08 January 2009

BRITISH racing has been compared to the Titanic, in that it is steaming blithely towards its doom while all aboard open another bottle and listen to the band. Pat Haslam has a different ship in mind.
“Racing’s a bit like the QE2,” he says. “You can’t change its course at the drop of a hat; it takes about four miles to turn around.”
There is latent imagery within that phrase suggesting that the whole thing is firstly a symbol of a bygone age and secondly ripe for decommissioning, Setting that aside, the question arises as to whether racing actually needs to turn around in a wide, leisurely gyre and plot another course. Haslam, a trainer for more than 30 years, has no doubt.
“What we have is not a sustainable model,” he says, on a stone-cold January day that engenders the feeling that winter may last forever. “You really have to be some sort of optimist to think that this is all great at the moment, that today’s status quo is ideal.” And then, with an aside that sends a deeper chill through the soul than does the outside temperature, he adds: “And this credit crunch, recession, whatever we’re to call it, has hardly started.”
Being a trainer, one who had the notable distinction of sending out a winner at each of the racecourses in England, Scotland and Wales until Great Leighs moved the goalposts, Haslam’s views on the situation and possible solutions are necessarily trainer-centric, but the underlying message can be extended to embrace the whole industry. His Middleham brethren share his concerns and many of them identify with the steps he has already taken.
“The owner is integral to the whole operation, especially where finance is concerned,” he says. “I have reduced my overheads where possible and moved to increase efficiency in the yard in regard to suppliers and staff, while also introducing concessions for my owners.
“I give a free month’s training fee for any two-year-old who hasn’t run by June 1 and don’t charge for horses at rest or at grass. I’ve also cut by half my fees for owners with four or more horses in training, and concentrated on having runners at local courses - from here there are 17 racetracks within two hours’ travel - as the cost of long-distance travel is prohibitive relative to current levels of prize-money.”
It would be easy to harp on about prize-money, but that subject is terminally unwell and Haslam’s most novel idea is based on prevention rather than cure. A phrase he returns to again and again is “we need to get everything moving”, and the medicine he has in mind is a good strong dose of reality.
“It costs a lot of money to keep a horse in training and a lot of those horses are useless, no good to their owners or their trainers,” he says. “Yes, it’s good business to keep taking a training fee for these horses, but it won’t help racing as a whole. We need to get everything moving and the time that these horses are in training has to be reduced..
“Say that an owner has a two-year-old, and not a particularly good one at that. It takes three runs to get it handicapped and another couple to find its level so it might actually win a race. Those five runs cost an owner around £10,000, and then he’s only running for a £2,000 purse.
“What racing needs is a system of two-year-old claimers, which would require trainers to assess the ability of a horse more quickly. First time out, the horse runs in a £15,000 claimer, in which it comes sixth, beaten eight lengths. Maybe someone claims it, and the owner then has money to put in the bank or to reinvest at the sales, where because of overproduction horses are getting cheaper and cheaper. That‘s another story.
“If not, next time it runs in a £10,000 claimer and finishes second, beaten three-quarters of a length. Maybe someone claims it; money to reinvest. If not, at least its level is established without it taking five expensive runs to do so.”
It’s the old shape up or ship out model, with the advantage of increasing liquidity in an area of the sport that can often grow stagnant. Horses with no future on the racecourse are as expensive to run as Group 1 winners, and Haslam would like to see retraining opportunities expanded, citing the number of horses he has had that have found their true calling on the polo field, in the dressage arena or with the local hunt.
It may also do something to ease a situation that has Haslam shaking his head. “There is so much low-grade, identical racing that you can hardly tell one meeting from another.
“At Southwell next week there is a 45-60 handicap for four-year-olds and up over 1m4f, and the very next race is one with the same conditions over 2m. Both races will be well subscribed and both have the capacity to divide, so there’ll be four almost identical races for low-quality horses. How boring it is.
“My horse Hi Dancer, who’s six now and is usually rated between about 52 and 58, won at Southwell last Friday under a girl having just her second ride. He cruised through the race and won by 11 lengths. The third horse, a 150-1 chance, was 12 lengths behind the runner-up. You can’t tell me that’s real racing. It’s never been an exact science but this is ridiculous.”
Haslam believes that racing is approaching a crossroads, and is not sure how far he trusts the present racing hierarchy to make the right decisions required in these financially straitened times. He points to the recent epidemic of bank failures and business closures, noting that all of a sudden news breaks that a bank has gone, and when one goes it can be akin to watching a line of dominoes tumble.
He recognises that racing has changed more in the last 20 years than it had in the previous 200 years, and forecasts a similar rate of change in the next five or six years. The problem is, and has been for a long time, that racing is formed of a multitude of groups for whom the first rule is self-interest and the second rule is that there shall be no other rules but the first rule. Haslam holds up his hands and admits that trainers can be as guilty of that as anyone, but insists that attitude must change.
“We have people willing to put up with racing as it is, but there’s no divine right that we’ll have them forever,” he says.
“We have to pitch our ideas forward to how bad the situation might be in five years’ time and work back from there to prevent such a situation developing too far. We mustn’t let the tail wag the dog; we mustn’t be dictated to by events.
“We need a committee of people around a table with every area of racing represented, and we need self-interest put aside. We need our business to be run properly and kept that way. We need good decisions made by well-informed people, and we have to realise that any course of action that is taken will not suit all of us. The alternative is that what happens won’t suit any of us.”
If the metaphor will stretch, we had all better cross our fingers and hope that, whether Titanic or QE2, racing isn’t a ship of fools.