Crus Caps Great Weekend!

There has been much speculation recently over the size of the bookmaker’s levy contribution and how that is going to affect prize money levels in racing next year. Why there is suddenly a panic about this now, when the problem has clearly been ongoing for some time I will never know. You just have to look at the comparative prize money from the races that we won over the weekend – in 2009 Peut Etre Sivola won £18,786.000, while this year’s renewal rewarded him with prize money of £12,697.50 (a decrease of some 32.4%). Grands Crus picked up £12,524.00 for his terrific Cheltenham success, while the 2009 renewal netted winning connections £15,655.00 (which represents a 20% decrease last year to this). Racing is clearly in need of some direction with regard to funding at present…and quickly! If prizemoney continues to drop away like this, there will be little incentive for owners to run their horses in this country. Indeed, many of our horses have been bought from France, and we are already looking for more lucrative opportunities for some of them back across the Channel.

As mentioned last week, Our Vic has been retired and many of you may well have seen him on Channel 4 Racing parading before the Paddy Power Gold Cup (a race he won in 2005) at Cheltenham on Saturday. I am sure that you will agree that he was looking fantastic and he has been retired sound and well – he will now spend his retirement with Timmy Murphy in company with a couple of his other old favourites, Well Chief and Vodka Bleu. It is also great to hear that Robert Thornton is making good progress from his injury sustained at Newton Abbot back in the summer. I understand that he has been back in the saddle aboard Vodka Bleu, so it is nice that these great old campaigners are being kept active during their retirement.

The defection of Kauto Star from the Hennessy Gold Cup has certainly opened things up a little bit (if not a great deal!) with Denman likely to be the topweight for Newbury’s feature on Saturday week. With a rating of 182 Denman will still leave many of his rivals out of the handicap proper, although Madison du Berlais will creep in with a nice racing weight of 10-1. He put in a pleasing effort over hurdles on his reappearance at Exeter and that will have done him good – he won the Hennessy in 2008 and has since twice beaten Denman, so we are looking forward to renewing rivalries there.