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DJ
The Warwick fiasco was caused by the track officials and the meeting was cancelled after two races.Warwick Racecourse made an ex gratia payment of £180 to every owner that had a horse declared but did not run.
Weatherbys refunded all entry fees and no jockeys received payments.
On Mark Johnstons website he states he did not charge his two owners any money for racing plates and he also stood the transport costs and staffing costs himself.
His objection to this was he thinks there is no way he should be out of pocket as Mark Johnston Racing Ltd paid out the costs and not his owners. According to him Warwick Racecourse ignored his invoice so he sent a second one.
The treatment of Christine Dunnett in this whole scenario has been a disgrace. No one was under any obligation to follow this lead, and it isn’t her fault that there wasn’t another horse from a small yard entered. It’s a word that’s been used already, but ‘bullying’ is the only term I can see fit here. I find it terribly sad that the owners felt so pressured that they were giving away the prize money they would have received today.
With all due respect to Dunnett & Yarmouth, perhaps Johnston, Gosden et al would be better employed going after people who can actually make a difference to the dismal prize money on offer.Anyone know the exact reason why Yarmouth’s prizemoney is so low? Given its proximity to quality horses, track configuration and access to holiday makers you’d imagine financially they’d be doing ok.
Should the Bury Road brigade by venting their spleens at Northern Racing rather than taking cowardly unilateral action against a small trainer doing her best?….Shame on them.
Mark Johnston a hypocrite.
Totally disgusting behaviour from the big male operated yards in Newmarket to a small female trainer who is just doing the best by her owners and local racecourse.
Maybe Newmarkets big boys should boycot the entire season at Yarmouth although i have a feeling that come September with the Eastern Meeting they will be targeting the big fillies Listed contest when they are desperate to gain some black type at the back end of the season.
This is tantamount to work place bullying and i hope the Jockey Club come down hard on these people for their behaviour
Looking at the behaviour of some of our so called top trainers it will be interesting to see if the HRA have the balls to take action against them under 220 (iii)
“No person shall act in a manner which in the opinion of the HRA is prejudicial to the integrity, proper conduct or good reputation of horseracing in Great Britain whether or not such conduct shall constitute a breach of any of the foregoing Orders or Rules of Racing.”[/color:2d7q9vc6]
Cav,
Holiday makers – Yarmouth! When was the last time you visited the Costa East Anglia?
I suspect the key problem for Yarmouth is that it isn’t exactly well placed to find sponsors, being so far from any major city or commercial centre, nor can it make much from corporate entertaining, for much the same reasons. That’s not to excuse Northern Racing, who certainly haven’t helped themselves in recent years by cutting back on their contribution.
But look at the Redcar meeting today – it’s hardly any different apart from one race worth £6500 and they are independent.
AP
Racing is full of absolute idiots. Horribkle stuck up self important fools. From the punters to the press to the trainers and to the owners. Full of complete and utter pratts (obviously will be a few nice people in racing who somehow slipped through the radar) but the majority of them are the horrible people.
I have decided I dislike racing people and dislike the UK in general. I am going to NZ to live.
The delights of ¨Newmarket by Sea¨ are unknown to me AP
.I was looking at my racecourses book that contains aerial shots of all the racecourses and I notice what looks like a big holiday camp between the racecourse and the beach. It mentions that most meetings are midsummer and turnstiles are busy. The book is a good few years old now though and I take you points on sponsorship and the corporate situation.
I think the solution to this lies with the unhappy trainers dealing with the racecourse management directly rather than rounding on a trainer doing the best for her owners.
It is very much a holiday makers course, not least because it is an absolute bugger to get to from almost anywhere in the country.
Even by train from London you are looking at 2.5 hours each way with a change at Norwich.
Also one of the few courses that charges for parking and it isn’t even a decent car park, boggy field with standing water last time I went.
The steps in the stands are the most user unfriendly in the country – with crampons and ropes the order of the day.
Plenty of lawns for the kids to play on and there are plenty of those in evidence.
That just about sums Yarmouth up!!!
The racing – generally poor, although being reasonably close to Newmarket the odd decent youngster may put in an appearance.
Cav,
In 2008, that holiday camp is more likely to be occupied by Polish vegetable pickers who think a Lucky 15 refers to the group sharing the least crowded caravan.
AP
Cav,
In 2008, that holiday camp is more likely to be occupied by Polish vegetable pickers who think a Lucky 15 refers to the group sharing the least crowded caravan.
