has yet to be decided.

*Qualification for the big Cheltenham Festival events through designated races, providing a championship that would supersede the sometimes-flawed Order of Merit.

*Stronger link between Cheltenham and Aintree, including possibly ending the jumps season at Britain's most-watched race meeting of the year.



Racing would continue to be staged 12 months of the year under both codes, but the premier product would be king. Chris McFadden, chairman of the Racing For Change board and its promoting body said: "The driving force for these ideas came from the rebranding exercise conducted by Harrison Fraser for Racing Enterprises Ltd (REL), which highlighted the need for simplicity and a narrative that will hook the new racing consumer.

"The 52-week season won't be thrown away, but just as motor racinghas events outside the grand prix, we need to make racing's big events bigger, by highlighting the start, the middle and the end.

"We are looking to create a situation where, when a new consumer asks, ‘When is the beginning and end of the Flat season?' there will be no ambiguity, because there will be a fanfare for both."
 
*Flat championships that run from Newmarket's Craven meeting in mid-April to a concluding ‘champions day', possibly at Ascot, in late-September.
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Late September? With Arc day, the Champion Stakes and Dewhurst still to come?

*A jumps equivalent that begins at Cheltenham's Open meeting in mid-November and reaches its climax on John Smith's National day.
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Which will make it what, a reorginisation or slimmed down version of the Order of Merit? Not necessarily a bad idea.

*Readily identifiable premier fixtures on the Flat, adding to those already recognised as such, with a high level of minimum prize-money.
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This seems a bit vague to me. Don't we already have plenty of identifiable premier fixtures? Very easy to get to the stage of having too many "premier" meetings, thereby nullifying their impact.

*More Group 1 events to be staged on Saturdays.
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Bingo! You've got to wonder about the wisdom of top class races like Sea The Stars in the Juddmonte being run during work hours.

*A team-based series involving Flat handicaps to be staged over six summer Saturdays. There will be points for placings, but the make-up of teams to be nominated in advance - owners, trainers, jockeys, horses, sponsors, or a combination of each - has yet to be decided.
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Meh. Not sure what that offers, but would be interested to see what the final plans are.

*Qualification for the big Cheltenham Festival events through designated races, providing a championship that would supersede the sometimes-flawed Order of Merit.
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Does jump racing need to be even more Cheltenham-centric?

*Stronger link between Cheltenham and Aintree, including possibly ending the jumps season at Britain's most-watched race meeting of the year.
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Don't see how that will make much difference, as you just know the new season will start the next day.
 
Largely agree with Gareth's comments but I'm totally against any team competition. We know from the Shergar Cup that it leads to collusion and cheating. It's a bad move. I can't believe it's even been mooted.
 
I'd quite like to see a North vs South jockeys team day myself, just for the sheer embarassment that the Northern jockeys would face.

That said, speaking of cheating and collusion....
 
I'd wonder if one or two of those jockeys that 'came off' were UK NH riders doing a bit of moonlighting.

Edit - great minds, Colin...
 
Do we really "know from the Shergar Cup that it [any team competition] leads to collusion and cheating"? We have one person's assertion that the races were thrown and that the day was a non-triers convention, a view I, and probably many others, disagree with. Sounds more like pocket talking to me.
 
After all the controversy over team tactics, how can another "team-based series" be justified without changes being made to the rules?
 
Shadow Leader said:
Do we really "know from the Shergar Cup that it [any team competition] leads to collusion and cheating"? We have one person's assertion that the races were thrown and that the day was a non-triers convention, a view I, and probably many others, disagree with. Sounds more like pocket talking to me.
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Absolutely, probably fewer questionable rides at Ascot on Saturday than there were at Newmarket.
 
Desert Orchid said:
Largely agree with Gareth's comments but I'm totally against any team competition. We know from the Shergar Cup that it leads to collusion and cheating. It's a bad move. I can't believe it's even been mooted.
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When was there cheating and collusion?
 
It should be an individual jockeys title or a team in the sense of a trainer, jockey and select number of horses (Distance dependant which could be replaced if injured). If you had a four race programme built into a card with distances of 6f, 1m, 1m2f, 1m4f each team would have four horses dedicated to the series (They would be precluded from competing elsewhere) and the handicap marks would be insular to the series for that season. You could then move the series around a number of premier tracks and also include the tote to run a scoop 6 type bet on them (You could extend it to 6 races and make it the scoop 6 series?). The teams should also have one team colours, owners i'm sure could bite the bullet for a period, which would make it easier for new attendees to relate to a team and a jockey. I would make it a 6 or 8 meeting series over a 3 or 4 month period which would also allow trainers to train the horses specifically for the events.

Another thing I would bring in is a masive timing board and possibly introduce pure time based sprint events (Like quarter horses in the US). Each course would have it's standards, a course record and there would also be a national record for the distance which would be up on the board. These could be run as heats and then a final before the start of a main card or afterwards. People like sprints in humans so why not with horses.... I'm not always convinced the fastest horses win sprints anyway. Breeders will shudder at this suggestion but I think it would get the kids interested.

Press conferences are another thing that should be introduced, it should be included in a jockey's license that he has to attend press conferences after particular races, probably stakes races and above. Trainer as well. If racing wants to become more accepted then it has to accept that it will need to prostitute itself to the media a bit more. The young trainers coming through are at least cogniscant of this.

