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To give an example of the impact, my horse ran in a class 4 handicap at Kempton last week and the owners share of first prize was £4077.
Under these new arrangements, that will be reduced to approx £3350, so that the owners of the placed horses can get an increase.
Quote from the ROA head honcho – “This improves earnings across the sport and enhances funding to the middle and lower tiers.”
No it doesn’t you economically illiterate idiot, the total amount of prize money remains exactly the same, all you’ve done is fiddle with the deckchairs.
I’ve no idea how others will react, but I’ve already emailed my trainer indicating that this is the last straw.
The start of the “flat” at Doncaster on Saturday and 3 of the races worth less than 3 grand to the winner. How many of them would you need to win to break even? You may as well put your money down a grid.
With no racegoer revenue for a year, I am not surprised by prize-money levels tbh.
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"I think the point that apracing is making (excuse me ap if I am wrong) is that they have kept the overall prize money for the race the same but have given more to the placed horses at the expense of the winner BUT then claimed
“This improves earnings across the sport and enhances funding to the middle and lower tiers.”Fair enough – rearranging the numbers to add up to the same total doesn’t exactly meet the dictionary criteria for “improving” overall prize-money levels, granted!
I am "The Horse Racing Punter" on Facebook
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"Apracing – have you considered having a horse trained in France? I don’t know how the fees etc compare but looking at tomorrow’s Doncaster’s card and yesterday’s St Cloud fixture and the difference is stark particularly at the lower end. I couldn’t believe the three year old maiden is worth only £2862 – there were three such races at St Cloud yesterday worth €13500 for the two races confined to newcomers and €17500 for the “open” maiden. Also a €25k handicap for five year olds and upwards – when did you last see one of those in the UK?
I appreciate this is a deviation from the original point you are making but interested to get your take on it nevertheless. Base yourself in Deauville, race your flat horses on the All Weather track there and plot up some jumpers for a trip down the road to Dieppe – what’s not to like? (Food probably better too!)
Two reasons why I wouldn’t want to have a horse in training in France. First, my limited experience of going racing in France was that it totally lacked atmosphere, character or interest. In a word it was dull.
Second, I only use people I can count as friends to train for me. My current trainer, I’ve known for over thirty years, initially as another one of the regular punters on the West Coutry jumping circuit, now as a trainer. It means we have a shared outlook on the game, that I trust him to get the horses fit and keep them sound, and he trusts me in matters of buying, placing and form. No chance of having that sort of relationship with a trrainer in France.
Aside from my comments in the initial post, I’m bemused that the people running a sport that depends for its income on punters generally accepting that every horse is trying to win, would actually decide to reduce the incentive to win. I could make a good case that for the owner of a moderate class 4 handicapper, constantly finishing second or third could now be a better approach than trying to win. Because second and third now get better rewards, but don’t get raised (or at least not as much as the winner) by the handicapper. Which makes it easier to keep finishing second or third!
While I understand your position apracing prize money has been one of racing biggest issues for years and it isn’t going to get any better , let’s be honest how many horses actually make there owners a profit over a season ? , correct me but it takes around 20k a year to train a horse ( plus of course the cost of horse purchase ) if a individual can afford that then the diff between £3350 and £4077 isn’t going to be a game changer , the lockdown has pushed up the numbers of syndicates and outwith the JP and Ricci,s of this world then there numbers will continue to increase , certainly this will be the only way I’ll ever get into ownership
They are actually encouraging bad horses to be run in bad races. Banded races last night at Wolverhampton were worth only £2300 to the winners but the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th placed horses still received £300. Why?
There should be a lot less racing but “they” don’t want less. It’s a nonsense.Very fair comments, thanks for the explanation and apologies for the brief diversion from the main thrust of your thread.
Yeats – I went racing with a friend who had the favourite for a big Saturday race at Chepstow. It fell – his response was – I pay for everything, my horse falls or is unplaced and I am the only loser. He felt that there
should be appearance money for horses on all televised races (this was before RUK and SKY).Everyone else is making money – to a degree he is right and I believe that upping the place prize money is correct – but not at the expense of lowering the winning prize money. It will be interesting if you see horses that should be pulled up and being made to finish because of this. Will you get poorer horses running to mop it up at the lower end. There is little incentive in the UK as an owner – looking at the prize money statistics – some owners have 10 – 15 in training and their prize money total is terrible.