AP
They didn’t mention that when I was booking my 2 weeks in August. Hope the Lucky 15 are female.
As an aside, what are the economics now that the meeting was abandoned?
Did anyone, anywhere, make a cent from the whole sorry affair?
I agree with Gosden – the prize money at Yarmouth is a disgrace. Why should he run subsequent trainers’ multiple group one champions, like Halling, in dire races there when he doesn’t even pick up a penny for his efforts?
And if they want Mark Johnston to make the long trip down they really should start thinking seriously about paying prize money down to last place.
Cav,
In 2008, that holiday camp is more likely to be occupied by Polish vegetable pickers who think a Lucky 15 refers to the group sharing the least crowded caravan.
AP
They didn’t mention that when I was booking my 2 weeks in August. Hope the Lucky 15 are female.
They arent exactly female, although they do weigh 8 stone and wear tights so you wont notice the difference.
Did John Gosden really say "…one runner in a maiden.. trained by a woman in Norwich no-one’s ever heard of"?
I can’t believe anyone would be so arrogant and rude. Surely he was misquoted.Greg Wood in The Guardian:
Botched boycott obscured real issue of prize money
Like Greg Rusedski on ice skates, the sight of racehorse trainers acting like assembly-line workers at Dagenham has been painful to behold
March 25, 2008 1:12 AM
Mark Johnston, William Haggas and Greg Rusedski are not, on the face of it, the most obvious of bedfellows, but in the aftermath of the botched attempt by some trainers to boycott a race at Yarmouth yesterday, they just might squeeze under the same duvet after all. It is nothing to do with Rusdedski’s long record of occasional success and more frequent, slightly goofy failures on the tennis court. Instead, it is the memory of his more recent attempts to ice-dance on Sunday evening TV.
Like Rusedski on skates, the sight of rich, successful racehorse trainers trying to agitate and organise like assembly-line workers at Dagenham has been painful to behold. It is not what any of them were designed to do, and so the end result was misguided and clumsy.
And when the Newmarket trainers who cooked up the idea on the gallops one morning realised how silly they had started to look, their reaction was both spiteful and aggressive as they tried to bully Christine Dunnett into submission.
Dunnett, who trains a small string near Hingham in Norfolk, was the only trainer to declare a runner for the race that some of Newmarket’s "big boys" had decided to boycott.
This enraged not just the plotters from headquarters, but also the ever-bubbling pot of brimstone that is Mark ‘Mascherano’ Johnston. It is 204 miles from Middleham to Newmarket, but North Yorkshire’s finest – and chippiest – trainer could not resist the urge to get involved, apparently firing off an email to Dunnett that suggested she should be "ashamed" of herself.
Dunnett, to her great credit, refused to be intimidated. She not only sent Johnston a detailed defence of her actions, but also had the good sense to copy it to the Racing Post.
Clear and measured, but with a well-judged undertone of controlled anger, Dunnett told Johnston where to go, which was – to paraphrase – back to Yorkshire and his string of 180 choicely bred horses, each one of which brings in upwards of £400 per week.
Dunnett acquires many of her horses from sellers and claimers, but she is a shrewd judge who often coaxes a few extra pounds of improvement from new recruits. If one result of the weekend’s row is that an extra owner or two finds their way to her yard, it will not have been entirely wasted.
The real shame of it all, though, is that there is certainly an issue over prize money at Yarmouth and elsewhere – as Dunnett herself was happy to acknowledge – but it has been obscured by the trainers’ ham-fisted approach.
Yarmouth, after all, is part of the Northern Racing group of courses, which has been owned since April last year by the Reuben brothers, who are best known as property developers. If, as the trainers concerned suggest, Yarmouth’s prize money is not merely poor, but getting worse all the time, then we would all like to know the reason why.
Are the new owners trying to run it into the ground in order to cash in on the land value? Will it be Yarmouth this year, and Newcastle the next? Or are they just being greedy and keeping as much for themselves as they can, as racecourse owners for generations have often been minded to do?
These are important questions, but Northern Racing seems to have been let off the hook by the Warren Hill gang, who turned a chat on the gallops into a PR debacle amid accusations of ignorance, arrogance, hypocrisy and bullying.
The number and variety of British racecourses is one of the sport’s greatest assets, but a good part of that heritage is in private hands. If prize money is slipping at Yarmouth, it is the British Horseracing Authority, on behalf of the entire sport, that should be making a stand.
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