My final suggestion - CUT THE FRICKIN TICKET PRICES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Desert Orchid said:
Just about in every race in every year since its inception.
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Any specific examples DO?

Can't see how it's any different to any other meeting. In fact, I'd think Johnansson and Uchida and co would have less grounds to pull one than Queally and co in Newmarket maidens!
 
Some interesting thoughts there Aragorn and much of the sentiment I tend to agree with. Contrived team events are basically that, contrived. If they haven't got a natural bonding for the supporter to nail their colours to, then there's a limitation as to how far they can ever really succeed or become embedded in the sports fabric.

The idea of team events based on ownership is pure folly. The only exception I can see where it has worked to a degree is IPL when 'sexy' Bollywood stars have stumped up the money and so there's a kind of association between industry rivals that transcends sport and into celebrity. I doubt very much that the sporting public are going to identify with one millionaire tax exile over another.

I can see the attraction of using sponsors as the delineating factor as it will reduce costs, but lets be honest its hardly something that's going to ignitie the imagination of the racing public. I've interpreted sponsors in this case to mean big studs, and if that is the case then it has more merit than owners as it carries a bit of an edge, which not only has a bit of personal and commercial emnity, but also an international element.

Having said that team events based on ownership is folly, I should perhaps qualify that by saying that where ownership overlaps into sponsorship/ breeding operations it might work. If however its just a question pulling in large corporate interests who commit to a couple of years like Formula 1, and then run for cover once their branding needs have been satisifed then it's a non-runner as you'll never get any sense of continuity or team identity. Can you imagine the allegations etc if bookies started sponsoring a racing team. And lets be honest, how many punters have been conditioned to roaring support for a large bookmaking chain - they're the enemy aren't they?

Jockeys might work, and I wouldn't be against that idea, and have mooted before the possibility of a 2 season league of 10 jockeys run over a split year involving relegation and promotion half way through the calendar (so 20 jockeys in total). I'm not sure it would be a showcase though, and I'd prefer to see it consigned to smaller tracks at specified meetings midweek, with some kind of final day showdown at progressively higher profile meetings. The season would run May - July and then August - October. The premier league jockeys would be permitted to wear something through out the season that acknowledged that they were premiership jockeys, but on getting relegated they'd have their lapels ripped off and their swords snapped etc.

I would agree with you that so far as possible jockeys should race in their own silks and not that of the owners although whether this would be possible to agree is obviously a moot point. Doubtless a lot of owners would kick up, (even if half of them never seem to bother to turn up to watch their horses anyway)

Team events in this country have tended to work when you've got some correlation between the supporter and a 'place' and with it a sense of tribal identity. The stronger the sense of enmity the better the prospects are for it becoming adopted. Manufactured events tend to struggle if there isn't a natural sense of rivalry to plug into, and lets not forget that the Shergar Cup, although kind of gaining acceptance now, seriously struggled as an unloved travelling circus which was something of an embarassing sideshow. Even now, it hasn't engendered (nor will it) a true sense of of 'me' versus 'him' and seems to have cobbled together some hybrid appeal where the alleged popularity (and I'm not sure we could say its unpopular anymore even if its never likely to be fully accepted and loved in some quarters) owes as much to other factors than it does the team ethos.

There might be some international angles;

The otherwise genteel sport of golf has been able to plug into (well re-ignite) various competitions that seek to make the USA a natural target of team focus. In 1983 it seemed that for a month at least, half the country became aware of, and supported a bleedin yacht (and an Australian one at that) which was in process of bringing the yanks down for the first time in 150 years in the Americas Cup. I'm surprised that Tennis has never latched on to a Ryder Cup format pitting Europe against the Americans. There does seem to be a natural disposition towards wanting to beat anything American and although I doubt it could ever be organised to any level of satisfaction, it could probably only work with some kind of contrived format that involved 3 days and alternate years home and away. If you overkilled it, it would fail through familiarity and inability to attract the star names, so it would be very much a flagship competition of international rivalry rather than a perenial.

On a similar theme, an Anglo French discord could be plugged into and might work for the title of European champions (and see how long it is before the Irish start protesting). In truth this would have to be a 3 nations championship to give it any credibility, and I think I'd prefer to try and introduce it to jump racing rather than the flat
 
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How crazy is it to propose excluding races such as the Middle Park, the Cheverley Park, the Dewhurst, the Champion Stakes, the Racing Post Trophy, the Cambridgeshire, the Cesarewitch and the Sun Chariot Stakes from the championships. I don't understand the logic of it, these are some of the biggest races of the year.
 
I have no interest in team events at all, a total waste of time.

More big races on Saturdays is a suggestion I like, but implementing it might be difficult though. When Newmarket proposed moving the July Cup to Saturday, other tracks with meetings that weekend were up in arms.
 
I'd say more Sunday racing is a good idea. Less competition with other sports. Only thing is, transport is woeful on Sundays for people to go along.
 
They shouldn't be up in arms - they aren't staging any good races that weekend so why shouldn't Newmarket move to a Saturday?

If there's an opportunity to stage a Group 1 on a Saturday when it'll be at its highest profile then racing should take it.
 
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