The turf
Irish hopes
Robin Oakley
Through five soggy days of holiday in the Cotswolds I was left reflecting that, if it stays as wet as it has been, it could be an Irish year at Cheltenham, especially with the Champion Hurdle on St Patrick's Day. The Irish idea of good jumping ground, it has been said, is roughly equivalent to Venice's Grand Canal, although the soupy stuff did not seem to do Doran's Pride much good on his latest outing at Naas. He remains co-favourite for the Gold Cup, though, as does Aidan O'Brien's Istabraq for the Champion Hurdle. Many still feel the Champion Hurdle is too short a race for the O'Brien horse and it is hard to assess his form. He has won his races well enough this season but not beaten anything much.
At least those two from my Ten To Fol- low have won some races. My 'nearly' can- didates Marello and Indian Jockey obliged at decent prices. But, as yet, it has been a mixed season for the rest. In some cases, the Oakley gremlins have struck. After scoring one good victory, Tullymurry Toff is out for the campaign with a hairline frac- ture of the knee bone. Geoff Hubbard's Strong Promise is yet to be seen out after a setback and Jenny Pitman's handsome grey Mentmore Towers was tragically killed at Cheltenham. But Mighty Moss did win a decent race on the same course and Let's Be Frank has made the scoresheet too.
I have to admit, though, that I was disap- pointed with Shadow Leader's run in the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton, even on such bad ground and with the stable yet to strike form this season. (They'd be hard put to it to strike a match at present.) And it is quite an achievement to have picked Or Royal, one of the few Martin Pipe hors- es which has not won this season. But it is a new year and we live in hope.
I think it was the sage David Ashforth who pointed out that, if punting was such a sensible game and bookmaking such an unwise one, there would not be three win- dows saying 'Bet' for every one proclaiming `Pay'. Ladbrokes, which not long ago bought up more than 100 betting shops from the A.R. Dennis chain, have certainly digested that lesson, and their planned £375 million takeover of Corals should strike fear into punters' hearts. If the Big Three are to be reduced to the Cosy Cou- ple, it will soon be as hard to find any vari- ety or value in prices as it is to find a leading racehorse owner carolling the praises of the BHB chairman Lord Wake- ham.
Corals have around 800 of the country's betting shops. If they are swallowed as planned, then Ladbrokes will have over a third of the country's total of 8,500. But for the moment that does remain an if. The Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, has more of a legitimate departmental interest in the soukhs and bazaars of the Middle East than in the gnome stools, sawn-off ball- points and remodelled Formica of the aver- age high street betting shop. But we should take heart from his comments that 'ques- tions need to be explained about the extent to which this gives Ladbrokes a dominant share of the market with one in three bet- ting shops', and his call for a close scrutiny of the deal.
His interest in racing is well-known. But Mr Cook was his party's spokesman on trade and industry in Opposition. He is a political ally of Margaret Beckett, the pres- ident of the Board of Trade. And such a shrewd operator as Britain's Foreign Secre- tary, we are entitled to assume, would not have gone clumping his brogues so brazen- ly across a colleague's patch without some preliminary consultation. I doubt if Lad- brokes are now offering much of a price against a Monopolies and Mergers Com- mission investigation of the planned takeover.
That would not necessarily stop the deal, of course. But there are those in Labour's ranks who are convinced that at the very least an MMC investigation would demand that Ladbrokes sell off more of the Corals shops than the 128 they are already off- loading to the Tote following preliminary chats with the Office of Fair Trading about local competition. And the Tote's new chairman, Peter Jones, has declared that they are in the market to buy more than the 343 they now have. 'If the government forces Ladbrokes to sell more within this deal, we'd buy them.'
I don't want to see a Tote monopoly in this country. Bookies are part of our racing tradition. But, as the off-course bookmak- ers' interests in non-racing betting increas- es and the prospects for the Levy decline, racing will need an ever-larger contribution from a thrusting, successful and expanding Tote. The late Woodrow Wyatt flamboy- antly raised the Tote's contribution to rac- ing to £8 million in 1997. Under his quieter but canny successor we need to see that double as soon as possible, and the more off-course outlets they have the better.
Robin Oakley is political editor of the BBC.
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