Form, Facts, Feelings and Formulations about the Festival – Reflections on Cheltenham

How was the Cheltenham Festival for you? Personally I found it the best ever from a pure enjoyment standpoint, even though it takes its toll – particularly on the liver. It has definitely been a case of recovery and detox over the last few weeks ahead of going up to Aintree for more fabulous fun on Merseyside. Hardly surprising, as it is the NH Olympics, there was an enormous amount of views shared and arguments raging throughout the Festival week. As ever in racing, mostly clap-trap, but here are ten reflections.

1. It certainly wasn’t the highest standard of Festival that we’ve seen. The general view was that both the Champion Hurdle and the Gold Cup were 10lbs below normal, and there weren’t that many races that were truly memorable. For me personally, the highlight was one of my favourite horses, Defi Du Seuil, winning the Triumph Hurdle for Philip Hobbs and Richard Johnson. Such a hardy, game horse. Indeed I think Philip would run him every fortnight if he could. The best race to watch, I thought, was the Mares’ Championship with Apple’s Jade, Vroom Vroom Mag and Limini battling it out. Great to see Noel Fehily showing again what a champion he is, winning the top race on each of the first two days.
2. Definitely the best ever for the Irish, who are now dominant. The somewhat meaningless Prestbury Cup was a shoo-in for the Irish, with 19 vs. 9. Willie Mullins won over £750k and Gordon Elliott over £600k. The late 1980s seem more than a couple of decades ago, when it was a complete whitewash to the British on one occasion, and another year 17/1. The key question is why GB is falling behind.
3. Bloodstock prices continue to spiral into the stratosphere. I went along to the Tattersalls Ireland sale during the meeting and was flabbergasted to see 13 horses go for £100k plus, with a median of £120k and an average of £142,857. As the auctioneer said, “There is now fierce demand and a ferocious appetite for young horses with form.” You can say that again. The grass-roots owner clearly isn’t going to get a look-in.
4. The declining state of UK National Hunt racing. There was a working party to look at the decline in Northern NH racing, and maybe their remit should be broadened to the whole of the country. Yes, there is superb prize-money available at Cheltenham but it is lousy almost everywhere else. There is an interesting statistic to confirm that: the difference in prize-money between the top and everyday racing in many countries is four times, whereas in the UK it is now 100 times. Horses always follow the prize-money, and it is hardly surprising that top owners are migrating to Ireland where they can scoop up easy pickings in Graded races and easy handicaps.
5. The gap between the top and the bottom of the sport has never been greater. This really reiterates points 2-4 above. Is it time to change some of the rules and conditions for races to encourage the grass-roots owner? I did an analysis for the Racehorse Syndicates Association and amazingly there were only 40 syndicate horses at the Festival, even though there were quite a few partnerships. Many of us are now fishing in a different pond.
6. Was the drink crack-down worthwhile, and did it work? After the excesses of 2016 with some very unsavoury incidents, Cheltenham and the Jockey Club clearly needed to do something. It seems to have worked, although most people wouldn’t get many problems getting round the four-drinks-per-buyer rule. I saw lots of people buying four for themselves! There was also a crack-down in the town centre with on-the-spot fines. Sad, but necessary.
7. Rumblings about the bookmakers. There were no sympathies for the bookies, as they won on almost every race and there were numerous Festival flops, notably Douvan at 2/9, reportedly the shortest loser in a hundred years. There was more misery with Yanworth, Tombstone, Death Duty, Unowhatimeanharry and Djakadam. However it is rumoured that the BHA had a meeting with the Association of British Bookmakers, who want help in a rearguard action against imminent changes to do with fixed-odds betting terminals. I have zero sympathy with the bookmaking industry, who need to focus far more on innovation and collaboration with their racing partners.
8. Well done, ITV with their terrestrial coverage. Encouragingly for the whole sport, they lifted the viewing figures by 250,000, massively ahead of Channel 4’s last effort of 526,000 average viewers. It’s a lighter style and seems to be far more appealing to the general audience. A good start has been made by them.
9. Time to crack down on abuse of the whip again. Charlie Longsdon was desperately unlucky that his horse Pendra was collared in the final strides of the Kim Muir by Gina Andrews on 40/1 shot Domesday Book. She mercilessly flogged her horse, and rightly received a three-day ban for it. It seems really unfair that a rider who stays within the rules is beaten by one who doesn’t. Stewards should be given discretion to reverse the placings and behaviour would soon change, particularly if the culprits had to make a financial contribution to the owner for lost prize-money.
10. And possibly some other changes are needed. We are in an era now when top horses, owners and trainers can cherry-pick valuable Graded races and avoid all meaningful competition. This doesn’t do much for competitiveness, nor public interest. Should there be some qualifications added whereby horses for championship races must have competed in a minimum number of Graded races prior to the Festival? With the grass-roots owner not getting much of a look-in, should race conditions be framed to encourage them? So for example should there be more caps on second-tier races to force top owners to take their best horses up into the championship races? I would also have a syndicates-only race, but then I have been arguing for that for quite a few years.

