Shared Ownership: Start as you mean to go on

After a flying 2025, Value Racing Club made the best possible start to 2026 with a winner at Cheltenham on New Year’s Day.

The brainchild of founder James Couldwell, Value Racing Club was formed in 2013. Whilst James gets some support from people behind the scenes, he still conducts most of the club administration and communications himself and tries to be at the races to host shareholders when there is a Value Racing runner. This is no small undertaking, with Value Racing currently looking after 34 horses on the Flat, over jumps and now even dipping their toe into breeding as well.

Whilst there is the word ‘Club’ in the title, Value Racing is actually a syndicate operator, with each horse sold in 5% shares. There are 242 owners who each have one or more shares of Value Racing horses. 

As has been noted in this column in the past, syndicate ownership is a great way for owners to diversify their holdings and James identified several owners who have shares in ten to 15 horses, with an outlay that is less than if they owned one horse individually.

As with so many of today’s well-run syndicates, shareholders can expect much more than just the chance to go racing as an owner when their horse runs, receiving WhatsApp groups, text messages and emails to keep them updated on the progress of their horse. Twice a year, owners are invited to spend the morning on the gallops with their horse and their trainer. Value Racing currently has horses with Tom Lacey in Herefordshire, Jamie Snowden in Lambourn, Mick Appleby in Oakham and James Owen in Newmarket.

James is rightfully proud of the year that Value Racing had in 2025, but 2026 started in great style with a Listed winner on New Year’s Day at Cheltenham when Solly’s Gold was the impressive winner of the bumper that closed the card. Having won on his debut at Wetherby, the James Owen-trained gelding looked like a serious horse with a nice follow up win here.

Whilst it was nice to get a winner at Cheltenham, Value Racing shareholders are no strangers to success all over the country with just under 40 winners in 2025. That resulted in over 300,000 
in prize-money banked by the horses including over £23,000 from the win of the Lacey-trained The Lord Maid on Scottish Grand National Day at Ayr, and just under £40,000 from the Snowden-trained Only The Bold who won the Summer Cup at Uttoxeter in late June.

Summer jump racing is an area that Value Racing focuses on. They have also had a lot of success there and it is slightly frustrating to James that because each horse requires a separate  syndicate to be created, syndicate groups do not feature on lists of top owners. 

With 16 winners in the summer jumps season last year, Value Racing would probably have been the leading owner in that sphere; let’s hope that at some stage syndicates can be recognised for the number of winners they achieve. It is a shame that you can type the name of a sole owner into the Racing Post website and see a full list of their horses, but you cannot do the same with a syndicate, as each horse runs with a different ownership name. Even if a naming convention is used (Value Racing register their ownerships as Value Racing and then the name of the horse), it is hard to get details of the number of horses that are running for the syndicate and their form.

Many syndicates are run by enthusiastic individuals or small groups, and Value Racing is no different. When asked about aspirations for the future, James was keen not to get so big that he could not deliver the service to shareholders personally and he would rather emphasise the quality of horses owned over the quantity.

Despite not wanting to grow too big, Value Racing did want to diversify and with a 90- rated mare from the Flat, the temptation to get into breeding was strong. With their first homebred due to 
race in 2026 and more offspring from the mare coming through, James is dreaming of a first homebred winner, and maybe that will happen in 2026!

Value Racing has not been the only syndicate operator that has started to breed horses. Shared ownership is increasingly introducing shareholders to the breeding side of racing and that can only be a good thing. Let’s hope that our syndicates and racing clubs become a starting point for future breeders as well as future breeders as well as future sole owners!