Interesting point around “poorer horses running to mop up the prize-money at the lower end”. I’m sure there have been others but I remember Dr Phil Pritchard specialising in this on several occasions back in the early 2000s, especially in the more lucrative Saturday TV races. He had a few horses in his string but one was Blazing Batman. I recall Francome laying in to him at the start of one C4 race, saying it made a mockery of the grade of race. I actually admired Pritchard for being opportune. He wasn’t breaking any rules and it wasn’t his doing that the number of declared runners in the races he “targeted” were so low. Anything can happen in a jumps race, so if it pays the bills and the horse’s welfare is not at risk, then why not?
No link to Dr Phil at all but the other point you make about not pulling up horses to stagger round and pick up the lower-end prize money is a valid one, again more relevant in the longer jumps races. You just hope that a jockey would make the right call in these circumstances. No debating the answer in a choice between a pulled-up horse returning in one piece, as against one pushed beyond its limit to pocket £700 with horrific consequences.
As Apracing suggested you’ll be better off coming 2nd and protecting the handicap mark this is not good for punters
Since my original post, the horse I currently own (Love Dreams) has run in nine handicaps, finishing second four times and third twice, but without a win.
Those placed efforts have produced almost £11k in prize money and his handicap mark has fallen from 78 to 75, with the only rise being a 1lb jump (75 to 76) after being beaten a head at Kempton on Sept 4th.
I should emphasise that we’ve been trying flat out every time and would love to win a handicap, but ironically, I’ve become the beneficiary of the changes I criticised, by owning the exact type of horse I joked about!
In fairnesss, AP’s experience with Love Dreams seems to be an example of the changes achieving what they were intended to do:
“Prize-money distribution has always been a frustration for owners, whether it was the complexity of the system or the levels generally. The changes deliver what owners want: simplicity and fairness. Put simply, more owners can access a larger share of the prize-money now. This improves earnings across the sport and enhances funding to the middle and lower tiers.”
I think AP may have misconstrued the sentence from the above he quoted in the opening post. It seems more likely to me that all the CE of the ROA was opining was that by re-arranging the deckchairs more owners of run of the mill horses would get more back (though of course without an overall increase in prize money that necessarily means others get less).
I was about to start a new thread but was sure I’d touched upon an element of my question in an older thread…..and I had (in relation to Dr Phil Pritchard).
Saturday’s Adonis Hurdle was a relatively competitive betting affair, bar Taritino as the 125-1 outsider. I’m useless with criteria for entry to races but a quick glance at the horse’s form would suggest he was clearly unsuited to a Grade 2 contest. However – and as noted in my reply above on Dr Phil – I have no issue with such placing, as long as the horse’s welfare is not compromised in any way. In addition to a small trainer such as Joe Tickle bagging some useful prize money, with one horse having already been withdrawn his inclusion also made it a five-runner field and therefore enabled each way betting.
So to my point. Had all originally-declared horses got round safely, Taritino’s connections would have picked up £1,072 for a sixth-placed finish. At the off and it subsequently being a five-runner field, that sum had increased to £2,144 for fifth. As things played out, Peking Opera fell at the last and the tailed-off Taritino came home a distant fourth and picked up £4,264, more than most winners on a midweek card would pocket. My question is what happens to the £3,216 of unclaimed prize money earmarked for the horses finishing in fifth and sixth. Does it get divided amongst the finishers or go back in the pot, so to speak?
Cymro, I wondered about this too a long time ago. From code 12 of the Rules of Racing:
RACES WITH MORE PRIZES THAN DECLARED RUNNERS
17 If a Race has fewer declared runners at the ‘Off’ than the number of placings with prizes, the surplus prizes shall not be paid.RACES WITH MORE PRIZES THAN FINISHERS
18 After a Race is declared ‘Off’, any money or prize which is surplus due to fewer finishers than placing(s) shall be distributed to the finishers equally.
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