If only racing in Britain wasn`t in such dire straits the Government`s new budget this past week wouldn`t have got much of a look in compared with the Breeders` Cup in Kentucky at the end of October and the coronation scheduled for Aidan O`Brien`s ninth champion trainer`s title.

The Breeders` Cup, in its 43rd year, is acknowledged as the World Championship of racing, and the master of Ballydoyle (in his 59th year) has no peer in the global sport. O`Brien had a couple of two-year-old Group One winners on the first day of the Breeders` Cup - the filly Sun Goddess (Sioux Nation-Etoile Bleu by Starspangledbanner) in the Juvenile Fillies Turf (Gr1) over a mile, and the colt Haffner (Justify-Earth Strike by Zoffany) in the Juvenile Turf over a mile. And even then with his 26th and 27th Group Ones of the season threatening his own record of victories at the highest level, for sheer brilliance O`Brien was all but upstaged by champion jockey Billy Loughnane (20) getting down to his lowest-ever weight to win the Breeders` Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint (Gr1) on Libertango.



Another top American jockey had provisionally been booked for Libertango (No Nay Never –Ein Gedi by Oasis Dream) trained by Loughnane`s equally remarkable young boss George Boughey (34), before Loughnane took another sliver off his spare frame to regain the ride less than an hour before the start and force his filly home: shades of Lester Piggott who existed on a cigar and fresh air.

Libertango had been runner-up to O`Brien`s Sun Goddess in the UK`s juvenile six furlong fillies` championship race, the Cheveley Park Stakes (Gr1) at Newmarket last month.

It took O`Brien, the greatest trainer in Breeders` Cup history, plus a ride of pure genius by Ryan Moore to get the Europeans on the scoresheet on the final day of racing`s world championships at Keeneland, through Benvenuto Cellini (Frankel-Newspaperofrecord by Lope de Vega). The colt had been a let-down after winning the Irish Derby but O`Brien had admitted to a low-grade infection that had inhibited some of his stable stars as summer crept into autumn.

Coolmore`s perpetual rival, Godolphin, with their own principal challenger Notable Speech (Dubawi-Swift Rose by Invincible Spirit) had the ‘moral` winner of the Breeders` Cup Mile which he had won last year with his trademark late burst. Godolphin`s ‘finest` finished hard again but Deterministic`s (Liam`s Map-Giulio`s Jewel by Speightstown) American connections had learnt from their defeat by Notable Speech at Woodbine, Canada. William Buick brought Notable Speech out of the ruck but Deterministic had gone beyond recall – a body blow to Godolphin but from which they soon recovered to win the biggest prize of all, the £2.1m ten-furlong Classic with their American-trained Sovereignty (Into Mischief-Crowned Beauty by Bernadini).

Total Breeders` Cup prize money of $32 million tops the Derby, Royal Ascot and the Grand National combined and in America means everything – hence their stout defence on the second day when from sixteen foreign runners only Benvenuto Cellini was successful. He was chased home by Map of Stars (Sea The Stars-Bateel by Dubawi) trained by Daryz`s handler, the French champion trainer Francis Graffard. Then again ten of the runners in the race were Europeans. It was O`Brien`s 24th Breeders` Cup victory – not that Ryan Moore was around to celebrate – he jetted off straight after the race for Australia and the Melbourne.

Having made it look like easy pickings on Friday when all three Breeders` Cup races on the turf went to the visitors, the Americans hit back on Saturday, not only dominating on the dirt but upsetting the Europeans in the Turf Sprint, Filly & Mare Turf and the Mile, all Grade 1 events.

The only ‘foreigners` in the climax to the Breeders` Cup, the £2.6m Classic (Grade 1) on Dirt were the Japanese, who again failed to ‘travel`. Their ambitions outside their own country are (puzzlingly) rarely requited.

Sovereignty, America`s Horse of the Year in 2025, re-established his eminence in the Classic. The Kentucky Derby winner had taken time to come to himself this season, but last Saturday the four-year-old stallion (Into Mischief-Crowned by Bernadini) proved he is the best horse on Dirt in the world – a position that had been challenged by Japan`s Forever Young (Real Steel-Forever Darling by Congrais). The latter could only finish fifth, though still taking £150,000 back home for that disappointing position.

Having scored with Sun Goddess and Haffner on Friday to edge past Bob Baffert as the leading trainer at the Breeders` Cup, O`Brien moved further ahead courtesy of Benvenuto Cellini`s victory in the Turf, although without Ryan Moore`s contribution, it would surely have never happened.

The representatives of fifteen racing nations gathered for the Breeders` Cup meeting. Keeneland basked in its russet Fall colours and brought together so many of the world`s best performers that the absent dual Prix de l`Arc de Triomphe winner Daryz was barely missed: saying which his runner-up at Longchamp, Bay City Roller, hardly endorsed the Arc form, finishing behind Benvenuto Cellini. Form in Europe this year has been distorted by continued drought and, it must be emphasized that O`Brien`s mid-season blip when his horses had that “mild infection” is now a distant memory. To re-establish the reputation of such as Benvenuto Cellini and his two-year-olds who had had their defeats, suggests for the foreseeable future it will be more of the same – O`Brien dominance.

Personally I cannot accept that the trainers` championship which ends on the last day of 2026 (as opposed to the jockey`s which, confusingly, has already been decided) goes to the trainer with most prize money. Nine trainers have had more winners than Aidan O`Brien in the UK this season: Andrew Balding in second place has had an incredible 193, many of them at the highest level, but he is short by a few thousand pounds of Aidan O`Brien`s 29 victories total earnings – and there are only the meagre prizes on the all-weather in the last couple of months of the season to come.

