Saturday 13 July: guaranteed prize money: Ascot £296,000; Newmarket £755,000; York £294,500. Once the first televised race was late off, this deluge of valuable racing became a nightmare for the punters and bookmakers, probably resulting in punters missing some opportunities and bookmakers missing some turnover. Lower turnover means fewer funds for racing as the bookmakers pay The Levy (and HMRC) based on turnover. During the week, trainer Mark Johnston, an industry member of the BHA committee, complained that having three very valuable meetings on one Saturday was a bad idea. Obviously as a trainer he is concerned that top jockeys cannot be at three meetings at the same time. He criticised the decision to move the July Meeting from its original slot (Tuesday to Thursday) to its current slot (Thursday to Saturday). Newmarket defended the decision on the grounds that it wants to run as many of its Group 1 races on Saturdays to maximise attendance. I wonder how the fixture clash with Ascot affected the number of people from the South East travelling up to Suffolk. The weather should surely mean bumper attendances at all three fixtures in 2013. Personally I preferred the original Tuesday to Thursday meeting as the âCherry Hintonâ and the Princess Of Walesâs Stakes used to be on the Tuesday. Now that the July Meeting has been re-arranged I probably wonât go to the July Cup on a Saturday because the traffic to the July Course must be horrendous as there is only one main road. In Saturdayâs Racing Post, a couple of other trainers expressed their frustration with the cramped schedule. It was suggested by one of them that the July Meeting could be moved back a week as next weekendâs only feature meeting is the Newbury Super Sprint. Ironically, there is a Newmarket card next Saturday; and Newbury and Ascot have swapped weekends since 2012. So where does the sport go from here? Racing For Change were quite happy to cannibalise Newmarketâs Champion Stakes card to create Championsâ Day at Ascot and several other meetings have moved from midweek festivals to race on Saturdays (e.g. the York Ebor meeting). Does this overload benefit the sport enormously from increased turnover for the bookmakers to compensate for the loss of their traditional (i.e. older) racegoers? Ultimately the intention is to bring new young racegoers into the sport to ensure a future but this blinkered approach is ignoring the fact that for forty weeks of the year racing has to compete with football and that is a competition that it is always going to lose. Perhaps they might be better advised to target new âgreyâ racegoers as they have plenty of time and there are increasing numbers of them.
Bloody stupid scheduling today. This must not happen again. I think there are 2 options 1) move the July meeting back to weekdays only 2) move the July meeting back a week ( the scheduling will get worse soon for the sport when Wimbledon moves back a week in 2015)
The obvious thing is for Newmarket to race Tues - Thurs whilst York and Ascot race Friday and Saturday. The whole thing changed when Racing decided (probably correctly) that it needed new race goers beyond the already converted. This meant staging the big races on a Saturday to attract the casual race goer tempted by a good day out. Epsom started this with The Derby in the nineties, and I was all against it, but commercially I believe they have been proved right. It actually changes when I go racing as I hate being around drunk day trippers and so will never go on a Saturday. Should I visit my local (Ascot) it will be a nice midweek fixture when you can get about with ease and not have to deal with drunks. On a good point however, What I liked about the fixture clash was that it gave lesser used jockeys the chance to ride decent horses for decent prizes. I think Jockeys outside the top ten have a tough time of it, travelling vast distances to ride moderate horses and finding few winners. To see Seb Sanders, Micky Fenton and Steve Drowne win good races at York, whilst apprentices Thomas Brown and Darren Egan won good races at Ascot was very nice to see.
Your last paragraph makes an execllent point Bluesky - it shares the wealt around and given the hard jobs they do and the low paid in the ranks that can only be a good thing. I also agre wholeheartedly about Saturday meetings as well. There are totally different crowds with too many drunks.
if Newmarket refuse to abandon the idea of a Saturday July Cup then surely the obvious thing would be to move the whole meeting back a week to this week? they race again there this weekend but would not be up against other big Saturday meetings. the negative to this would be that on Thursday and Friday the sport would be up against the Test match at Lords and the Open Golf Championship. I feel the July meeting is in a bit of a mess whatever it does to be honest. I used to like the fact that it was in a nice quiet sporting week between Wimbledon and the Open Golf. From 2015 there will no longer be a break between these 2 huge sporting events. perhaps the most worrying thing for horse racing was the lack of promotion for this weekend. in the TV sport section of the Evening Standard on Friday there was a preview of the weekend sport. There was a mention for the Test match, for the British Athletics Championship, the Tour de France, the Rugby League Challenge Cup and even a fishing! championships on sky sports. Horse Racing though got no mention at all. And that is what should be the most worrying for the sport.