Hopefully some food for thought there. Bring on Aintree!

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Aintree, The Appeal of Festival Racing and British Racing’s Strategic Goal of Increasing Racecourse Attendance

Most of my friends and co-owners felt that this year’s Grand National meeting at Aintree was the best ever. The facilities at the racecourse are simply superb now, and the population of Liverpool embraces the meeting wholeheartedly as one long party, both on and off the track. And as for the quality of racing, with Willie Mullins bringing over so many of his hot-pots, it was outstanding. Personally the stand-outs were Cue Card’s win in the Betfred Bowl and the redemption of Paddy Brennan – and wouldn’t it be absolutely fantastic if Cue Card does go to Punchestown to take on Don Cossack; Apple’s Jade’s extraordinary performance in the 4yo Juvenile; Annie Power’s flawless jumping and Thistlecrack’s extremely impressive win in the Stayers’ Hurdle. Mouse Morris’s emotional win with Rule The World was spectacular and pub quiz bores were quick to tell you that the last maiden to win the National was at the end of the 19th Century. It is always interesting to note a horse for next year’s race and mine would be Vieux Lion Rouge, not least because a couple of years ago when one of our former horses, Lady Charisma, raced against him at Wincanton he impressed as a brave, tough stayer.

Throughout the meeting the head-on competition between Mullins and Nicholls for the Championship was a talking point and, as usual, there were a number of issues that pundits flagged up: should the Aintree meeting be extended to four days; is the Mullins dominance good or bad for racing; is it constraining betting as well as disillusioning grass-roots owners; should he even be eligible for the British trainer championship, and would it be better if that was settled on total wins rather than total prize-money; why are so many of the big bookmakers miserly in their pay-outs on the Grand National – surely in a field of 39 runners they should be paying at least down to 5th place; is the price of NH bloodstock now in bubble territory, judging by the extraordinary prices paid at the first Aintree Goffs sale, or is it just that there is now a platinum tier of mega-rich NH owners who will pay whatever it takes to buy a potential Cheltenham or Aintree Winner; and why is it that Liverpool women on Ladies’ Day seem to be totally impervious to the cold?

In many ways the Aintree meeting also highlights some of the relevant features that are central to British Racing’s strategic goal of increasing racecourse attendance from 6 million to 7 million by 2020. This goal was emphasised by Rod Street at the Newbury presentation that I attended a month or so ago. I thought his presentation was excellent, not least because it was backed by customer insight data obtained through the Racecourse Association’s study of attendance data 2011-15:

• Only 6% of racegoers ever go to more than one racecourse, which is usually their local one. In effect therefore racecourses are not in competition, so there is considerable scope for racecourse collaboration.
• There is positive awareness of racing on the part of 34 million people, even though they never attend. A marketing goal has been set to target 5 million of that group and to convert them into one million tickets. There will be a national “Come Racing” campaign.
• Ten million people go racing once, but then not again for several years.
• There is considerable churn in racecourse attendance: 27% of racegoers come back year on year, whereas 73% don’t. Over the next five years the goal is to improve the retention figure from 27% to 33%.
• Two-thirds of all racecourse attendance is driven by the social side. Racing has a huge social audience, and therefore promotion and marketing messages to do with that social context are critical. A huge plus point of this is that the social aspects of racing make the sport more resilient than other sports, and also racing appears to be very attractive to both sexes and all demographics.
• Yet, racing suffers from very low advance booking compared to other sports.

