Are Racing For Change backing a loser?
When Racing For Change was launched it came with a catchy title and some interestingly-worded “strategic goals” that formed their mission statement.
One of these core principles was to “define and launch a strategy that leads with distinctive premium-branded racing events, products, championships and finales”. Well, it sounds good even if it requires an honours degree in marketing speak to have a clue what they meant.
The week of free admission last month had to be deemed a success, but probably said as much for the inability of the sport to see that entry charges to largely run-of-the-mill mid-week cards was a problem that needed addressing in the first place. Similarly the push to have Tony McCoy nominated for the BBC’s Sports Personality Of The Year Award, following his headline-grabbing victory on Don’t Push It in the Grand National, is a worthy cause for one of the game’s most indefatigable players.
However, the major test of endurance, and the appetite for change within a sport where the trilby is still pretty much standard-issue, was always going to be the much-talked about revamp of the fixture list. A couple of years ago the British Horseracing Authority conducted a review which amounted to little more than gentle pruning of a something that has pretty much run wild to the point that those “distinctive premium-branded racing events” have been all but swamped by the plethora of anonymous cards that surround them on any given Saturday.
There have been suggestions of a revision of the jumps season and a new starting point for the Flat season but the first concrete proposals appear to be landing on the table is for a Flat finale – if that is not a contradiction in terms – that will be run at Ascot next October.
The centrepiece of this initiative will be the Champion Stakes, which has been run at Newmarket since its inception in 1877, but now is destined to be switched in 2011, where it will be under-pinned by a seven-figure prize fund, to a card that it is hoped will become a genuine competitor to both the Breeders’ Cup and Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe meetings. That is assuming that the plans are acceptable to the racing authorities in Ireland and France.
Racing For Change spokesman Nick Attenborough has kept it to a simple “nothing has been finalised” so far this week but the decision will have taken within weeks if the meeting is to be ratified in time for next year's fixture list, which is scheduled to be completed at the end of June.
Some decisions, like ditching the idea of alternating the fixture between the two courses, have been taken but the drawing board still has a few pages waiting to be filled out. On the one hand there is the question of just what will fill the rest of what its supporters will hope will be a stellar card?
As the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes appears to be staying in its current September slot it is a largely blank canvass. One race will be over a mile and a sprint, a stayers' race and a fillies' and mares' race are likely to feature in the programme, for which upgraded versions of the Ascot's Diadem Stakes and Newmarket's Jockey Club Cup and Pride Stakes seem logical choices, with a couple of big handicaps added for balance. However, the Dewhurst Stakes, Britain’s premier two-year-old race, and the Cesarewitch are set to remain with Newmarket.
That seems a strange move given this meeting will need all the prestige it can muster and any new races are unlikely to awarded Pattern status (and with it the black type that is so important to breeders) in the immediate future unless the European Pattern Committee overturns recent precedent of not awarding such status to new races.
Awarding such a meeting to Ascot, in preference to Newmarket, will be seen as a no-brainer to the marketing department given that the current fixture has an attendance of less than 15,000 and Ascot can cater comfortably for three times that capacity.
However, can that same marketing department deliver the message to the public that they are trying to attract? While those who have yet to be sold on the whole Racing For Change concept may have patience for a new idea to take hold there may be little holding back if it is felt that a traditional fixture has been sacrificed on the altar of radical change.
Then this event may be a branded a premium failure.
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