A Plea From A Small Trainer

Difficult times ahead in the next few weeks as us trainers face up and try to make our views known about the prize money being made available at ARC racecourses.  It’s terrible to think you can travel to a racecourse, compete in a professional sport, finish 4th and come no where near to covering your costs.  It definitely isn’t good enough.Vote with your feet, they say.  Yes it seems so easy.According to social media a ‘call to arms’ email was distributed to trainers this afternoon asking for a boycott of all ARC racecourses next Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Great to know that we  were considered enough in the thought process that an email didn’t even reach here to keep us informed of possible action. If anyone would like to forward a copy that would be super?Sedgefield class 5 race this Sunday where the prize money is abysmal is easy for us to avoid and the horse can be rerouted to a class 4 on the Tuesday, although still at an ARC track is has to be said.However, this becomes a lot more difficult when it comes to the All Weather racing.  For anyone who’s not familiar with the yard let me just say I had a spot of success with my only flat horse last season, this year I have 3 and I am ready to kick on and give it the best go I can and we started with a winner at Newcastle last week.  We want to be successful and be out both racing and winning. I am also trying to turn this into a profitable business and there is no advertisement for a racehorse trainer like runners and of course winners.My yard is based in The Scottish Borders, Newcastle is handy, Wolverhampton and Southwell are do-able,  Lingfield (400 miles), Chelmsford (346 miles) and Kempton (371 miles) are not really acceptable journeys to be making with my class 5/6 horses, the bills to the owners would be obscene.  So the 3 reasonable journeys are all ARC tracks.  We have great races picked out next Friday at Newcastle for two of our team, the horses are well, ready to run and if we don’t run there the next available races for those two horses within 300 miles and not at an ARC track are Ayr 1st April and Musselburgh 2nd April.Please tell me there’s another way to do this, we work so hard to have these horses ready. I get up at half 5 every morning, muck out and ride out so these horses can be at their best and out running, not for them to be standing in their stables until April.  My staff rode every day when the minus 11 frost set in the end of January so our horses would be ready to race in these races.  Our owners have paid for these horses to come in and have a few runs before the turf season kicks off so they can enjoy watching their horses run in these races.Surely other trainers must be worried about this?From a trainer who is so frustrated and worried I am close to tears..