BACK IN THE SADDLE!
Racing is ready to lead us out of the sporting a meeting at Newcastle. It will be different
RACING is expected to receive the green light from the Government this week for a return on Monday at Newcastle’s all-weather track. It will be the first major professional sport in Britain since the shutters came down when racing ended with jumps fixtures at Taunton and Wetherby on March 17.
It has always been favourite that racing would lead us back. It does not have the logistical issues of some team sports, especially the contact sports like rugby. And unlike football, which has struggled for a common approach, racing has been united in the common goal of getting going again.
Indeed, the only disunity has come from the owners, trainers and racecourses who believe that the BHA has not pressed racing’s claim hard enough for a quicker restart, a debate fuelled by their belief that British racing could have returned with minimum risk, as has happened in some countries around the world.
The sport, possibly wounded by the criticism levelled at it for staging the Cheltenham Festival as the pandemic cranked up in March, has insisted that waiting for Government approval has been the only possible approach.
During shutdown, the majority of racehorses in Flat stables around the country have kept moving, their frustrated owners still paying most if not all of their training fees. They, along with jockeys, stable staff and trainers, have been champing at the bit to get back in action.
A massive 369 entries were made yesterday for the ten-race Newcastle meeting, with many leading trainers from around the country represented and champion jockey Oisin Murphy among the riders booked.
Newcastle is a start, a welcome one, but the reality is that the racing landscape will look very different. No one knows when crowds or owners will be able to return to the track. Income streams have been ravaged, sponsors’ businesses financially hit, meaning prize-money will plunge.
It’s back but not as we know it...
FIXTURES
RACING will have been absent for a day short of 11 weeks when the stalls open again. There will have been 325 meetings lost, a massive chunk of the 1,481 fixtures scheduled.
In the equivalent period last year, there were 20,657 runners. That is a massive backlog. Runners are queued up to go and in the early weeks, at least, opportunities will be hugely oversubscribed as the sport eases its way through a backlog making the M25 during rush hour look like the definition of fluidity.
Newcastle will be the only meeting on Monday, there will be two meetings for the next four days with three on Saturday, June 6. That is the date of the Qipco 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket with the 1,000 Guineas 24 hours later.
A clutch of big races have been lost but rescheduling at the top end of the sport has revolved around ensuring the Classic programme and the major contests, which define the outstanding performers of each generation, survive.
A revised fixture list has been drawn up to concertina a series of big events into the first five weeks. This will allow the flow of the season to return to as near to normal as possible, with meetings like Glorious Goodwood and york’s Ebor meeting in their usual slots.
The first Group One race of the season will be the Coronation Cup on Friday week, transferred from Epsom to Newmarket. The Investec Derby and Oaks at Epsom have been moved back to July 4 with the Coral-Eclipse Stakes at Sandown earlier.
A behind-closed-doors Royal Ascot, which will have six extra races taking the total to 36, sticks to its scheduled slot of June 16-20. The programme over the five days has been adjusted to give as much time as possible between races that attract the same runners. That means the St James’s Palace Stakes, normally on the opening day, will be pushed back to the end of the final day because it is a natural stepping stone for 2,000 Guineas participants.
By late June, the redrawn fixture list, currently published until the end of August, will see four meetings on Saturdays with this extended to Fridays in July. In the original schedule there would have been six and seven meetings.
However, Ascot do not expect to allow in racegoers until September at the earliest.
RULES AND REGULATIONS
PROTOCOLS for the first phase of racing’s return were published over the weekend and ran to 33 pages. For the time being the sport will look very different.
Under the mantra of only essential personnel on course, there will be no owners or sponsors admitted and all those who attend a meeting will have to be pre-registered and have filled in a health questionnaire, something which must be repeated every seven days if they attend multiple fixtures.
Once at the track, everyone must undergo temperature testing. If they test over 37.8°C — they can take the test twice — admittance will be denied.
It will be one groom per horse and a trainer or their representative and, initially at least, trainers have been asked not to send difficult or fractious horses to the track which might be hard to deal with within the protocols.
