It's Fakenham over Royal Ascot for me

I am writing this column before the year’s British racing showcase, Royal Ascot, is underway. As is often the  case before festival meetings, the Chair of the ROA  receives an invite to lunch from the racecourse executive on one of the days of the meeting. Sadly, North Berwick is a long way from Berkshire and usually entails at least one night away, which makes it an expensive trip – especially if one is still working full time. I declined the kind Ascot offer.

However, one invitation that I have accepted and am determined to make is the new season opener at Fakenham racecourse on Friday, October 16. David Hunter, Chief Executive and Clerk of the Course at Fakenham, was prompted to email me after reading the Leader in May's Owner Breeder headlined ‘It costs nothing to look unless you’re an owner’.

David wrote to me explaining that, along with a few other tracks, Fakenham had taken the decision some years ago not to charge entry fees to owners (all entry costs there go to the BHA and Weatherbys for processing your horse’s appearance on the Racing Admin website). The reason was that “…we believe that owners should not be contributing to the prizemoney of our races.” 

Well, I am going to support a course that takes that excellent stance. I hope jumps owners in that neighbourhood do the same, although I’m not sure that I can persuade Nick Alexander to make the trek from Fife to East Anglia with one of mine!

Contrast that with the comment of another director of a racecourse made to me about owners’ entry fees: “We just trouser them.” Last year, £28 million in prize-money was logged as being ‘contributed’ by  owners. In reality, much of it displaced racecourse executive contributions, which would otherwise have been necessary to meet the prizemoney advertised on the Racing Admin website. 

I write about this because it brings up another issue raised in a recent email – the question of whether the Leader columns are ROA policy or whether they are my own thoughts. I made it clear in the second  of my contributions that the views in the column were my own. The ROA’s official stance on matters of prize-money, costs, and owners’ experience is well-documented on the official website and in Chief Executive Louise Norman’s columns in this magazine and online.

If I were sticking solely to the script of what is agreed policy, I wouldn’t need to even think about the columns because I could ask AI to write them instead. Perhaps many people in racing would prefer that! For good or ill, I am doing it my way for now. 

My approach to the Leader column is the same as to the daily, weekly and monthly commentaries I have been writing for fund managers over the last 36 years – a clear, personal point of view based on my own analysis of what the important points of contention are in the industry. It won’t be diplomatic, but it will be honest and heartfelt. The overriding purpose is to make people think and, perhaps, to understand a different perspective. 

But back to David Hunter at Fakenham and the other reason I’m keen to visit. He is the only racecourse Chief Executive that has responded to one of the Leader columns (many owners, sole and syndicate, have responded to welcome – or otherwise – the views expressed). I am sorry to say that no one has written to promise that they would – regardless of any decision that is imposed by the BHA whenever it deems fit to discuss the issue – increase the minimum value of prize-money by £2,000 per race as argued in the March Leader. 

One or two racecourses do, of course, contribute much more than minimum values to all races at their meetings, but they tend to concentrate almost exclusively on Classes 1-4 or Grades 1-3 levels. Royal Ascot is an excellent case in point. 

Yet no matter how ‘aspirational’ we all are (the subject of a future Leader column), very few owners end up with a runner there or at any of the big festivals. My own experience at the top level was down to sheer luck; my many experiences in the bottom grades are much more defining. 

Put simply, we need higher revenues and lower costs for owners across the spectrum or British racing will wither on the vine. For starters, we need more Fakenhams.