RACING

The Duke's race war

Captain THREADNEEDLE

The Duke of Norfolk is on record—no racing record is ever superannuated—as say- ing that there would be steeplechasing at Ascot only over his dead body. I understand that Lord Wigg has asked for this obstacle to be incorporated into the National Hunt Rules.

On that grim, fog-bound day at Ascot Heath when the Duke took to the tannoy, you would not have believed to look at Lord Wigg how deep the antipathy between the two noblemen lay. Lord Wigg stood there by the unsaddling enclosure, impas- sive, as the Duke's apologia boomed towards the chestnut trees: not even his ears twitched. Within hours Lord Wigg was attacking the Duke on his own ground: what he had said was a breach of propriety, an abuse of the Duke's position as the Queen's representative on the Ascot Authority—'Art any more than a steward?'

No one, not even the racing correspondent who suggested Silent Duke for the follow- ing Monday's greyhound racing—a bet against the form book which very properly went down—took the Duke at the face value of what he said. He had been provoked, in particular, by Lord Wigg's speech at a party given by the great house of Bollinger, friends of the turf; a speech which attacked, in the plainest terms, the capacity of the Jockey Club to run a racecourse or to administer present-day racing. Lord Wigg likened the Jockey Club to a vintage car: elegant, he implied, but useless. The Duke said no more than that an open feud in racing hurt every- one, and that those who loved the sport should try to bury their differences. Lord Wigg treated these peaceable overtures as though they made his point and justified an outspoken riposte.

What underlies this feud? Why cannot it be settled in the Court of Chivalry? It has been presented as a quarrel over who should run racing. Now racing is an infinitely various thing, which is the best reason why it's interesting: as Mark Twain said, 'It's a difference of opinion that makes horse- racing.' If all racing were run by one man,

there would be nothing to bet on. There may be objections to the Jockey Club as a disci- plinary body, as the arbiters of what is fair and square in racing. The Club's power to take away a man's living comes near to being absolute. But that is not the power that Lord Wigg seeks to assume. The question is, not who should run racing, but who should run racecourses.

That is what explains Lord Wigg's attack on the business capacity of the Jockey Club.

That attack, in itself, was ill-judged; for the Club, if it quarrelled with Lord Wigg on his own ground, might say that many of its members were men of great wealth, accustomed to the handling of it, whereas his Lordship was a political placeman who had never operated anything for profit in a long and busy life. But why should, either be tested by their capacity to manage race-

courses? The Jockey Club controls New- market Heath. Lord Wigg controls the Levy, Board, and thus has supreme command over the money that bookies, willy-nilly, put into the game. But that, on the face of things, is as far as it goes.

In practice it goes further. United Race- course, the company which owns Epsom and Sandown, succumbed to a markedly gener- ous bid from the Levy Board. And a num- ber of racecourses, of which Cheltenham is the most important, belong to a non-profit- making company which has closes links with the Jockey Club. Which is better qualified to run a racecourse? The short answer is: neither.

The Benson report made the fundamental point that, since nobody could make a for- tune out of owning and promoting a race- course, the game was unlikely to attract the enterprising management it needed. To put that more plainly: why take a job with a racecourse? To make money? You must be mad, or worse, stupid. Then because you like horses and the horsy scene? Fair enough. But not a qualification either to innovate or to sell.

Mr David Robinson, the television mil- lionaire who is now racing's most thorough- going patron—over 100 winners last flat- racing season—put the point with cruel clarity. Last year he laid out a quite dispro- portionately large sum of money to buy a London racecourse, Kempton Park. He means to make it a show-piece. Now few there must be whose favourite racecourse is

Kernpton: in spite of its fine steeeplechase course, the ambiance until now has been

that of a Third Division football ground. 'It will not surprise you', Mr Robinson told his fellow-guests at the Gimcrack Dinner, 'that I found at Kempton most of the things that are wrong with racecourses throughout the country. Staff without any business training, an attitude towards the ordinary racegoing public that is at best indifferent, at worst supercilious and offensive . . . take off approximately twenty-two days when racing is held'—on a course in a year—`and we are left with 291 days. What on earth does the management of a racecourse do on those 291 days?'

It is a double irony that the Gimcrack Dinner is staged by York, by common con- sent the best-run racecourse in these islands; and that Major Leslie Petch, the man re- sponsible, has two other racecourses in his charge. But Petches are not to be had for the whistling. How many racecourse managers believe that whatever is, is right, or failing that inevitable!—that on a quiet day the public is failing in its duty, and when there's a big crowd it must expect a scrum in the bars and a morass in the car-park! But again, how many of them could save them- selves by their own exertions? They are de- pendent on patronage. Lord Wigg, in par- ticular, disposes of funds which could make or break a course. What manager would pick a public quarrel with him? Yet management, good or bad, is the key to the success or failure of racing: witness, in their hold on the most populous county in Britain, little Haydock's chain of success and mighty Aintree's string of misery. Not for nothing was Aintree compared, by an articulate jockey, to racing in a large prisoner-of-war camp.

What racing needs is good, outgoing, con- scientious, professional management down the line. Neither the Jockey Club nor Lord Wigg can themselves supply that need. They should sink their differences and cheer on their managerial winners. But do they want to?