A great match? British owners deserve a better raceday experience

Three-year-old colt Jaramillo is a good horse. He was bought for 50,000gns as a yearling. The year he was conceived his sire was standing at a covering fee of £50,000. He is trained by one of the premier trainers in Newmarket and he has a Cazoo Derby entry.

He is owned by Teme Valley, which was established in 2019 and already has a promising string stretching into Ireland with aspirations to operate in Australia. Their Legion Of Honour is set to run in Saturday's Qipco 2,000 Guineas and Group 1 Criterium International winner Gear Up will be targeting the very best races this summer.

Teme Valley is exactly the sort of investor British racing is trying to attract. Their team are targeting all of the big international races and injecting huge sums of money into the sport.

Given the current state of prize-money in Britain – Jaramillo won just £2,862 in a 1m2f novice stakes on Saturday – and the impact the coronavirus pandemic has had on the racing industry as a whole, the least owners deserve is an experience proportionate to the support they give it.

Last weekend, Teme Valley’s racing manager Richard Ryan added his voice to those calling for better.

For winning a race, a milestone many racehorses never reach, Ryan was presented with a branded match holder as well as a small frame he described as no bigger than the size of a phone.

"It's minimalistic and just a little bit of feel-good factor needs to be employed," he said.

"The probable cost of those things is probably a lot more than it would be to nip down to Tesco to buy a box of things, there's your photo, there's a bottle of bubbly and everyone goes away understanding their limitations.

"Do the best you can, not the least you can. Or the least you can get away with. If nobody says anything it will remain and that attitude to owners generally will remain."

He labelled the memento "ill-judged" and "self-promotional", and it is difficult to disagree.

Racing is known as the sport of kings, but sometimes racecourses are guilty of treating owners as anything but royalty.

No ownership group is ever going to make a decision about where to train their horses based on a sole incident, but each fracture builds to have a cumulative effect.

Whether it be drinking tea from a paper cup or eating packaged sandwiches, insufficient seating or poor access, racecourses often fall short of even modest expectations. They can and must do more to satisfy their customers.

Jaramillo won at Leicester on SaturdayCredit: Tony Knapton

There is a complacency in British racing that because of its heritage it can afford to offer subpar experiences. This is an incredibly outdated and dangerous view, especially when other jurisdictions have a far more financially attractive model and mirror that in the experience they offer.

If you pay for a luxury product you expect the service to match. If you purchase an expensive watch, you expect the staff to be happy to help you, it to be packaged immaculately and be of excellent quality.

British owners should not feel fortunate to participate. They should feel appreciated and acknowledged.

Prize-money in British racing is so poor the sweet smell of success is more akin to the smell of smoke from your own burning cash. In this case, Leicester races have provided the match.

Team Wall in for a good season

It is more challenging than ever to be a smaller racehorse trainer in the current climate. Therefore, I think it is only fair to give credit to those who overcome the obstacles to make it work, and one handler in particular has caught my eye in the last couple of weeks.

Chris Wall has been training at his Induna Stables in Newmarket since 1992 and most would associate him with globetrotter Premio Loco, who earned over £750,000 in prize-money from 2006 to 2014.

Wall had his most productive season in 2014 when saddling 37 winners for a +43.42 profit to a £1 level stake and he has already made an excellent start to this campaign with three winners from just 12 runners for a 25 per cent strike-rate.

Chris Wall: has made an excellent start to the season with three winners from 12 runnersCredit: Alan Crowhurst (Getty Images)

Double Or Bubble won a handicap in impressive style on Feilden Stakes day and she is likely to fly the flag for the yard in top company this summer.

She is a sister to Mix And Mingle, who won the Group 3 Chartwell Stakes for Wall and owner Salah Fustoq in 2017.

By Exceed And Excel, it is unsurprising she has raced exclusively on a sound surface so far and don't be too surprised if she ends up contesting a race like the Jersey or Duke Of Cambridge Stakes given her sire's record on the straight course at Ascot.

Black Lotus is another Fustoq-owned filly who will be marching towards black-type this season and by the time this column is published she may have already done it in Tuesday's Nottinghamshire Oaks.

Wall is particularly skilled at placing his horses, as he proved when mopping up handicaps at Yarmouth and Leicester last week with Bague D'Or and Kingmania.

Those two horses, alongside five-time winner Capla Huntress, should bring in more victories in the warmer months. Goldie Hawk was only denied by a head at Windsor on Monday night and fits into the same bracket, too.

Read more from Maddy Playle:

How Rachael has helped repair racing's image and what it means for the future

How racing can learn from Formula One when it comes to showcasing our sport

£250 fine or a ban? Lack of consistency for transgressions is concerning

He's among the best in the world – so where is the love for Golden Sixty?

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