Sam Sangster, Manton Thoroughbreds
I think the answer is to delay the start of the turf season until after the Grand National and just before what in a normal year is the week in which we have both the Craven and Greenham meetings [an unusually late Easter this year saw the two days of Newbury’s Greenham meeting programmed for the week prior to the Craven for once].
The way things are, there’s not enough excitement about Lincoln week and the start of the turf because the Grand National is looming large and tends to overshadow it. Then for a fortnight or so afterwards there are just the odd turf meetings here and there before we really get going. I think it would be a different story if you could stage Doncaster just before Craven/Greenham week, and you would also hopefully attract a better calibre of runner even just a couple of weeks later, particularly among the two-year-olds, who will be a lot more forward by then. I think it would give a real big bang to the start of the season if you went from the Lincoln straight into the Craven and then on to the Greenham, all in a week.
Imagine if the Brocklesby was run two weeks later. In our part of the country, we already tend to think of turf racing starting in Craven week and we didn’t have anything ready for it this year. But two weeks is a long time in a two-year-old’s development and if it had been that bit later you would tend to get a better-quality race and we could have had one of ours running for something like £74,000, including Goffs’ £50,000 bonus.
Lord Grimthorpe, Racing Manager to Imad Alsagar
At the risk of stating the obvious, in the days before the all-weather and before Dubai and so on, the Lincoln meeting heralded the start of the Flat racing season full stop, not just Flat racing on turf, and as such it was much more of a landmark in the calendar. The spring double with the Grand National was quite a thing then, but now I’m afraid the start of the turf season at Doncaster has become rather isolated, as the opportunities available elsewhere mean that the Lincoln and supporting card aren’t necessarily the number one destination.
I’m sure there are better brains than mine thinking about it at ARC, but it’s not something that will be fixed overnight. It needs an incremental, co-ordinated marketing campaign to try and build up some of the races into something that people want to see and want to bet on, then at least that would generate more excitement. Money alone isn’t the solution to adding a bit of glamour though, since the advent of so many lucrative opportunities abroad mean that the pool of horses of a certain level available in Britain is being stretched.
Even if you succeed in building up a bit of momentum, there’s still going to be a lull between the Lincoln meeting and the Craven when nothing much happens for a few weeks, and my own view is that moving the meetings closer together isn’t going to make much of a difference. We have to consolidate, we have to support and we have to innovate. We need a campaign to drive a bit of excitement to make Doncaster a bit of a festival in its own right.
George Baker, jockey coach, RacingTV pundit and assistant to Ed Walker
I think a much clearer start to the grass season is needed. We currently almost have three separate starts – Doncaster, Craven week, which is what a lot of people regard as the start, and then Guineas weekend, which is when the championships kick off. Also, on the same day as the Lincoln, there’s a very strong all-weather fixture at Kempton, and that’s where a lot of the top jockeys and trainers are, so that’s not ideal.
I understand why the championships start when they do, and QIPCO has been an amazing sponsor, but I think grass racing should start when the championships start, or the other way around if you like. I think it needs a complete revamp. I appreciate that if you start turf racing in Craven week then obviously Doncaster loses one of its signature fixtures, but I think we have to find a way.
If anything, I feel even more strongly about the end of the season. It can’t be right that the climax to a strong apprentice title race plays out at Catterick on Champions Day. There shouldn’t be another grass meeting that day. Even if they aren’t riding at Ascot the award winners should be there receiving their honours in front of their peers. The way the jumps season finishes is messy too. Is there a case for finishing it on Grand National Day? I think there is.
Eve Johnson Houghton, trainer
It’s a nightmare these days and it’s something I’ve thought about a lot, but I’m not sure what the answer is. I think part of the problem is that we’ve lost some turf courses so the emphasis after Doncaster is still on the all-weather. For example, we used to race at Folkestone after Doncaster, but that’s gone, and there always used to be turf Flat racing at Warwick on Easter Monday, but that’s gone too. We clearly need more turf meetings in the opening weeks, but where are they going to come from?
Some people have suggested we need to move Newmarket and Newbury closer to Doncaster, but it’s cold and horses won’t be ready. If you do it the other way around and move Doncaster closer to Newmarket and Newbury, you are likely to get firmer ground and then where do the soft-ground horses go?
I agree that something needs to be done, but every action has a consequence, and the timing of the Grand National and of Easter in particular make it really difficult. This year it’s really bad because Easter is particularly late. I can’t remember Newbury ever having come the week before Newmarket.
Andrew Cooper, Head of Racing and Clerk of the Course at Epsom and Sandown Park
It’s the fortnight after Doncaster that is mainly the issue and I can understand why there’s no great appetite from courses to step forward and fill those midweek gaps before the Classic trials meetings at Newmarket and Newbury, after which we are up and running and there’s no longer a problem. From a clerk’s point of view, it’s just not a very attractive proposition. Some dual-purpose courses will still be holding jumps meetings, and the last thing you want to be doing at a Flat turf course in the early weeks is trashing it on soft ground.
I see Bath and Yarmouth now start way earlier than they ever used to, but it’s not straightforward. I suspect it’s not necessarily commercially attractive and that the number of Flat turf courses that would be ready and able to step in is in any case very limited. I know that my tracks couldn’t realistically start much earlier than they do traditionally, which this year meant April 22 at Epsom and April 25 at Sandown. To start any earlier, I would have had to have brought forward fertilisation and irrigation and so on by a good couple of weeks, and Sandown needs that six-week gap after Imperial Cup day.
If you started with a blank sheet of paper, you might say that the week after the Grand National is where the Lincoln meeting would sit best, but Easter will always play a part and this year moving to the Saturday after the National would have meant a clash with the Scottish National and also the Greenham meeting, which this time came the week before Newmarket. That wouldn’t have made any sense, so it’s a difficult one.
Jack Channon, trainer
I think the problem we have is that a lot of the tracks that used to stage turf racing in the first few weeks of the season are gone now, and those that we still have aren’t keen to mess their ground up so early in the year. I know I’m going back a bit now, but the good all-weather meeting they have at Kempton on Lincoln day used to be a decent turf fixture, and then there would be Folkestone, Warwick and so on. They might not have been the most glamorous of fixtures, but they provided a bit of continuity.
I think that the answer is to try and fill some of those gaps in the period between Doncaster and the trials meetings, which is when most of us in the industry tend to think of as the real start of turf racing. However, finding turf courses that would step in and take those fixtures is easier said than done – and is a question for better minds than mine!
