Willie Mullins© Photo Healy Racing
Irish racing's financial structure basically revolves around the theory of 'Trickle-Down' economics, concentrating on prizemoney in the belief that enough of it will eventually percolate from the few at the top to the masses at the bottom. It's basically Thatcherism, except the idea is a lot older than that, certainly long enough for many by now to have dismissed it as voodoo.
The legendary economist JK Galbraith noted how it was applied in the USA all the way back in the 1890's, except then it was called the Horse and Sparrow Theory - "If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows."
Of course we're much too digitally swish for such earthy similes these days but whether it trickles or poops, it still smells as a supposedly magic solution to the ever widening gap between the few Clydesdales at the top and the many sparrows struggling at the bottom.
Can throwing more prizemoney at the problem really work? Does it trickle down at all, or flood away, dare we say it, sometimes maybe even offshore?
That other chestnut, 'Rising Tide Lifts All Boats,' is basically a variant on 'Trickle-Down' but, when economics professors at Harvard, hardly a bastion of Lefty Trots, slag it off - "It's like giving people aspirin when they have cancer: it might make them feel a little better but it's not going to cure them" - then it's surely worth examining as a long-term policy.
Willie Mullins left himself vulnerable to flak last week with his comments about National Hunt racing, and Cheltenham in particular, needing to increase prizemoney levels.
There's no doubt the champion trainer is genuine in his concern for colleagues doing less well than he is. And there's something very refreshing about a major racing figure actually taking an overview in the first place and then being prepared to express an opinion on it.
But when Mullins says for instance that the Gold Cup prizemoney should be increased because the winning pot is roughly the cost of buying an expensive horse, he leaves himself wide-open to hearty choruses of 'There's no interest like self-interest, like no interest I know!"
It's obvious to everyone that in such a circumstance the pot is mostly irrelevant to all bar those involved professionally. And if it's a sweat to an owner than it could reasonably be asked why are they in possession of an expensive luxury like an expensive racehorse in the first place?
Sure there's an argument for equine meritocracy being rewarded; certainly a more logical one than cramming cash into handicaps. But there's no getting away from how it still effectively corrals prizemoney into an ownership elite that's hardly short anyway and are presumably involved in the sport for sporting reasons.
That those purporting 'Trickle-Down' can often be the ones most enthusiastic in their market-forces and survival-of-the-fittest beliefs is hardly a coincidence. It's Santa voting for Christmas. No one's saying there are easy alternatives but shouldn't the issue be seriously examined?
Especially since tears from the top for those at the bottom are wide open to accusations of being crocodile when you examine how, just a day after Mullins's comments, E300,000 got added to an already bulging 'Irish Champions Weekend' prizemoney fund.
Where exactly is that money supposed to eventually trickle to? And is an extra E300,000 going to make any appreciable difference to anyone fortunate enough to have a horse involved in Champions Weekend? What precisely is the point of it, except maybe bringing the total prizefund to E4 million which will sound snappy in a press-release.
People can fill in their own blanks as to what sort of difference E300,000 could make elsewhere: there's hardly a shortage of options. But prizemoney remains the great Godot and there's no sign of that changing anytime soon. Why would it, when it continues to trickle into the pockets of those that matter.
Willie Mullins's idea of a 'Champions' fixture for jumps got attention too, although since the inspiration for every 'Champions' flat fixture probably included Cheltenham it's hard to follow the logic exactly. However one thing Mullins was bang on the button about though was in pointing out how midweek dates should be relished rather than tolerated.
In PR terms having a day or a sequence of days to yourself is a no-brainer when you consider racing usually winds up swamped by other sports when big dates are run at weekends. You have to balance potential feet on the ground against that coverage but plenty of weekend fixtures have hardly been over-run by floating customers in recent years.
In fact it can hardly be a coincidence that after all the various 'Champions' fiddling in Britain, with dates and races shuffled about, there seems to be growing acknowledgement that going back to the tried and trusted mightn't be a bad idea. You see those that want to go usually find a way to go, whatever day of the week it is. So what's the betting on how long before the Epsom Derby goes back to a Wednesday?
With just a fortnight to Cheltenham, bookmaker hype is going to go stratospheric, with every funny step, sniffle and utterance pored over for meaning and significance. And there's one phrase that will be repeated a lot - smart money.
Last week one firm assured us that in the market to be JP McManus's next jockey, both Mark Walsh and Paul Townend had come in for support from "smart money." And the inevitable rejoinder had to be how smart can it be if BOTH were being backed.
Mind you some people can talk: there were fourteen races in Ireland at the weekend and this corner tipped precisely none of them. Admittedly just two clear favourites obliged but there were only a couple of long-priced howlers too. And getting a 4-9 favourite beaten in a two runner race put the proverbial tin-hat on it.
Oh yeah, roll on Cheltenham - the hardest punting week of the year!
