'Everyone should make a small sacrifice' - Pontefract chief on fixture list row

Pontefract racecourse's chief stressed the need for cross-industry action and for everyone to make "a small sacrifice" as he responded to the war of words that has broken out since the publication of next year's fixture list.

Norman Gundill, a former RCA and BHB board member, was responding to assertions that the rises in minimum race values were “pitiful” according to trainer Mark Johnston, whose memories of the course’s part in the tariff row a decade ago he claimed were not strictly correct.

“Everyone keeps saying, ‘There’s isn’t enough prize-money’, but my question is, ‘What is your solution?’, Gundill said.

"There have been complaints about lack of prize-money since I started. But finances are simple, you either need to increase the income coming into racing or reduce the cost of staging racing. But that has got to be an industry solution.”

The 2023 fixture list contains a nearly identical number of meetings to this year’s, despite calls for a reduction to fit the horse population and boost falling field sizes.

“It’s all very well saying we’ve got to cut races out – and I’m inclined to agree, we do need to match race types and class to available horses – but the question is where and who loses them,” Gundill said.

Norman Gundill: question is which tracks would lose racesCredit: David Carr

“It’s a Gordian Knot, but when I was on the RCA board a long time ago, in the Jockey Club era, all courses with 16 or more meetings put one fixture into limbo for a year.

“I’m not saying that would work now but it is a precedent for collective action when the horse population becomes tight, everyone making a small sacrifice.”

Johnston claimed that Gundill had threatened to downgrade Pontefract’s programme at the time of the row over prize-money tariffs a decade ago.

But the course's managing director said: “What actually happened was the Horsemens Group said, ‘Your problem is you put on too good a programme for the type of racecourse you are’, and I said I hadn’t spent the last 30 years improving the race programme in order to dumb it down.

“All the races that we’d been allocated had been approved and we’ve always had a policy of endeavouring to run all races above minimum value.”

2023 fixture list: the British racing calendar by month (PDF)

Read more . . .

'A drop in the ocean' – Mark Johnston blasts minimum prize-money rises (Members' Club)

Racecourses and trainers at loggerheads after 2023 fixture list is published

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