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According to Racing Post online, the Racehorse Owners Association is in a strop with the popular Yorkshire course:
Steven Astaire, ROA Council member, said: "… the decision not to renew the award was a necessary step, due to their failure to meet a key aspect of the selection criteria.
One of the important conditions of renewal is the provision of a free food offering for owners with runners on the day, and Beverley has been unable to fulfil this requirement."
Presumably the other criteria include free badges, free parking, exclusive stand areas… I wonder what they’d like Beverley to throw in additionally on the Haut Cuisine front? Fois gras, perhaps? Caviare? Champagne?
Considering that all the Beverley executive itself will see of these owners’ mazumah (directly, admittedly) will be the £10 entry fee per horse charged for most races at the course, are not the ROA being a little… well, uncharitable??
What about owners who withdraw horses with a high draw – do the ROA think the racecourse should be compensated for any extra buffet layed on?
Maybe the racecourse could provide fillet steak if your horse is drawn in double figures while those with a single figure draw get M&S sandwiches!
Beverley already serve up a massive buffet for the bookies every other meeting. They would do the same for owners but they don’t want to encourage them to fill the five furlong sprint handicaps there.
Pinza wrote:
Presumably the other criteria include free badges, free parking, exclusive stand areas….I wonder what they’d like Beverley to throw in additionally on the Haut Cuisine front? Fois gras, perhaps? Caviare? Champagne?
No, just a cup of something hot and a sandwich. That’s all the ROA are asking for and surely not an unreasonable request.
Maybe Newbury’s Gold Standard status will also be withdrawn because how on earth they achieved that accolade is a mystery to me. What did they offer owners on Hennessy day? Absolutely zilch.
Am I missing something here? Why should owners not have to pay for any food and beverages – there seems to be something seriously amiss in the Racing world.
Am I missing something here? Why should owners not have to pay for any food and beverages – there seems to be something seriously amiss in the Racing world.
Without these ‘mug owners’ we wouldn’t have no gee-gee’s to punt on (so they tell us) and the courses would be sold off for social-housing or golf-courses.
Sticking a sausage-roll in the mircowave and giving them a nice cup of tea is surely worth it.
In theory, owners have an enormous amount of power in that they decide which course(s) to patronize with their horses. In those circumstances a course will want to make itself more attractive than the competition in order to attract as many runners as possible.
The reality, of course, is very different. Many owners leave entering their horses to their trainer (who is very unlikely to be swayed by the standard of the owners and trainers facilities) and even those who have some input are far more likely to enter a horse based on whether the conditions of the race give their horse the best chance of winning.
Only if there is a choice of similar races offering an equal opportunity to their horse might an owner then make a choice based on what the course has to offer but ahead of the owners’ facilities would come prizemoney, location, time and place of meeting and whether the trainer was sending other runners to the meeting.
Whilst the ROA’s ‘Gold Standard’ may be a worthy ‘name and shame’ exercise to get courses to make themselves more attractive to owners, I doubt whether it has any impact on the number of runners those courses attract.
Tuffers,
You mean the prospect of a lukewarm cup of tea and three day old Danish pastry wasn’t the key factor that decided you to spend several thousand pounds on buying a horse and another thousand plus per month in training fees?
Tuffers,
You mean the prospect of a lukewarm cup of tea and three day old Danish pastry wasn’t the key factor that decided you to spend several thousand pounds on buying a horse and another thousand plus per month in training fees?
We ran Feet of Fury on the Sunday of the Lincoln meeting and travelled up to take advantage of Doncaster’s ‘free lunch’. My father was astonished when asking for some bread to go with his bowl of soup to be told ‘sorry, we used up all the bread yesterday’!
Salselon wrote:
Am I missing something here? Why should owners not have to pay for any food and beverages – there seems to be something seriously amiss in the Racing world.
I suppose there will always be some people who will resent any suggestion that owners who spend a small fortune annually to provide racecourses with their raw material should be treated decently when they turn up to see their horses run.
Tuffers,
You mean the prospect of a lukewarm cup of tea and three day old Danish pastry wasn’t the key factor that decided you to spend several thousand pounds on buying a horse and another thousand plus per month in training fees?
We ran Feet of Fury on the Sunday of the Lincoln meeting and travelled up to take advantage of Doncaster’s ‘free lunch’. My father was astonished when asking for some bread to go with his bowl of soup to be told ‘sorry, we used up all the bread yesterday’!
Were you too busy eating the lunch to tell Egan to do a convincing job? Presumably the jockeys orders will be a bit different the first time she’s in a handicap?
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