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Wit, thanks for that. It seems an age since I’ve read an upbeat article from a broadsheet journalist in this country. They’re becoming unreadable.
Continuing reports of the death of racing as written by our many bleak correspondents are greatly exaggerated, in my opinion. I’ve just got back from Donny and it was rammed.
Believe it or not, the ruthless parasites up there were charging £25 for a Grandstand ticket and a fiver to park. That’s thirty quid before a bet and a pint – I’m sure you and American forumites will find that hard to believe – but still they came. That’s not an indicator of a dying sport. An indicator of a dying sport is no-one turning up even with free tickets
Like Muscat et al, I well remember racing in the nineties and it was gruesome up there. Instead of tented villages, you could see huge sprigs of tumbleweed in the wind swirling across Town Moor.
Fields were small in the stakes races and there was the shadow of the Needleman – remember Bravefoot and Norwich? All around you could witness the lingering impacts of Thatcher’s recession. There was the sad passing of the owner breeders – the St Georges, the Joels, the De Waldens, the withdrawal of the big American owners (like Richard Duchossois), and the imperceptible shifting of the gambling psyche toward football.
I looked around today among the beautiful women, the well dressed gents, the lines of bookies and the ring full of enthusiastic connections and realised that all we’re missing is a
damned good horse
to give it all some point. The Chapple-Hyam juvenile got everyone buzzing – let’s hope he scoots up at the same venue in a month’s time.
Despite the hand wringing, the Bill and Ben campaigns and the atavistic bleating of our once respected journalists, it occured to me that racing today is in the middle of a process of change, not at the beginning of one.
What we need now is a horse. Presvis could be that good horse but we aren’t going to see him run, which is a shame, as I have contended.
I do hope the Hong Kong public do appreciate a good horse when they see one because we do: When Dancing Brave won the 1986 Arc, 12,500 of us travelled to Paris to see him run.
So when the Cumani gang arrives on your side of the world, send him packing – we need his horse more than you do.
Cheers
Wit, thanks for that. It seems an age since I’ve read an upbeat article from a broadsheet journalist in this country. They’re becoming unreadable.
A clueless article from Muscat. Don’t hold your breath if you expect us to pay for nonsense like that, Rupert.
Wit, thanks for that. It seems an age since I’ve read an upbeat article from a broadsheet journalist in this country. They’re becoming unreadable.
Continuing reports of the death of racing as written by our many bleak correspondents are greatly exaggerated, in my opinion.
Seconded!
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
Max,
and that is why the likes of Royal Ascot and Newmarket dig their hands deep into their pockets to bring our public the likes of Scenic Blast, Sacred Kingdom and Takeover Target….
If Presvis was a colt he’d be racing in Europe but as a gelding I can’t blame the owners for wanting to maximise their returns on the course.
Maxilon, if you’re really in favour of Britain being able to compete on equal terms for star performers I suppose you’d be in favour of dumping the bookmakers – like every other country. Because they’re all that’s holding us back.
Zorro, not only would I prohibit fixed odds bookmakers without a second glance, I’d also put the exchanges back in Pandoras Box. Both will eventually do for British horse racing in a competitive market place imo – the latter much faster.
My argument is that Mr Cumani could race Presvis in the UK if he chose to. The races he could aim it are well funded. The Eclipse is worth a load and carries incalcuable prestige.
And lets not forget, when he started training here in the mid seventies, he chose a to train in Newmarket, in a regime orchestrated and funded by fixed odds bookmakers. He had the chance to train in the States, I understand, a well funded pari-mutuel regime. He chose here. It’s not as if poor prize money has been thrust upon his yard unbidden.
Indeed, lets not forget once more, his start-up funding was boosted, like Barry Hills, by the advantages conferred by fixed odds bookmakers.
It’s a bit cynical for him to use this ploy now, when he knows there is an appetite to see this lovely horse in the UK.
Maxilon, the Eclipse is worth relatively little in terms of prize money. And what is the value of its alleged prestige to a gelding?
Luca Cumani began training in Britain because (I’m guessing) the process of undermining British racing still hadn’t begun, and he wanted to act on what was still racing’s greatest stage. Remember the Derby was still then the most coveted prize in the world.
If he played to the rules he found, who can blame him?
Was it you who said he could race the horse anywhere he liked? I’m not sure that’s true, even if Mrs Cumani is part-owner. Wouldn’t the major shareholders have the ultimate right to decide how he’s campaigned? And if they want to go for the international money instead of the scraps the bookies leave us, why shouldn’t they?
Isn’t anyone who campaigns a very good horse for what are now not much more than sentimental reasons actually just protecting us from the consequences of the 1961 folly anyway, and so helping put off any lingering hope of change?
Halfway through this discussion, Zorro, I listed on a blotter a list of races I’d like to win if I owned Presvis and when it came to the Eclipse, I remembered some of the great horses to have won that race, including his own stable’s Falbrav.
I suppose I was talking about the prestige of history, of having knowledgeable racegoers and enthusiasts talking about my horse in glowing terms throuighout history. A hall of fame is more lustrous when those voting for potential entrants have actually seen the horse, rather than heard about it in myth.
I must confess, if great horses still contested British races, I wouldn’t have raised a whisper on the subject. I well remember Bill Watts’ Teleprompter and, again, Mr Cumani’s Tolomeo raiding big foreign prizes and also recollect the sense of pride – and wonder (being much younger).
We need Presvis at home this year. It’s more of an emotional plea rather than a logical one, because as usual you talk a lot of sense.
Though I have to confess, us tote monopolists are a bit like Canute -do we really have to see the death of British racing in order to witness change, as you intimate?
