After listening to a violinist’s justification of his playing, Dr Samuel Johnson responded tartly: ‘Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible.’ Racing’s marketing arm, Great British Racing, probably attempted the impossible in trying to satisfy all parties concerned in devising a new structure for the Flat Jockeys Championship. As part of its efforts to give greater narrative and structure to racing’s untidy seasons, its plan is for the title, which will now include a £25,000 prize, to be awarded to the jockey who rides the most winners between the Qipco-sponsored Guineas meeting at Newmarket on 2 May and the Qipco-sponsored Champions Day on 17 October.
It is not a perfect situation. The Flat Owners Championship will be decided over the same period as the jockeys’ championship, but the Flat Trainers Championship, decided not by winners trained but by the amount of prize money won, will still be determined over a calendar year. The timeframe selected means that the Lincoln Handicap, the traditional opening to the Flat season run at Doncaster last weekend, won’t be included. Also uncounted will be winners ridden at Newmarket’s early season Craven meeting, Newbury’s Greenham meeting and the important Racing Post Trophy at Doncaster a week after Champions Day. As jockey Luke Morris noted, it is like running the Formula One motor-racing championship and saying that the first and last races won’t count towards the drivers’ championship.
Attempting any change in racing immediately gives rise to a vociferous chorus of traditionalists who insist that marketing is nothing more than the rattling of a mop in a slop bucket and that anything from a plague of locusts to the slaughter of the first-born will ensue from tampering with the way things used to be done.
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