Newbury lands a safe bet to support its revival
Ladrokes has form for saving big races and can ensure the Gold Cup venue prospers, writes Marcus Armytage
Newbury is rejuvenating itself. More than £10m has already been spent on its facilities
Au revoir Hennessy Cognac. Hello Ladbrokes.
Not my New Year’s resolution, a direction to my nonexistent stockbroker or a Remoaner’s lament, but rather Newbury tomorrow when the jump season’s biggest handicap chase outside of Aintree takes place.
For 60 years it was the Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup but runs for the first time as the Ladbrokes Trophy and, like 60 per cent of all sponsored races now, it bears a bookmaker’s handle.
There are some people in jump racing who still refer to Newbury’s Betfair Hurdle in February as the ‘Schweppes’ – a company which gave up its near quarter-century sponsorship of the race in 1986. Others still call Sandown’s Bet365 Chase the ‘Whitbread’ – a business whose name has not been attached to it since it stopped brewing beer in 2001 – so I was planning to give it at least a generation (until this year’s school intake have become trainers) before the Ladbrokes Trophy starts tripping off the tongue.
Perhaps, however, by the time 13 of the 14 races run over the two days have been called the Ladbrokes something or other – there are, confusingly, two Ladbrokes Handicap Hurdles, one each day – like the drip, drip, drip of Chinese water torture our resolve to keep calling it the Hennessy may already be broken as soon as tomorrow night.
Ladbrokes’ takeover of the whole meeting should not be seen as some philanthropic act by the bookmaker stepping in to rescue a nouveau-pauvre old friend. Rather it is a commercial coup for the company and, indeed, for Newbury, a racecourse also trying to look forward rather than backwards. It should be a win-win for both parties.
For although Newbury has this wonderful jewel of a race full of history and heritage which has been won by some of the winter greats like Arkle, Mandarin and, more recently Denman – the only horses to win it twice – the racecourse itself had become like one of those once great trainers who has to pack it in because all his old owners have died and he is down to two horses.
But Newbury is now rejuvenating itself and trying to reconnect with the town – particularly those resident on site – wider Berkshire and its old ally, Lambourn.
In that respect Ladbrokes has form; it helped save the Grand National, it re-invigorated the St Leger, which the ‘Hennessy’ replaces in its sponsorship portfolio, and it looks hell bent on making Newbury’s biggest two days into a ‘winter carnival’.
It was part of the racecourse’s misfortune to find itself at the start of the 21st century at the back of an industrial estate, parts of which are quite run down. The low point came in February 2011 when two horses were accidentally electrocuted in the parade ring by an old electric cable which had lain redundant and seemingly benign under the turf for years.
Since that awful day Newbury has hopped into bed with a housing developer and the sale of bits of land for apartments and flats is funding the racecourse’s own re-generation. It will take until 2020 until it is complete. By then you will not recognise the place – more than £10million has already been spent on the stables, the pre-parade ring, a rail bridge which brings in traffic down the home straight – Newbury’s better side – to a new entrance. A new owners’ facility, which is now de rigueur for modern racecourses if they are to attract the best horses, was opened recently and improving things for the racegoer is next up. When it is complete it will be like me after a few yoga sessions; it will flow more, breathe better and, though it was good at the time, it will no longer need the brandy.