End of Flat season in turmoil as Champions Weekend appears doomed
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Version 0 of 1. The climax to this year’s Flat season could be dramatically reshuffled after it was announced on Monday that permission had been granted for the dismantling of Champions’ Weekend. A final decision has yet to be made, however, and the event could yet be staged exactly as it was last year, contrary to initial reports prompted by an equivocally worded press release from the British Horseracing Authority. The BHA appears to have begun the process by asking the European Pattern Committee to consider whether Future Champions Day could be moved to the weekend of Saturday 10 October, a week before the richly endowed Champions Day at Ascot. Last year, the fixture was controversially moved to a Friday, the day before Champions Day, allowing the BHA to trumpet a “£4.5m Champions Weekend”, which it claimed represented a “big leap forward” and would be “a fantastic shop window” for British racing. But the move was unpopular, notably with the racing media, who felt it was impossible to give Future Champions Day adequate coverage while simultaneously providing advance coverage for Champions Day just 24 hours later. It was widely felt that a card with three Group Ones was wasted on a Friday, though Channel 4 did provide terrestrial TV coverage last year and is committed to doing so again this year, even if the Friday date is retained. BHA sources predictably spluttered at suggestions that the rapid dismantling of Champions Weekend must represent a “big leap backward”. Instead, they insisted that the end-of-year pattern for British two-year-old races had been in evolution over a number of years and that, properly understood, each change amounted to a small step forward. Certainly, the latest round of changes are likely to be popular, if Future Champions Day is indeed given its own Saturday. One change that will definitely take place this year is the movement of the Middle Park Stakes from that card to its own date on 26 September. That will also be welcomed by the Flat racing community, since the general feeling has been that the Middle Park should not be run on the same day as the Dewhurst Stakes, preventing any one horse from trying to win both. The races were run on separate dates until 2011 and Henry Cecil’s Diesis was the last horse to do the double, in 1982. “We’re still in discussions with the BHA with regards to any potential changes to Future Champions’ Day,” said Amy Starkey, managing director of Newmarket racecourse. “We’ve put forward a number of possible changes to the BHA and will work with them to ensure that any changes are for the good of British racing and Newmarket.” Starkey added that it would be unfair of her to speculate as to the most likely outcome and that there was no deadline or probable timetable for a final decision. Ruth Quinn, the BHA’s director of racing, issued a press release saying: “Changes in France have opened the door to move the Dewhurst and Future Champions Day back a week and the earlier date for the Middle Park does, we believe, represent a positive step towards producing a better balanced autumn two-year-old programme. We look forward to working with Newmarket on the precise make-up of their programme.” Coneygree will miss his planned outing at Cheltenham this weekend after a brief setback. The exciting novice chaser was “a bit stiff” on Saturday night, according to Sara Bradstock, wife of his trainer, Mark. “It’s something and nothing and he’s fine now,” she said, “but we want to be careful with him.” The plan now is to run in the Denman Chase at Newbury next month before deciding on a possible tilt at the Cheltenham Gold Cup. |