Kennet Valley Thoroughbreds to donate 2020 prize-money to Racing Welfare

Kennet Valley Throughbreds plans to donate a percentage of all prize-money awarded to its runners this season to Racing Welfare.

The syndicate has 12 Flat horses to campaign this year, with 16 shares per runner, and members were asked if they would like to opt in and donate up to 10 per cent of their winnings to the charity.

Racing Welfare, which provides support to the workforce of British racing, has launched an emergency appeal to raise vital funds in the absence of traditional fundraising due to the coronavirus pandemic.

"We became aware of the emergency appeal and without stable and stud staff there would be no racing," said racing manager Sam Hoskins. "The sport's workforce need support more than ever.

"The Racing Welfare cause really struck a chord with us and we told our members about how much it needed support. Without the charity stable staff would be facing even tougher times."

'We've got some nice runners'

Hoskins added: "Prize-money is likely to be heavily impacted when we come back so we didn't want to make donations compulsory but a lot of our members have opted in to the initiative.

"We have quite a few shares ourselves so we committed those and thankfully people have followed. We're expecting more to come too.

"The return will vary by horse but we've got some nice runners who could contest valuable races. So we'll keep the charity informed and let them know what we've donated at the end of the year."

Among the horses set to represent Kennet Valley in 2020 are Magical Memory, winner of the 2015 Stewards' Cup, Sir Busker and the Clive Cox-trained Dance Fever, unbeaten in three starts last year.

Hoskins also co-founded Hot To Trot Racing, which provides three syndicate options – two on the Flat and one for the jumps season – with a number of trainers including David Simcock and Philip Hobbs.

Three membership packages, one for each group worth more than £2,000, have also been donated to Racing Welfare.

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You can donate to Racing Welfare's Covid-19 Emergency Appeal here