Agree with so much of what has already been said. For me hold the July meeting Tuesday – Thursday (or even Wednesday – Friday if they must) and then leave the weekend free for Newbury and Ascot. Nowadays, so often the racing Monday – Friday is Poor with a capital ‘P’ and I see no sense whatsoever to continue this trend of shoehorning all the decent event onto a Saturday with nothing, in most weeks, but Class 4, 5 and 6 races the rest of the time. And the way things are going, unfortunately, it looks like only a matter of time until Cheltenham goes 5 days with the Cheltenham Gold Cup being moved to a last day Saturday. One further complication re last Saturday’s card in future years is that I see Ascot are going to campaign ‘aggressively’ for the ‘Summer Mile’ to be upgraded to Group 1 status (a similar plan of action is in place re the Coventry and Hardwicke Stakes). The racing on this day, in the future then, could get even classier!
I haven't minded with many of the days that have been switched to the Saturday but the Cheltenham one is what I fear the most. If the Gold Cup is ever moved to the Saturday (as well as having a diluted 5 day festival) then that is the beginning of the end for the festival in my opinion
There is no doubt that racing needs “new” racegoers, but as I stated in my original comments, I think they are targeting the wrong crowd. The ‘young’ have disposable cash to spend whilst they are single but are only available generally at weekends. Once they have acquired spouses/partners, kids and mortgages their money goes elsewhere. The ‘old’ have (hopefully) got rid of their kids, have paid off the mortgage and have disposable cash and twenty-plus years to live and spend it. I will go racing on Saturdays because I tend to drive so, therefore, I do not hang around near the casual racegoers in the bars.
The last couple of years the fixtures have been distorted by the Olympics. The Ascot “Summer Mile” card was moved last year and the Newbury “Super Sprint” card was a week earlier. Having Newmarket and Ascot on the same weekend does not make any sense because they are both competing for the same South East visitors. I preferred the July Meeting just as it was years ago (Tuesday to Thursday). They then went with Wednesday to Friday and re-arranged the races to create a Ladies’ Day whilst ignoring the fact that Friday is always a bad racing day because so many people now use it to commute.
There is a lot of poor quality racing during the week. At my ‘local’ track, Beverley, almost all of their fixtures comprise races of Class 4 or worse, selling races and claimers. That is why I hardly ever go there; however, they do seem to attract sufficient numbers that they remain financially viable. As Cheltenham Gold Cup day always seems to be a sell-out way in advance, there does not seem to be any advantage to moving it. If they create six new races in order to add a day to the fixture, now - in a period of austerity - does not seem the time to do it. They may end up killing the golden goose. Ascot are going to really struggle to get the “Summer Mile” upgraded to Group 1 status because this is not just an arbitrary decision that the BHA or Jockey Club can make. They have to consult with the European racing authorities and agree any changes. They cannot just come up with more prize money and create a new Group 1 event. When they wanted to create Champions’ Day a couple of years ago, they moved the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes from September to October by reaching an agreement with the French to move their Group 1 mile race, the Prix Du Moulin, to early September (it is now part of Arc Trials Day) to avoid a clash. Note that all the pattern races on Champions’ Day are not Group 1 despite the prize money but they are on Arc Day.
QM, they only need to add 3 new races to get it up to 5 days – they currently have 27 races. 3 more and Cheltenham can have 5 days of 6 races. Mr Waley-Cohen, the Chairman of the Racecourse, has already spoken about adding both a ‘Mares Only Bumper’ and a 28 Furlong Handicap Chase. Meanwhile, Mr Henderson added, not long after Long Run’s owner had spoken, that he’s like to see a 20 Furlong Grade 1 Hurdle added to the meeting. I would agree though that any move to 5 days would be Overkill with a capital ‘O’ and would dilute the product out of almost all recognition.
And it would involve a lot more work for whoever runs the competiton(s) on here. Bet they haven't even considered that.
They did a similar thing with the York Ebor meeting a few years ago. It used to be twenty-one races from Tuesday to Thursday. Then to add an extra day they took the listed race off their September card and added a couple of new handicaps to make it four days with six races a day and now they have re-arranged the whole card and moved it back a day so that the Ebor handicap is on Saturday. I used to go to the whole meeting but last year I only attended the Juddmonte International day because Frankel was running and this year I will be a no show unless I decide to go for the Nunthorpe to see Lethal Force.