Aintree seems to be a case study of how to build and maximise brand and social loyalty: its positioning as a Liverpool festival has made it a “go-to event” on Merseyside; highly targeted marketing both retains the regular attendees and persuades the “one-off” customers to come back; it is a very attractive and safe event for groups of women to attend; and a lot of effort is put into advance booking (indeed I have already received details for 2017).

Increasingly I feel that racecourses need to collaborate together in well-defined regional groupings where they retain their individual strengths and characteristics while actively marketing the (social) advantages of going racing more regularly within that region. Yorkshire already does this, and I’m sure it needs to receive much greater marketing energy and endeavour. Linking together Aintree, Haydock and Chester as socially aspirational meetings could clearly be one example of this. It is a classic case of collaborating to grow the overall size of the pie rather than just dividing it up.

All in all it was hard to leave Aintree without being very positive for our sport, and really enthusiastic about a number of the initiatives being pursued by racecourses particularly those under the Jockey Club Racecourses banner. I really hope that the 7 million attendance target is not just attained but exceeded by 2020.

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Ides of March for the Bookies: Whacked by Whittingdale and Mauled by Mullins. But Who is the April Fool? Please Step Forward, Paul Darling

So how was Cheltenham for you? I always like the turn of phrase of Alastair Down in the Racing Post, and he described this year’s festival as “the antidote to cynicism”. Having been critical of Cheltenham’s facilities in the past, it is marvellous to be able to praise the course for everything that has been done to transform Prestbury Park and make it one of the best sporting venues in the world. Indeed, in many racegoers’ eyes, it is now the best race meeting in the country and certainly this year it proved to be a punters’ paradise. Even I made money on every single day, which shows how easy it was!!! It’s a long time since I’ve had a Heinz in, but how could anyone fail to perm lots of winners from Douvan, Annie Power, Vroum Vroum Mag, Yorkhill, Vautour, Thistlecrack, Limini, Ivanovich Gorbatov, Don Cossack and then the three JP McManus-owned and top amateur-ridden hotpots of Minella Rocco, Cause Of Causes and On The Fringe – laid out, or what?

The stand-out performances for me were Douvan in the Arkle (first horse since Flying Bolt in 1965 to do the double with the Supreme Novices’); Sprinter Sacre’s emotional comeback in the Champion Chase; Any Currency’s win as a 13-y-o in the Cross Country for our trainer Martin Keighley (who attended our OfO champagne picnic with his wife Belinda that day and convinced most of those present to entrust their cash to “Woody” and Aidan – a superb ride); Vautour’s romp in the Ryanair; Thistlecrack’s sublime win in the World Hurdle; and then Don Cossack demonstrating why he is the top chaser in training in the Gold Cup (and OfO has a particular interest in him as we have a Sholokhov 2yo, nicknamed “Don Caster”). Great to see first festival wins for Dan Skelton, Harry Fry and Ian Williams as well as Martin, while you can’t help but be envious of Patricia Pugh, whose horse Altior won the Supreme Novices’ and is only the second horse she has ever owned. Victoria Pendleton, quite rightly, was lauded for her personal poise and riding performance on Pasha Du Polder, although she has a veritable mountain to climb to catch Ruby Walsh, who passed his landmark of 50 winners at the Festival on Black Hercules. And after Gold Cup day, the debates on whether Cue Card would or would not have beaten Don Cossack will continue for many years. Phew – a magnificent meeting. Now on to Aintree, where Willie Mullins is expected to send a team of over 20 horses in a bid to win the UK jump trainers’ championship crown. The last Irishman to do that was the legendary Vincent O’Brien, one of my all-time heroes. Willie is now odds-on for the title and is 6/4 to land seven or more winners in Liverpool. I wonder if we’ll see a repetition of the stats from Cheltenham – four owners managed to win half of the races. I definitely hope not.

Throughout March the backdrop to British racing has been all about the announcement by the Government on the Racing Right, and on Budget Day, Wednesday, 16th March, Chancellor Osborne reiterated that offshore betting operators will contribute to racing’s finances, and in Nick Rust’s phrase, the Government is clearly committed to a “fair, enforceable and sustainable return from all betting activity on our sport”. The timetable to introduce the new funding system was outlined by the Chancellor with consultation planned over the summer, notification to be given to the European Commission, a statutory instrument to be published by the end of the year and then the new funding model in force from April, 2017. A huge win for racing.