It`s not a question of which is the better trainer: O`Brien (aged 57) or Balding (53) or sentiment that this year, the year of Balding`s father Ian`s death, Andrew would have been the appropriate winner. The racing public will vote for their trainer of the year and there is no guessing as to whom that will be.

One must give early acknowledgment though to the results of new Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey`s first Budget. Like his predecessors, some of whom have done their best to wreck the economy, his was a beige, ‘do no harm` budget when racing`s Jeremiahs – prophets of doom - had forecast Armageddon with racing being clobbered by punitive tax increases by sanctimonious politicians. Instead the duty on gaming machines was raised by a meagre five per cent.

And yet there were those who still decried the marginal measure – possibly annoyed because it belied their forecasts that the Budget would wreck racings finances. Forecasts of racing losing income were as wildly apart as £15m and £57m – to illustrate the gulf in financial fortunes, neither figure was much as an average football Premier Division striker would cost. If Harry Kane, newly presented with the Ballon d`Or as the best footballer in the world, were on the market, he`d fetch a lot more than the Derby winner.

Those projected losses were based on the closure of betting shops, loss of media payments and reduction in Levy income from betting tax, ignoring the fact that shop numbers have been halved from a peak of around ten thousand and those that are left patronized by less punters than public houses, the latter closing at the rate of one a week. Online and black market betting have taken over – sounds familiar in India?

Ironically in the week everybody professed to ‘know` there`d be existential tax rises in this Budget that would finish racing off, the court case over illegal betting by Conservative Party politicians with ‘insider information` of former PM Rishi Sunak`s 2024 election date, concluded. They got their fingers burned when the plot was discovered and were, it has to be said, merely slapped on the wrist with suspended sentences.

So the questions about racing`s future are unresolved: bookmaker`s shares rose on the Budget news! All those ‘back of the fag packet` figures that doomsayers had scribbled were proved to be merely scaremongering – for the moment. Of course the decline in interest in racing is scary. Newspapers are dropping racing and when the Daily Telegraph gets rid of its esteemed racing correspondent, you know the Press is in trouble. The Racing Post, the trade paper, staggers on costing, at a rough calculation, the biggest part of six hundred rupees – a copy!

Unsubstantiated ‘leaks` had gushed forth that the budget enema would flush away all hope for racing. The latest head of the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) Simon Cox has entered through a revolving door (more defeated chairmen than Prime Ministers) describing the Budget as “not as cataclysmic as it could have been”. At least he is realistic that betting shops are going to be a declining area for the foreseeable future. But the rest of his interview in the Racing Post by the knowledgeable Industry editor Bill Barber was talk of “jam tomorrow”, airy fairy words like “levers” and other weary clichés.



There was a seeming failure to understand that if racing`s finances depend on poor souls shoving bets at £2 a time (the limit used to be £200) into gaping gaming machines, we`re in dire straits. Betting shop walls are plastered with screens showing everything from racing in Mumbai to ice hockey in Canada to tennis in Australia – the few in attendance not in the least bit interested in any of it. What world are they living in?

Several racecourses, most notably Ascot, have dissociated themselves from the sclerotic Racecourse Association. But more fixtures in a year round programme which only a handful of gluttons can handle and threatens to include the imminent reopening of the mothballed course at Chelmsford and unloved Towcester – shows the tunnel vision of racing`s authorities.

The French haven`t in one swoop “closed twenty-four courses” but they have dropped either flat or jumps disciplines at these tracks for trotting – in some cases. If the French are behaving rationally surely it is time we followed their example?

The buzz word is compliance – the act of obeying laws, rules, safety standards to save gamblers from themselves, to inhibit money laundering, alleged suicides and neglected children due to gambling away the family finances. Regulations are there to be subverted but the ‘war on gambling` is a phoney one. People always have and always will and I`m bound to say always should have the freedom to gamble. There will be casualties but there are in every field of human enterprise.

The war used to have its frontline at the racecourse gates with weapons nothing more fearsome than fanatic`s banners proclaiming “The end is nigh”. That date could have been Oaks day 2000 when Love Divine won the classic and the Betfair betting exchange began and punters started drifting away from the racecourses and betting shops. (Another seminal date was in 1961 when bookmakers were all but handed a monopoly of the new, legal, betting shops – then also known as “licences to print money). Fixtures have risen from 1132 to 1458 with smaller less attractive fields the result of lower foal crops and declining interest, not least from the racing public unable to stomach or afford the cost of patronizing ageing tracks.

Once upon a time there were eighteen, yes eighteen betting shops in one East London High Street. Now the same street (a long street, yes) ‘boasts` three. There was an enormously popular television series in the UK, ‘Yes Minister`, where state intervention was satirized as an exercise in self-preservation by the ministers and civil servants involved; bureaucrats expanding their control not to benefit the public but to increase departmental budgets, secure jobs, and justify throttling initiative: sounds familiar?

Yes Minister didn`t trouble itself with betting on racehorses while defending other attempts to save people from themselves – burgeoning taxes on cigarettes and alcohol foremost. Cigarette tax would help pay for the National Health Service and save lives.

“The smokers who carried on, through their taxes were saving lives for others,” says a political underling.

“So long as they live,” suggests the Prime Minister. How long have we got in racing?