Gordon Elliott runners parade before the Troytown Chase at Navan© Photo Healy Racing
I’ve been asked where I stand on the plight of racing’s middle tier and its economic struggle for survival against the industry’s elite players. And the answer is I don’t know where to stand because it’s very complicated. What is noticeable though is how such an otherwise conservative and self-consciously hard-nosed private enterprise sector has suddenly got so welfarist, maybe even, God Forbid, a touch Maoist; who’d have thought?
Some racing professionals who’d surfed the financial wave with the self-confident entitlement of true free marketers when times were good - bullishly flaunting the benefits of having ‘got up off their arse’ — can now be heard singing a very different entitlement tune.
Even those who might be suspected of having posters of Michael O’Leary on their bedroom wall seem a lot less enraptured with how the stark bottom-line consequences of free-market realities are impinging upon them. And no amount of getting up off their arse seems to change things.
That’s a stark reality that many other industries are struggling with too; what to do when getting up off your arse doesn’t work anymore, and the rich keep getting richer, the poor poorer and the middle winds up squeezed ever tighter. There’s nothing unique to racing about this even though some of the more plaintive ‘beal bocht’ stuff being put about might suggest otherwise.
So it’s hard to know where to stand when watching the Trainers Association, which once would have instinctively reacted with horror to any unified action, now clubbing to demand various centralised responses to their plight.
And it’s only right and proper people fight their corner, just as it’s only proper to remember how many of them would previously have ‘tut-tutted’ that those falling by the wayside were little more than casualties of economic war, the result of failing to go all O’Leary and ‘get up off their arse.’
If nothing else it certainly provides a frisson to negotiations between trainers and the Stable Staff body which is also fighting its own corner. They are reportedly seeking a €1.65 per hour increase in pay, based on a 39 hour week, which would leave those at the coal-face making just over twenty three grand a year. Try finding the post-PAYE fat in that. And if you’re a trainer try budgeting for such an increase when an attempt to raise training fees in order to cover it risks losing clientele. But as has been dramatically highlighted this year, that’s the market, and the market is God. And God is good.
On the ground the current mood appears to be towards restricted competition. There are after all restricted races for certain tiers of jockeys. It’s not like the very basis of much of racing — handicaps — aren’t exercises in restriction. Most sports have divisions. But don’t let anyone pretend such moves in this particular context wouldn’t be exercises in commercial artificiality.
Since racing’s subsidised financial model is essentially artificial anyway, that mightn’t matter too much. And since HRI is basically a reflection of racing’s component parts then it can be argued if it doesn’t move to help then who will, although little of this reflects well on its trickle-down economic model. But in return maybe, just maybe, we won’t have to stand and listen to such enthusiastic whistling of the free-market tune in future.
Anyway, fears about an unhealthy concentration of clout among a tiny oligarch at the top will hardly have been eased by Gordon Elliott’s remarkable 41,277/1 six-timer at Navan, a superb accomplishment by any standard and one which has had historical heads scrambling for the record books to see if a similar feat had been achieved in modern times.
It doesn’t require much imagination though to picture some portraying it as further proof of how the game really is shot in terms of diversity. The ’41,277/1 six-timer’ bit was the figure in the headlines: more significant for many was the 11 Elliott runners lining up in the Troytown which is after all a handicap theoretically designed to provide a more level playing field.
But what’s Elliott supposed to do? Not run perfectly suitable candidate for appearances sake? The idea is silly.
The thing with Elliott too is that this is a guy who started from absolute scratch with no inherited start or sugar of any kind. It’s what helps make his rapid rise in less than a decade such a remarkable story. This really is a case of cream rising to the top and in any circumstances it is hugely admirable.
In big-picture competition terms however it still can’t be healthy for any sport where a small combination of outfits can dominate to such an extent. Navan on Sunday was truly exceptional in its own terms but neither can it be argued that it came out of the blue. Elliott had 27 runners in all at the meeting. He had 36 weekend runners in all. Numbers aren’t everything but there’s no denying they help.
What promises to be fascinating between now and late April is how the numbers pan out in Elliott’s attempts to dethrone Willie Mullins from the top of the trainer’s championship. He says himself he has no chance this season. It’s hard not to suspect that might be an exercise in trying to deflect outside pressure. With half a million in hand such diversionary claims are starting to sound hollow.
There’s never a bad time for a laugh and for entertainment purposes if nothing else it was fascinating to read the response of the former UK Met Police Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, a recent BHA appointee, to Timeform’s assertion that stewards are turning a blind eye to non-triers. He has invited them to come forward with evidence.
It’s some statement to make considering Stephenson can hardly be naive in the ways of the journalistic world where even a misplaced comma can land you in the High Court never mind a bald claim of cheating. But more importantly, how likely are such cases to provoke ‘evidence’ which will meet burden of proof standards. By definition such judgements are almost always subjective.
The history of governance bodies pledging to act if presented with evidence and then doing nothing is long and hardly distinguished. And it’s easy to stand over that.
