One of racing’s great fallacies got taken out for a high-profile Christmas spin last week. Irish racing seemingly is at breaking point. Trainers not operating at elite level might have to give up because there isn’t enough prize money to cover rising costs. The solution, apparently, is more Government cash for prize money.
This was splashed across the front of the Irish Daily Mail in its St Stephen’s Day edition. As racegoers crammed into the festival action in Leopardstown, Limerick and Down Royal, racing’s foray to the front page painted a plaintive picture of a sport on its uppers. Ado McGuinness and Noel Meade were among those trainers telling a grim Christmas tale.
In essence, their argument boiled down to how costs have rocketed in recent years, while prize money levels have stalled. That makes it hard for owners with horses in training to “make ends meet”, which in turn is a problem for trainers who get 7 per cent of prize money won. Consequently, there has been a decline in the number of trainers in Ireland.
Cost increases are familiar territory for any mainstream audience. A visit to the supermarket brings the reality into sharp focus. Much more puzzling for most of the readership will have been a pitch that basically boils down to the State stepping up even more than it already is to try and help owners have racehorses.
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Racing’s sense of entitlement is deeply ingrained. Nor can any sector be blamed for fighting its corner as best it can. But the prize money argument so remorselessly pushed is mostly a red herring when it comes to an overwhelming majority of trainers.
Most prize money inevitably ends up won by the successful, not the struggling. Willie Mullins’s 7 per cent of the €5,972,265 in prize money he won in the last Irish National Hunt season comes to a hefty €418,000. Philip Rothwell got seventh place in the table with €570,845. His 7 per cent was just shy of €40,000, basically Ireland’s average industrial wage.
It underlines how for most trainers, prize money is little more than a cherry on top when it comes to cash flow. As for encouraging owners, if prize money is a vital part of any owner’s calculations for keeping a racehorse in training it’s probably a sign that they can’t afford it in the first place.
For a mainstream audience, it was a pitch that smacked of tone-deaf festive arrogance. At a time when so many struggle to properly make ends meet in relation to luxuries like food and heat, reading about an entertainment sector looking for more money to help those who can already afford racehorses is tough to swallow.
It might also have raised an obvious question as to why trainers don’t pass on the extra costs of feed, fuel, and everything else to their clients: it’s what happens on the supermarket shelves, so why not in stables?
The answer is that trainers are afraid of losing owners if they hike their training charges. Perhaps the most famous example was Michael O’Leary taking away 60 horses from Mullins when the champion trainer had the gall to increase his fees. Such moves happen all the time. It is why practically every trainer insists they cannot survive on what they charge to train horses.
It underlines how the real problem for most trainers is not prize money, but the fees they charge. The average cost of having a racehorse in training in Ireland works out at about €50 a day. Some very high-profile figures charge even less, working on the basis that it’s best to get horses into their yards first and then try to work out a profit. The constant worry is someone undercutting them.
It can be cut-throat stuff in an industry that prides itself on being tough and autonomous, although one that for the last 25 years has annually held out its hand for State subsidy. This year the allocation has stalled at €79.3 million. Despite that, Horse Racing Ireland recently announced record prize money of €74.7 million for 2026. That’s actually a 6 per cent hike on last year.
Rather than resorting to paper-thin arguments, maybe trainers already benefiting from Government subsidy might be better served by further parking their free-market instincts to the side and instead take the initiative by collectively agreeing minimum and realistic training fees to be effectively enforced by their own representative body.
It would require a shift of attitude and a level of enterprise that would be a lot harder than simply grumbling. There would also need to be acknowledgment of a co-operative element in their own fate. But the industry has become so reliant on State funding that there’s a collectivist factor anyway, whether it chooses to admit it or not.
Insisting on owners paying fees at a level that at least covers minimum costs might stick in a lot of Friedmanite craws. It might also see some owners drop out of the game in the short-term. But how sustainable is any business in the long-term if it’s unable to wash its own face with the very service it provides.
If nothing else, there would be the significant plus of a sector at least attempting to right itself rather than simply inflicting sad Christmas stories on the rest of us.
Something for the Weekend
Subzero conditions threaten to play havoc with the weekend programme but Wincanton may have a better shot than most of escaping the worst of it on Saturday. WESTERN SOLDIER (2.05pm) returns to the course and distance at which he won a handicap hurdle in November. He subsequently raced there at a half-mile further but could have been too aggressively ridden by his amateur rider. Callum Pritchard is back on board now.
MIDNIGHT OUR FRED (3.22pm) ran such a shocker in last Saturday’s Paddy Power Chase that his presence alone in a handicap at Cork on Saturday might be significant. The 2024 Paddy Power runner-up never raised a gallop last week. Cheekpieces have been dispensed with, Danny Mullins is back on board, and even with topweight he would be a factor if anywhere near his best.
