Kempton and all that
Despite hilariously sensationalist reporting of thundersnow
forecasts this week, it is the jump racing world that has seen significantly
more turbulence.
The Jockey Club’s announcement on Tuesday of plans to hive
off Kempton Park for a housing development heralded a hailstorm of
reaction. The proposals seemed to
come from nowhere, which is quite a novelty in this super-sensitive age of spin
and counter-spin. The move would
see racing cease at the track by 2021 and estimated revenue of £100m from the
sale of the vast site re-invested into facilities and prize money at other
tracks. That package would be boosted by further £400m secured from its other
investments. An all-weather track would be built at Newmarket and the King George
moved to an upgraded Sandown.
Opinion amongst commentators and the racing community has
been wide ranging. The most numerous and dominant voices have been pouring
opprobrium and invective on the Jockey Club for sacrificing a Grade 1 racecourse
and for laying naked profit before jump racing heritage and legacy. The populist
concern has been for the sanctity of the King George VI and associated memorials
to the race rolling down the years since 1937. Desert Orchid will be forever
associated with the race. His ashes are buried under the statue overlooking the
parade ring. Kauto Star’s statue is in the winner’s enclosure and half of his
remains rest at the west London venue. The Sun had a field day. “The Jockey
Club is prepared to desecrate the memory of the nation’s favourite racehorses”,
screamed the scandalous red top.
Nicky Henderson, Oliver Sherwood, local councillors, the
area’s MP and plenty of others have lined up to denounce the plans from racing
and planning points of view. Journo of the year, Tom Kerr let fly with passion
in today’s RP. The Jockey Club, erstwhile guardian of the sport, he said, was a
“gamekeeper turned poacher and the poacher has turned up at the estate with a
barrel of napalm to burn the place to the ground. Each and every person associated
with the decision should hang their heads in shame. How can they claim this is
for the good of the sport?”
There have been some more reflective views. Alastair Down’s surprising
piece on Thursday took a polar opposite position and praised the most
far-sighted and ambitious project he had ever witnessed in his years in the
game. John Ferguson saw plenty of merit in the investment in jumps racing and
Ruby Walsh has also put his weight behind the idea.
I initially see-sawed on the issue. I pondered whether
losing Kempton Park would be such a blow when the quality of the racing outside
the two-day Christmas Festival is poor. Most of the staple all-weather fixtures
are poorly attended low grade fodder. The best flat races disappeared as soon
as the cat litter track went down. The jumps programme is a shadow of its
former glory. Take tomorrow’s fixture. The Lanzarote was once one of the
premier hurdle handicaps of the season. The winner of the 2017 renewal will
take home less than £23k. For a race with such provenance, that is a poor
offering. The handicap chase that precedes it is a listed race and has
attracted a mere four runners for a winner’s purse of £17k.
Then I realised that this was the point. The Jockey Club’s
investment plans should have Kempton right at the heart, not to offer the place
up as a boil to be lanced; an asset to be stripped. The argument about prize
money was precisely made by Alan King earlier this week. Cheltenham has ramped
up the pot at the Festival by another £190k. King said, "We need to look
at where the funds are going. The extra purses will make no difference
whatsoever at Cheltenham, just as having a £1 million Grand National is a
complete nonsense. You'd get the same field at Aintree if the race was worth £500,000
and what's the point of boosting prizes at the festival? Hundreds of horses get
balloted out already."
King wants to see increased prize-money further down the
ladder. He rightly highlighted the ridiculous situation last week where a Grade
1 at Naas was worth €53,000 to the winner, “but we were running around for just
£22,00 in the Challow Hurdle. Races like that and the Tolworth should be worth
more. It makes it even worse that the winners get Grade 1 penalties to make it
harder for them in the future."
The Jockey Club points to its half-a-billion long-term
investment plan as a game changer. Great. Really great. This needs to be
apportioned carefully to support and nurture the sport away from its privileged
strongholds and to bolster the fixture list as Alan King has sagely suggested.
Not to build an all-weather track at Newmarket. Fuck’s sake!
Invest in Kempton and promote the venue as an iconic
destination track. We are not talking about Folkestone or Hurst Park here. Even
Hereford that closed three years ago has been resurrected this year.
The place does not need to be sold. The £100m price tag that
will unlock investment in racing is a red herring. The Jockey Club has already
found £400m in its coffers from other business and commercial interests. The
old boys club is loaded, dripping with capital. Tom Kerr again:
“Perhaps the Jockey Club could
look to some of its considerable non-racecourse assets, which encompass 4,500
acres of land at Newmarket, 550 acres of land at Lambourn and 90 properties,
including the Jockey Club Rooms, which turned over just £1.24m in 2015. The art
collection that adorns these rooms alone is worth tens of millions of pounds. That
is an almost priceless piece of racing's heritage, just like Kempton, but
unlike Kempton it is enjoyed principally by the rich, powerful and
well-connected. The Jockey Club Rooms is a private members' club.”
That’s where the argument turns for me. If there was ever an
injustice to rekindle the fire in my belly, it is the shameless exploitation by
the haves at the ruthless expense of the have-nots.
This storm is far from blowing out. Indeed it is only just
gathering strength. Whether or not the Jockey Club expected to be engulfed in
this way is not clear, nor whether it will prompt any reconsideration. Beyond
that, if there is any remaining shred of credibility left in the planning
system, this proposal shouldn’t get past the first hurdle in the back straight.
It breaches every Green Belt regulation ever penned. Even Spelthorne Council appears to have been taken aback by
the audacity of the plan. But we all know this is an environment where sense is
not king. The developers’ profit juggernaut has destroyed countless landmarks
and iconic venues in the past. You just wouldn’t expect the Jockey Club to be
behind the wheel.
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