So I was delighted when Paul Darling, Chairman of the Association of British Bookmakers, made a short speech in which he said that “we’re clearly entering a new era of partnership between betting operators and racing. It’s time for all of us in the betting industry to admit our past failures and lack of innovation, and embrace the new spirit of partnership that will strengthen the whole of racing, its sustainable funding and our own profitability.” On behalf of the big operators that had previously declined to become Authorised Betting Partners (ABP), such as William Hill, Coral, Paddy Power, Betfred and Ladbroke’s, he announced the launch of the Aintree Betting Pledge (ABP), whereby any registered owner will be entitled to a £100 free bet that can be placed on any of the Mullins runners.

If only, if only ….. What Mr. Darling actually said is that the amount of money racing now receives from betting shops is “completely unsustainable” and that racing is a product that is now a loss-maker in his industry. He believes that the current levy is unaffordable and that it makes the racing product less attractive than others. Indeed, “racing must be willing to treat betting as a partner and not as the enemy from whom as much cash as possible must be extracted by whatever is today’s latest device”. Alas, therefore, the sniping and skirmishing is bound to continue. There are some real dinosaurs in the betting industry.

The excitements of Cheltenham prevented me from doing the promised summary of the BHA Newbury strategy forum that I attended at the beginning of March. More on this in the next blog ….. provided of course that Aintree doesn’t distract me next time, which is highly likely.

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Grand Times at the Grand National – The Aintree Experience and Retraining of Racehorses

My wife and I always try to go to Aintree for the Grand National and for my money it is the best-organised NH meeting of the whole season- superb facilities, fabulous racing, and a real party atmosphere as 70,000 Scousers turn out in force, in their finery. It may be easy for the press to mock the excesses of “Ladies’ Day”, and it is certainly testimony to the tanning salon and tattoo parlour, but it really makes for a magnificent Aintree experience. It was also great to see the first £1m National, with excellent prize-money down to 10th. One of the real pleasures of the winter sport is that the “little man” can grab a huge prize. Charlie Longsdon in his blog summed it up really well: “Highlight of the Aintree meeting had to be Dr. Newland’s great win with Pineau De Re – he has 12 horses in training, and that is what the Grand National is all about. It is a fantastic story – something that could not happen in Flat racing. That’s why we love the National Hunt game. Everyone has a chance of having a superstar, and you do not have to have 150 horses in training and spend £100,000 to buy a great horse. Bring on the National in 2015!!!” Another of our trainers, Philip Hobbs, must certainly be thinking that – his Balthazar King, still improving at the age of 10, came 2nd and won £211,000. There was also a nice interview with Philip and Richard Johnson on Channel 4 – 16 years together. Although he didn’t say it on air, he has a lovely line: “If I don’t change my wife or my car very often, why should I change my jockey?” (Apologies [to Sarah] if I’ve misquoted, Philip – and I think I have – but that is the gist!)

There were several great results here for racing, not least Pineau De Re’s victory off the reasonable mark of 143 (certainly when Owners for Owners has a horse over 140 that stays forever, I know where we’re going). The excellent sponsor, marketing and branding for Crabbies created a very positive impression and they must be delighted with how the whole event unfolded, especially the avoidance of any controversy. There were no fatalities, and the way in which the core structure of the fences has changed for the better has been a most successful feature of Aintree for the last two years. It is also testimony to the leadership of Lord Daresbury who stepped down as Chairman at the meeting this year. When I first started going racing in the North I used to follow him as a rider. As Peter Greenall he was also the boss of the now-defunct brewery, Greenall Whitley (their bitter was often described as “only suitable to put on chips”), before selling the business off and concentrating on the hotels and leisure industry. One of the few real strategists in business and racing.

Finally, full marks again to the BHA for the way in which they took a proactive stance through the marquee and publicity for thehorsecomesfirst.com. They had a prominent and well-staffed stand by the parade ring and throughout the three days of the meeting, there was a concerted campaign to engage racegoers and raise awareness of the high standards of equine welfare in our sport. Proactivity like this is far better than responding reactively when there is a problem. Literature was given out containing such positive statistics as:

• Over the last 15 years the equine fatality rate during racing has fallen by a third, from 0.3% to 0.2%.
• The sport has invested over £25m in veterinary activities including research and education since 2000.
• There are estimated to be 1m horses in the UK. Racehorses are the best looked-after 2%.
• There are over 9,000 horses registered with Retraining of Racehorses active in other equine disciplines such as polo, showing, dressage and eventing.
• Our sport employs over 6,000 people providing first-class care and attention to the 14,000 horses in training.