I hope not.
Don’t blame the owners going East for the Winter, huge pots and all expenses paid. Still cant find any reason logical or emotional why they wouldn’t run the horse ONCE in the UK in the meantime.
A very poor show from connections assuming the horse has been well over the summer.
Zorro, Max
…to quote from Peter Thomas’s recent blog
The only thing that approaches RalphTopping’s annoyance levels is the number of people who write in to the papers and say, in chin-stroking tones, that the answer to racing’s financial problems is a Tote monopoly, as if it’s so simple that only somebody with a gargantuan intellect such as theirs could have spotted it and sliced through the Gordian knot. If one of them writes in and says "What we need is a Tote monopoly and here’s how to turn back the clock to the early 1960s, undo what was done then, and circumvent all manner of peskyEuropean laws to facilitate the delivery of our sport from penury", then I’ll sit up and listen, but until then, I wish they’d stop stating the painfully obvious as if they were among the century’s great thinkers.
Oh, TDK. That’s very harsh. And I was so nice to the Eclipse (and Coral), the other day.
Would you like to see Presvis compete in the Coral Eclipse? One other way of funding races is Match Race funding. A similar model was being discussed in the US in order to get Rachel and Zenyatta into the ring. Sheikh Mo was going to put up a decent purse. I’m sure connections would have considered it, perhaps somewhere like Lone Star, but the simple Borel beating the living bejasus out of Rachel in the Travers put paid to that idea.
Would your company contact Mr Cumani and ask him his terms? Presvis really is some racehorse and you’d get maximum publicity.
I don’t really have much respect for Peter Thomas TDK, and that sort of facile junk is one reason why. As long as everyone who knows we made a big mistake keeps saying ‘Yes, but there’s nothing we can do about it", the bookies keep on smirking and British racing keeps on giving the rest of the world’s three stone.
One way to help promote change woud be to argue in favour of it regardless of the objections of those who say it’s too difficult to achieve. One way to protect your income is to mock those who remind people that change is desirable.Maxilon, if you’re really in favour of Britain being able to compete on equal terms for star performers I suppose you’d be in favour of dumping the bookmakers – like every other country.
Because they’re all that’s holding us back.
Anyone care to elaborate on that final sentence? How are they holding the industry back?
Fascinating discussion.
Oh, TDK. That’s very harsh. And I was so nice to the Eclipse (and Coral), the other day.
Would you like to see Presvis compete in the Coral Eclipse? One other way of funding races is Match Race funding. A similar model was being discussed in the US in order to get Rachel and Zenyatta into the ring. Sheikh Mo was going to put up a decent purse. I’m sure connections would have considered it, perhaps somewhere like Lone Star, but the simple Borel beating the living bejasus out of Rachel in the Travers put paid to that idea.
Would your company contact Mr Cumani and ask him his terms? Presvis really is some racehorse and you’d get maximum publicity.
Of course we’d love to see Presvis – not sure Coral could afford him at the moment though…
Re the Tote Monopoly – I’m not convinced it would be a positive step, but I agree with Thomas’s sentiments regarding Tote monopolists in general. Is anyone ever going to put forward a workable and realistic proposal regarding a tote monopoly? All we ever hear is bleating, and pie-in-the-sky bleating at that….
The economics of the true stars in racing are dictated by breeding fees of course. Prize money is a minor factor for the likes of STS and so on. I wouldnt be prepared to sacrifice the ability to use exchanges and shop around bookies just so that a few more second tier horses can come and compete in races they probably wouldnt win anyway
Give up this idea of a Tote monopoly, it cant happen.
What could and should happen is a Tote that would represent serious competition for offcourse bookmakers and the exchanges. Surely a 5% takeout Tote could be viable given the pool sizes on Betfair? I would be happy to come off the exchanges if this ever comes about.
The bigger question is why isn’t the industry making it happen?
TDK, I’m sorry to hear that. I’m dreading next year’s all aged middle disatance Group Ones. I can’t imagine a four year old who’ll be remembered for more than an eyeblink, the mighty STS apart.
It’s been the worst year for three year olds in this country that I can remember. We could hardly muster a runner in the Derby, the Ascot races were much of a muchness and as for the Juddmonte. I felt sorry for the sponsors, to the extent you can ever feel sorry for a multi-billionaire.
The two year olds look fantastic this year so maybe, just maybe, 2009 is an aberration, but Presvis is going to prove a loss. I can only think of you guys who profess to care enough about British racing to offer Mr Cumani terms.
And that’s what Zorro and the tote monopolists mean by that sentence, Mr Deering. Here I am,.an anonymous voice, having to ask one of the big three bookies to seed a race in order to keep one of our best racehorses in the country.
Funding from a Tote monopoly would make this appeal unnecessary – we’d be able to look after ourselves.
And furthermore, we’d be able to attract other nations to race here, the home of organised horse racing. Wes Ward aside, the Americans don’t race here. If they race abroad, they tend to race in Dubai because the Maktoum brothers make it worth their while (and increasingly, they race in the far east, for the same reasons). The Japanese are obsessed with France for some reason which eludes me. You guys race your top sprinters at Royal Ascot for, what I assume, are for sporting reasons and provide a magnificent buzz. The French don’t come like they used to either. Which is a shame.
Luca is a noted anglophile and I don’t think he would take much persuading to change his position. He’s angry and making a point. After all, globetrotting has much higher core costs and can take it out of a horse. Much easier to drive up the M4 to Sandown and back for evening stables. As Cav says, it’s one race. One race to keep the three million people who love the sport over here satisfied next summer.
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