Pay peanuts...get monkeys

Ha! So all of those of you who voted against me updating this blog in a week were wrong. Oh, no one voted at all.

There was a little debate on the way to the races yesterday in respect to prize money - notably the lack of it. People moan that there is too much racing and not enough prize money. I take argument to this view; the amount of racing at the moment is sustainable and provides a regular flow of action to punters and fans alike. The problem is though that those associated with the upkeep of the horses (owners, trainers, staff etc) will not be able to provide the horses for the action because they can't afford to.

The recession hasn't dramatically altered the training of racehorses which has been the same, more or less, for hundreds of years but people are now being more economical - instead of trecking to a venue with one runner, they'll fill the box up with two just to make the trip more cost effective. Similarly, trainers' steeds now share lifts in horse boxes thus reducing the cost as well.

None of this is bad, in fact it saves money and reduces carbon emmissions because less boxes are travelling to the races, but it doesn't detract attention away from the problem of prize money.

You see horses racing round Wolverhampton on a Saturday night for roughly £1500. This barely covers a month's training fees for the nag. Ownership should be profitable for everyone and this would surely bring new faces to the game.

To boost the pot at the lower end of the scale, I think the authorities need to trim something off the top of the tree. Why, for instance, does the QE2 need to be £142,000 to the winner when there are only 4 runners and most years the quality of horse is substandard to Group 1 level?

Yes, the big handicaps should have valuable pots to attract competition but why does the Derby need to be worth almost £1m? Surely Chris Tsui, owner of this years winner Sea The Stars, wouldn't mind if he only won half that amount because, at the end of the day, he's still going to get insane money for him as a stallion.

Basically, the big Group 1s don't need big prizes because the value of the win comes with the horse, at sale or through breeding. Little handicap winners won't be worth much more for winning a class 6 event, they don't have a future in the industry after retirment, but if the prize is good, then things are more affordable.

Say you trim £200,000 off the prize money of the Derby, this could be redistributed as an extra £1000 prize money for 200 other races.

It seems that the rich only get richer in this game and for that reason, racing is excluding 99.9% of the British population.