Finally on the statistics front, there was a very interesting piece of information based on a study by Liverpool University which found that 62% of “traumatic injuries” (ranging from grazes to fractures) suffered by a sample of leisure and competition horses occurred when turned out in a paddock, compared to only 13% during ridden exercise. This certainly confirms my own experiences – I tend to be more worried when horses are on their summer holidays turned out in a field, than when they are being carefully looked after in their boxes in a yard. I hope all our NH horses that are being turned out now for the summer take note of this!

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Over-dominant Trainers and Cheltenham’s Many Frustrations

Although this blog has gone up the day after the Festival, it has actually been written on the eve of it. I know from past experience that there is no chance whatsoever of finding any time to do a blog while the racing is on, and by the weekend a combination of exhaustion and alcohol has completely numbed the brain. I can’t see any reason why this year would have been any different.

But what a great day prior to the start – reintroduced the pre-Festival round of golf at Naunton; off to the bucolic Plough at Ford for more than a few pints of Donningtons best bitter and a Festival preview evening, chaired by the estimable Stuart Machin; and all spare minutes totally immersed in the various race trends and preview evening reports.

And it is a foregone conclusion that the racing itself will have been immensely pleasurable.

So it is probably only a curmudgeon who wants to grumble about the whole Cheltenham Festival experience. This year it started with the extremely irritating charges for owners’ badges. Our Shantou Magic was scheduled to run in the Martin Pipe on Friday. All the owners and some family members were going. All of us are members at Cheltenham, and yet they saw fit to charge us £75 for each extra paddock badge, just so that we could all go in to support our horse. You gain nothing else really for your £75. There is a tatty old marquee to go to, but you have to pay for any food and drink on top. This is just yet another Cheltenham rip-off. In the last blog I berated the early closer system. We had Shantou Magic in the Coral Cup (cost £126) and obviously also in the Martin Pipe (£86). While this doesn’t sound a lot, if you multiply everything by several thousand to reflect the huge entries, it is considerable money.

I was also trying to organise meetings with friends and co-owners throughout the four days. The problem is that there are so few suitable bars to go to, and with up to 75,000 people there each day it is just about impossible to have a relaxed and convivial drink. This is in such contrast to Aintree, which would win the hospitality stakes in a hack canter, compared to Cheltenham. Hopefully when the new stand is completed, all this will change. The risk, though, is that the exploitative mind-set of Cheltenham doesn’t change, even if the infrastructure is improved. They keep sending me customer satisfaction surveys, which I always dutifully fill in. However I have seen very little improvement so far. Maybe it will have changed this year, but I doubt it.

Finally, another niggle going into the meeting was the whole issue of watering the course. I have a real concern anyway about the over-dominance of Messrs. Mullins, Nicholls and Henderson, which I just don’t think is good for the sport. So it was irksome to see two of that ilk publicly lobbying for the course not to be watered. They wanted “nature to take its course”. In this day and age, that is a totally impossible and naïve stance to adopt. Maybe it had more to do with the need for Big Buck’s, Bobs Worth and Triolo d’Alene to have good ground. Earlier in the season there were similar selfish views expounded over the framing of novice chases. I don’t have a lot of sympathy, just because they have yards chock-full of talent and want to keep them apart.

Right, that’s the curmudgeonly thoughts for this Festival out of the way. Let’s hope the racing has been superb, the hangovers manageable and the wins, huge! On now to Aintree and Punchestown.