Face covering must be worn and racecourses have been reconfigured. Jockeys will be changing away from the Weighing Room at many tracks — Newcastle has constructed a new social distance changing area in one of its big grandstand bars — and there will be no saunas or showers for riders.
Initially runners will be declared 72 hours before race day to allow all arrangements to be made. It is usually 48 hours for Flat races.
Most races will be limited to 12 runners in the first fortnight, the exceptions being more prestigious races at Listed level and above. Overseas runners will be allowed in the 1,000 and 2,000 Guineas and Coronation Cup, plus at Royal Ascot. But although movement of horses is unrestricted, trainers will have to operate their staff within the 14-day quarantine policy put in place by various governments.
Questions about travel have also prompted Ascot to call off the Shergar Cup, an international jockey challenge, on August 8.
FINANCE
TO SAy racing’s finances have a mighty great hole in them is stating the obvious. Copy and paste for virtually every sport and business in the country.
Since the shutdown an estimated
£7.5million a month has been lost to the sport in Levy income; media rights, which earn the sport £150m a year, have largely dried up and racecourses’ nonrace-day income has been erased from most diaries for the foreseeable future.
That is before the concern of whether sponsors will be able to fulfil their contracts, let alone sign up few fresh ones.
How to start filling in that hole with so many question marks about the future conjures up the image of a workman with a shovel when a JCB is needed.
In the short to medium term, racing has to cut its limited cloth to fit the best it can. In general, thanks to a £15.7m contribution from the Levy Board, that has meant shoring up prize-money at the lower end of the pyramid to offer some encouragement to smaller owners who have been racking up training fees and expenses with no idea when they will see their horses in the flesh at their stables or on the racetrack.
Average prize-money at 80 per cent of previous stated minimum levels is the aim but this policy can only be achieved with swathing cuts at the top of the food chain. That has meant 50 per cent cuts at the highest Group One level where winners gain added kudos that potentially can be translated financially in their future breeding career.
Ultimately, how sponsorship holds up will dictate top prizes on the day with racecourse executive contributions expected to be minimal as they struggle to operate at break-even without a crowd.
Sportsmail has reported that the Investec Derby at Epsom in July could drop to as low as £500,000, around a third of its proposed value.
BETTING
WHILE betting shops have been closed, the sport has lost an income stream that delivers £150m a year for pictures from the racecourse.
That means the news on Monday that betting shops will be among the ‘non-essential retail outlets’ allowed to open from June 15 is a massive fillip. Even more importantly, the re-opening comes 24 hours ahead of Royal Ascot. Firms look likely to open most of their shops but there is uncertainty about how socialdistancing measures will affect traditional business.
Until shops re-open the only way to place a bet will be online. Evidence, albeit from betting mad Hong Kong, where betting turnover held up well as crowds were barred from tracks, is positive as is the increased betting interest on overseas racing, particularly from the US. Pent-up demand and being the only show in town should see an uplift in turnover, something which should benefit the sport which receives 10 per cent of profits via the betting Levy.
In the short term that is one of the only income streams available to racing. The other is a small fee every time a punter watches a race on a bookmaker site, having placed a bet.
The other short-term change in the betting landscape is formulating the all-important Starting Price odds. This usually is collated taking a sample of odds offered by the on-course bookies. While they are absent, the SP will be compiled by the Press Association using betting shows offered by the major firms online.
MEDIA
THE opening fixtures will be covered on track by two reporters — one from the Press Association and one from the Racing Post — as well as two photographers. All will pool their work for racing and sports media not allowed on course. Remote press conferences and briefings via channels like Zoom are also being planned.
Racing TV and Sky Sports Racing will be allowed one reporter on track with punditry done from the studio or home. Pictures will be by RaceTech, the dedicated provider on British racecourses.
ITV, who will show their first live racing from Newmarket on Friday week, have carried out rehearsals with anchor Ed Chamberlin presenting from the spare bedroom in his Hampshire home with team-mates Francesca Cumani and Jason Weaver contributing from their homes.
Both ITV and Sky are hoping for a presence on track at Royal Ascot but restrictions will only be lifted slightly.