RACING’S s*** stirrer-in-chief has been at it again.
The question is, why do so many trainers still listen to the one-time BHA (or BHB, as it was back in the day) chief Peter Savill?
His track record is littered with high-profile duds, and this week’s failed media boycott is one of the most embarrassing yet.
To recap, news broke last weekend that 170 trainers, members of Savill’s new ‘pressure group’ the Professional Racing Association (PRA), were going to refuse to take TV interviews, at Sandown and for the foreseeable, unless racecourses coughed up half a million quid.
When the rancid rebellion came to light, it was not clear what Savill and his pals actually wanted to do with the money.
I think it’s a short price some of the supposed 170 PRA members — only a handful of whom have actually been identified — thought they’d end up making some cash on the side.
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For all the optics of Nick Luck slipping Hendo a score after a post-race chinwag would in truth be quite amusing, it has since been clarified the cash would have gone towards paying for the PRA’s admin costs, as well as a trainer’s benevolent fund.
Either way, it was the sort of PR disaster that would have made even Liz Truss wince and the trainers who backed it came across as entitled and out of touch.
At Cheltenham last Saturday trainers donned poker faces when quizzed on their views, though Alan King let slip it would ‘rev the sport up a bit’ before Dan Skelton came out of the trenches with all guns blazing saying it was a marvellous idea.
But it was condemned by pretty much every corner of the industry and they were quickly forced into a full retreat, with the cash-for-questions rebellion ending up like a terrible remix of Craig David’s 7 Days.
Sing it with me: “Demanded 500,000 smackers on Friday, doubled down on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, U-turned on Tuesday.”
Clearly, the real aim of the PRA is to put pressure on racecourses, who rake it in through media rights payments, to be more transparent and reinvest a fair share of their revenue into prize-money.
Nobody can quibble with that, but in reality you could threaten the most tight-fisted racecourse execs with a stint in Guantanamo Bay and they still wouldn’t cough up. This tinpot uprising was doomed to fail.
And it is quite rich of Savill to be leading this charge considering that, as pointed out on the AK Bets podcast this week, he had his foot in a very different camp when at the BHB helm.
At a BHB AGM in 2004 he said regarding prize-money: “Racecourses in future will be free to decide how much of their own money they want to contribute to the prize fund rather than being mandated to contribute a certain amount to it.”
Let’s not forget, around the same time he nearly destroyed racing’s relationship with the press when trying to charge newspapers £340,000 a year to print racecards, despite the fact it was free promotion for the sport.
Of course, he backed down when editors told him to eff off.
And after a period in the wilderness, he emerged a few years ago to foist the failed ‘premierisation’ project on the BHA. Another smashing idea, big Pete.
This sport never ceases to amaze in finding new ways to load a double barrel shotgun and blow its own feet to smithereens.
The only way we are ever going to get anywhere is through serious, strong leadership (easier said than done in this game, admittedly) and for all racing’s factions to compromise and find common ground, which shouldn’t be difficult.
I’m reliably informed the way the boycott fiasco was handled went down like a lead balloon with plenty of PRA members, and Skelton won’t have been pleased about the U-turn just a few days are sticking his head above the parapet.
A handful of high-profile members are already said to have quit, including Paul Nicholls, and with Savill funding it with his own cash, I can’t imagine the PRA will be ruffling feathers for much longer.
Savill has shown over the years he has done more harm than good, so it’s time for besotted trainers to give their master the Spanish archer so we can all move on with our lives.
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