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Owners - #1 Stakeholders, #1 Economic Contributors …. But Well Last in the Economics of the Sport

I love this time of the year. Two year olds are coming out on to the track and showing us what they can do for next year; all the NH owners’ days are under way with the dreams of future Cheltenham and Aintree glories well and truly alive; and the champions’ days in Ireland, at Ascot, Longchamps and the Breeder’s Cup are still ahead of us. Lots to look forward to, and it is magnificent being an owner. Alas, the moose on the table (as one of my clients always used to say) is the lamentable return to most owners for their investment. In the last blog I was thinking of calling this one “Milking the 8,215 cash cows (owners) dry”. However, I’ve decided to stay with the facts as summarised in the Deloittes study, Economic Impact of British Racing 2013. But here is the key paragraph in the report for us:

“Owners are the single biggest contributors to the funding of British racing, both through their purchase of horses from breeders (£189m being breeders’ expenditure and commission paid on horse purchases) and ongoing training and racing expenditure paid to trainers, jockeys and supporting industries (£369m). After receipts of prize money and sponsorship of £85m, owners are estimated to have made a net injection of over £470m in 2012 (compared to £465m in 2008).”

So let’s dig into these figures as well as others in the report and highlight the key statistics and implications (bearing in mind that the key figures relate to 2012).

• As owners, we’re putting the thick end of half a billion pounds a year into the sport. No-one else puts anywhere near that amount of money into the game. We are the #1 economic contributor, by a considerable margin. 
• Prize money over the past decade has remained within a relatively narrow band between £94m and £110m. In 2012, it was down at £78m (although encouragingly it is rising through 2013). For every £100 an owner spent on training and racing their horse, they recovered on average £21. 
• Cumulative inflation over the same decade has been 34%, so as an absolute minimum prize money should have gone up over that period by at least a third. 
• Average costs per day for each horse in training rose from £54 to £62 over the four-year period to 2012.
• Gross cost per run was £4,000 (reduced by 20% when prize money is taken into account). This is far more than virtually every other racing nation because of the low prize money in the UK. 
• The expanding fixture list (particularly with the dross of A/W racing) has resulted in average prize money per race declining by 14% since 2003 (but of course has led to a rise in betting turnover). 
• There were 24,000 horses in training during 2012. 17,500 appeared on the track. So over a quarter of all horses didn’t appear, and obviously made no contribution whatsoever for their owners. Of those that did appear, 6,500 won at least one race, so – big intake of breath – only a quarter of horses end up winning anything. 
• Between 2008 and 2012, there was an 11% fall in the number of horses in training, and a 14% fall in the number of owners. 
• 60% of all owners are involved in joint ownership in order to share the costs. 
• The final statistic (from the ROA) is that the upper end of the ownership scale has been the most resilient. Owners with three or more horses are down 7%, whereas those with an interest in only one horse are down 16%.

Phew! At this point it’s probably best either to lie down with a large block of ice on your head, or alternatively bang said head against a brick wall. These figures just do not make any sense whatsoever. Having said that, I have no intention of decreasing my involvement, despite the economic lunacy of being an owner.

Graham Lee came out with a very interesting comment about his switch from NH to the Flat: “The jumps is about fun, but the Flat is about business.” I was talking to one of our owners and he both agreed with the statement while also thinking that it was ludicrous. Owners are being exploited because there is a view that they will carry on supporting the industry regardless because of their love for the game.

Well, my challenge to everyone in racing is let’s start looking at the whole game as a business first, and dramatically improve the total economics of the sport. That means that as owners, if we are the #1 contributor, there must be a fundamental shift in the returns. We are the #1 stakeholder, and if the economics don’t change, the whole sport is on extremely rocky foundations.

Aintree and The National – Grand Result for Racing

As readers of the blog will know, I’m a huge fan of Aintree and much prefer it to Cheltenham. Alas though, in recent years I’ve been going up to the Grand National meeting with an increasingly heavy heart, in view of all the controversy surrounding the course and injuries / fatalities to horses, not helped by the stance adopted by the RSPCA (Royal Society for Permanent Criticism of Aintree).

But what a result this year, and a really fantastic outcome for our sport. When all 40 runners sailed over Becher’s, the roar from the crowd was truly heart-warming. Hats off to Aintree for all the work they’d done to maintain the going, and the softening of the fence cores has clearly helped enormously, as did the far less frenetic than usual start, with a shorter run to the first fence. Without doubt, the National is the most famous race in the world, and the only time that our sport truly takes centre stage. Lots of statistics were being bandied about, such as that half the UK population bets on the race, £150m staked, 600 million people watching worldwide, etc. This certainly goes right to the heart of racing’s brand value and the aims of Great British Racing that were covered in the last blog.

