Ffos Las owner's emphasis on exciting racing shows what can be done by putting courses at the centre of racing's promotion
Following Dai Walters' resurrection of the Welsh Champion Hurdle at Ffos Las three days ago, the news that the track's owner wants to get his hands on the Welsh National too could have been timed a little better. The Welsh Champion Hurdle, after all, was a personal triumph for Walters, whose own Oscar Whisky won in a canter at odds of 2-7, but so uncompetitive that it was of no real interest or use to anyone else. It might be an idea to get one race right, before trying to grab any more.
Yet there was a very obvious reason why the field for the Welsh Champion was so thin, despite a prize fund of �30,000, and while Walters' pursuit of the Welsh National might seem vainglorious, this kind of ambition is just what racing will need when ? or if ? we ever reach a post-Levy era.
The problem on Saturday was that there were two races with near-identical conditions ? the Contenders' Hurdle at Sandown was the other ? staged on the same afternoon, which attempted to draw runners from the very top of the hurdling pyramid. There were never likely to be enough to go round and, while a late setback for Peddlers' Cross prevented him from running in either contest, he was a likely starter in the first place only because yet another valuable two-mile hurdle, at Haydock, had been lost to the weather two weeks earlier.
There is one school of thought which holds that, in the grand scheme, this really doesn't matter. Not every race should be primarily about punting, and sometimes even a race that looks horribly dull on paper can add a surprisingly bright new thread to the grand tapestry that is racing.
Which is true, as far as it goes. But that is not too far, since ? as far as I know ? no one has ever argued that every race should be primarily about punting. What every race should be about, at least in the immensely valuable shop window of Saturday afternoon, is spectacle and uncertainty. Events that do little more than allow the purest of the purists to stroke their chins and murmur appreciative noises belong elsewhere.
In commercial terms Saturday's programme represented an almost complete waste of �40,000 ? forty grand ? at a time when the sport is already struggling for funds. It is an unsustainable situation, and one of these events will surely need to move, or disappear, in the near future.
One positive thought, though, is that the survivor is likely to be decided on the basis of who wants it more. The need for racecourses to be seen as the centre of the sport, the place that stages, promotes and ultimately manages "the show", is a perennial theme in this column, and this is a good example. There is a clear commercial incentive for the tracks concerned to boost prize money and make their race the only one that anyone wants to contest.
Saturday's race at Ffos Las was worth three times as much as its rival at Sandown. Another few thousand in the purse could be enough to secure sole ownership of this slot, with significant commercial benefits both for Ffos Las and also for racing, through increased audience interest and betting turnover.
Entrepreneurial courses were an important part of racing's early growth from private pastime of the gentry to a public sport. Sandown, as it happens, was particularly forward-thinking in the late 1800s, in terms of facilities for racegoers and prize money for the newly-conceived Eclipse Stakes, which was worth twice as much as the Derby at its launch.
Competition between tracks, both domestically and abroad, to get the best possible horses into the best possible races, is the surely the most logical way to boost prize money in a modern racing industry. Tariffs, by comparison, seem so 19th century.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2011/feb/07/dai-walters-ffos-las
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