RASEN A FUSS ON THE SMALLEST OF SUNDAYS

In Britain at least, the racing programme on the day after the turf Flat season has come to an end – so three days ago at the time of writing - has been pretty low-key for a while now, and all the more so since the disappearance of yet another non-weekday meeting from the embattled Hereford reduced the number of fixtures at home from three to two in 2011.

Arena Racing Company’s increasing reluctance to preserve Hereford’s weekend and Bank Holiday fixtures would lead one to think that giving up on this raceday (in favour of a vacant Monday slot the day after), plus the activity on the same day of another ARC Group course in the shape of Ffos Las, rather conveniently simplified this particular issue of how to fit quarts into pint pots. 

Not that the two surviving slots would necessarily have been open to rival bids by ARC, or the Hereford executive, or by anyone else at all, for that matter.  Ffos Las’s retention of its respective slot since 2009, and Market Rasen’s for at least a decade now, may hint that theirs were entitlements to race that were locked in and secured to several-year contracts.

If, however, they were not, and anyone was indeed within their gift to outbid the Carmarthenshire and Lincolnshire venues with pledges of better prizemoney, they didn’t make a good enough job of it to influence a change to the established running order - Ffos Las and Market Rasen proceed as before, and this despite, in the case of the latter venue, all bar one race on the card falling below the Horsemen’s Group’s respective tariffs for the race types in question.

Yah, boo and sucks to the tight-wads of the Rasen executive, have come the cries from the Horsemen’s Group, with Group member Rupert Arnold of the National Trainers Federation moved enough in Sunday’s Racing Post to describe the track as a repeat offender where not hitting tariffs is concerned. 

However, whilst there is no refuting that today’s fixture is by no means the only one at the course this year in which un-met tariff numbers have glared out in red print from the pages of the Post’s racecard (its Saturday evening fixture the weekend after the August Bank Holiday was a similarly HG-goading affair), Arnold’s claim as it stands wants for the benefit of context.  Whether Market Rasen’s pledge amounted to a hill of beans isn’t really the point – it was enough.  As Asda regularly beseeches us in its advertising campaigns, “why pay more?”

For a course to be able to run a fixture as markedly sub-tariff as this one, it takes the indifference of other courses to let it; and nowhere is this more evident than on Sundays.  Frequent are the howls from racegoers that British Sundays are mostly bereft of quality, the preserve instead of muck ‘n’ nettles jumps fixtures even at the height of summer.  The likely truth of the matter, however, is that for many Sundays in the year, there isn’t a stack of courses waiting in the wings to try to seize the berths in question. 

The business imperative to host one’s best races on a day of the week where commercial returns aren’t certain to reach the levels of, say, those of a Saturday afternoon fixture, isn’t especially compelling, and all the less so if the same degree of terrestrial television coverage of 24 hours earlier cannot be guaranteed.  Note that even with Ascot, Newmarket, Ripon and – theoretically, at least - Cartmel vying for coverage on Channel 4 on the same day, Market Rasen could secure itself enough of a share of the available airtime for the Summer Plate back on Saturday, July 21^st.  A day later, however, the rival action in Britain comprised just Ascot (all class 2 or lower) and Newton Abbot, but no terrestrial cameras were rolling.

Quality does exist in some outposts of the Sunday programme, though, and it’s noticeable that two of Pontefract’s Listed events are now well established as features at Sunday fixtures that regularly attract two of the venue’s three biggest crowds of the year. 

Whether numbers would shrink especially were the Pontefract Castle Stakes and the Flying Fillies’ Stakes to be moved elsewhere in the week is a moot point, however.  From this writer’s own regular patronage of both fixtures in recent years, this municipal course’s relaxed, family-friendly atmosphere, suitability for picnics and weathered Yorkshire red-brick charm (to say nothing of some incongruous, yet very welcome, outbreaks of genuine summer sun) looked to have proven the lure for more attendees than the presence of often penny-number fields to the best races on the respective cards. 

If not quite the stuff of bread and circuses, conversely, Market Rasen will nevertheless continue to chart a different course to the likes of Pontefract, basing instead its business model upon putting up what little prizemoney it requires to on days where frivolous abandon isn’t required, and better rewards at the fixtures requiring them on the days of the week that best suit. 

And what rewards those better rewards are – something Arnold failed to acknowledge in pronouncing on Sunday’s fixture.  The Horsemen’s Group’s prizemoney stipulation for a Listed Saturday-afternoon non-novice chase currently stands at £17,400.  Total prizemoney for the 2012 renewal of the Summer Plate, conversely, stood at £49,185 – that’s £31,785, or 282.67%, better than tariff – on a raceday offering prizes totalling over £120,000.

“Regular offender” or star performer, then?