Straight talking
Robin Oakley
Imagine Stephen Byers stepping up to the despatch box in the House of Commons and declaring: 'Oh, all right then, I did tell a porkie over the Martin Sixsmith case. It was a farrago of lies from start to finish.' Imagine a well-endowed actress facing the flashbulbs at a premiere and confessing, 'Yes, they are mostly silicone, and I've had a nose job, too.'
This week we had the racing equivalent of such a scenario. At a German stewards inquiry, apprentice Katharine Neubecker, asked to explain her riding in a race, answered: 'My instructions were to race in last place and stay there, so that Sir Ivanhoe would receive a low handicap rating.' It must have sent a shiver of 'there but for the grace of God go I' round every gambling stable across the Continent and being candid did not pay young Katharine, She received a six-month ban and the trainer one of 18 months. You never know which way the stewards are going to react. They were satisfied when Reg Hollinshead explained a remarkable improvement in one filly's form by telling them simply, 'Frankie rode her today', soon after Dettori scored his Magnificent Seven. And an amateur rider, called in after failing to ride much of a finish on a mere steering job and getting beaten on the line, apparently escaped without any punishment after declaring to the panel, 'I'd like to see any of you three old buggers do any better.' Nobody could be doing much better this season than Mark Johnston. At Lingfield on Saturday, Bandari scooted clear of his field to win the Derby Trial by 13 lengths, a record margin in that long-established contest. It left the Middleham trainer with the remarkable record of having trained the winners this year of three Derby trials. Fight Your Corner had already taken the Chester Vase and Simeon the Sandown Classic Trial. To add to that trio Sir George Turner, whom the trainer insists is his most underrated horse, was beaten just a short-head in the Dee Stakes at Chester. But, sadly, it remains unlikely that we will see Bandari, Simeon or Fight Your Corner storming round Tattenham Corner on Derby Day. Sir George Turner is the only one of Mark's quartet who holds a Derby entry. Mark Johnston enjoys a controversy almost as much as he enjoys victory on the racecourse, and within seconds of Bandar's win the man who confessed to the Racing Post: 'They call me Victor Meldrew because they say I'm always moaning about something' was inveighing against the Derby entry system and suggesting there were plenty of other races to go for with his talented quartet.
To run a horse in the Epsom Derby you have to enter it by paying £300 when it is an untried yearling. If you then accept at all the remaining stages, running in the Derby, which carries a first prize of some £600,000, will cost you £6,950 all-in. If you have missed the yearling entry, you can buy your way into the field with a supplementary of £9,000 in the April of the horse's three-year-old career and there is a final stage a week before the race at which you can supplement for a hefty £90,000.
Mark Johnston doesn't spend top dollar for many of his horses — Bandari cost £44,000 — and he complains that owners are being asked to provide too large a proportion of the Derby prize money: 'Even at £300 you can't enter every single yearling, and the £9,000 entry stage comes before the trials, before you really know what you've got.' At the £9,000 stage, he argued, you could still get into the French Derby for £380. For good measure he adds that he doesn't think that £600,000 is a big enough prize anyway for the winning connections to take home after winning at Epsom: You can win more on quiz shows.' He says that the Epsom authorities should re-structure the entry system and prize money 'to attract more horses, not to give us a dozen reasons not to go'.
Mark does hold an incredible hand this year, as he puts it 'with a team of one-anda-half-mile horses like you wouldn't believe', and it has to be a frustration that only one of them holds the Epsom entry. He is faced with having to ask his owners to stump up an extra £90,000 if they want to be in for that top prize of £600,000.
But there is a counter case, which was soon being eloquently put by Stephen Wallis, the normally mild-mannered executive director of Epsom who was 'boiling' at Johnston's comments. The £300 yearling entry fee, he argued, 'keeps an owner's dreams alive for a year', Nothing else had to be paid until the horse's three-year-old career when potential was becoming clear.
Owners, through their entry fees, contribute less than half the Derby prizemoney pot and the race is the only one in Europe which gets into the world's top 20 in terms of prize money. Epsom had introduced the supplementary stages in response to owners' and trainers' entreaties and the key was to keep funding the richest race in Europe. They had to strive for a balance, he said, and they would be prepared to look at a system of wild-card entries for those whose potential developed late. There, perhaps, might lie a solution — a deal between Epsom and the courses staging the various Derby trials permitting automatic Derby entry to the winners of certain key trials.
I have to declare a minor interest as a former member of Epsom Race Committee but it ought to be pointed out that Vodafone's Derby sponsorship represents 7 per cent in itself of racing's sponsorship deals. This year the Derby, the Oaks and the Coronation Cup all carry record prizes. You wouldn't pay the £90,000 late supplement for entry unless you were convinced your horse would make the first four, in which case your costs would be covered by
the £90,000 fourth prize. Anyway, the owner of the Derby winner doesn't just collect the £600,000 on the day. The moment his horse passes the post he becomes worth untold riches as a stud prospect. As for Mark Johnston's other beef about quizshow prizes: I haven't seen a horse entered yet for Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
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