The other statistic that I welcomed was that there were no more than 20 protesters at Aintree. I really hope that the BHA and all the bodies connected with racing do everything possible now to maintain the high ground in defence of National Hunt racing, and challenge the nay-sayers who argue that in some way jumping is cruel. As the Aintree changes have shown so purposefully, we’re doing everything possible to exercise our duty of care towards the animals that we all love and admire.

When I saw Frankel thrash Excelebration in the Queen Anne at Royal Ascot, I felt that was the best horse-race that I’d ever seen, or would probably ever see. But then to be present to watch the sublime performance of Sprinter Sacre destroy Cue Card and Flemenstar in the Melling Chase was to my humble eyes even better. Stupendous.

I was also interested to see the announcement from the Jockey Club that the £45m make-over at Cheltenham will go ahead straight after the 2014 Festival meeting, with the aim of completing it for 2016. There is going to be a new grandstand complex, some spectacular tiered viewing of the parade ring and much improved crowd circulation around it. As always in racing, there were a few vested interests fighting against it, but no doubt they will be adequately compensated and it certainly looks as though this investment plan is going to go forward quickly.

So with the Aintree spectacular and an imminent huge upgrade at Cheltenham, it really looks as though National Hunt racing is going from strength to strength. Having said that, I was wondering what other changes would make a real difference. I would certainly like to see much higher prize-money at the October Cheltenham meeting and really use this to kick-start the jumps season, and hopefully not clash it with Ascot’s Champions Day. At the other end of the season I’d also love to see either Ayr and / or the Sandown mixed meeting similarly revamped so that we really have a grand finale through March and into May. And then the race planners can have a look across the season and plug some of the weaker periods with bigger races as part of a high profile National Hunt series. Anyone against, please take one step forward.

Aintree – Stop Tinkering, Start Defending

Recently announced changes to the Grand National course appear to have been welcomed by most groups, although the RSPCA irritatingly gave Aintree a “yellow card”, which presumably means that any further casualties will lead to more protestations.

Lots of changes, most of them minor: start to be moved 90 yards further down the track, away from the noise of the stands; the no-go zone for jockeys to be increased to 30 yards from the starting tape; the starter’s rostrum to be placed alongside that zone; jockeys to be given a more detailed briefing before the race on both the rules and the need for co-operation with the starter; there will be a more consistent methodology (whatever that might mean) for the start; an additional catching pen will be trialled near fence 4 for loose horses; the landing areas for fences 4, 5 and 13 will be levelled out; a different central frame and core material for fences will be trialled at the Becher Chase meeting in December; and there will be an improvement in irrigation.

So, nothing too dramatic. Arguments had been put forward for a major reduction in field size, removing some fences, moving the start much nearer to the first fence and even changing the size and style of the fences. None of these have been acted upon.

The big issue is whether this is the end of the tinkering, or whether there are going to be endless changes after every National, depending on the casualties (which are, sadly, inevitable). No-one has problems with ongoing improvements and fine-tuning, but what shouldn’t be happening is for Aintree and racing to be permanently accommodating the views of lobby groups such as the RSPCA and World Horse Welfare. Indeed the risk is that the tinkering appears to be an implicit acceptance that in some way Aintree is ethically unacceptable from a horse welfare standpoint.

It really is about time that the racing industry embarked on a properly planned PR campaign of its own to defend Aintree, the National and, for that matter, National Hunt racing as a sport that is cherished by a large percentage of the population. In other words there is a line to be drawn here between risk and safety. Racing should not be afraid of standing up for the integrity of our sport.

On a different subject, everyone in racing was terribly upset by the recent death of a great supporter of the Grand National, Lord Oaksey. There was a lovely letter in the Racing Post recently which recalled his winning rides on Happy Medium in the Watney Mann Red Barrel Chase. Apparently part of the prize was a 36-gallon beer barrel and the noble lord, on the journey back home, opened it; with one of the happy drinkers being the horse himself, who swigged a bucket-full of beer. In the same race a year later, as the horse entered the home straight, he seemed to realise where he was. Oaksey reported that Happy Medium “pulled his way to the front like a thirsty man in a crowded bar, and won going away”. Doubtless they celebrated as before. RIP.