Willie Mullins calls for doubling of prize money at Cheltenham Festival

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/feb/18/willie-mullins-doubling-prize-money-cheltenham-festival

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Willie Mullins has used his pre-Cheltenham Festival media day to call for a dramatic increase in the prize money offered by jump racing’s major events. The champion Irish trainer’s business is thriving as few such operations have ever done but he reports the return on investment to be modest and feels something should be done to prevent money leaking out of the sport towards the betting industry.

“When you consider the biggest prize in jump racing, apart from the Grand National, is probably about what you’d have to pay for a nice young jump horse at the moment … to me, jump racing has to make a jump up to much better prize money for what it generates for racing.

“Maybe prize money in Cheltenham for the Grade One races could be, I’d say, at least doubled, if not more, to give what we see in Flat racing, meaningful prizes. Jump racing is a huge ambassador for [all of] racing, Flat and jump racing. What people race National Hunt horses for, it’s not fair and it’s not on, for what they do for the sport. The gaming end of the game seems to be getting bigger, it seems to be getting huge and racing isn’t. We’re going very slowly.”

It is hardly new for racing figures to assert that bookmakers do not reinvest enough of the profits they make from the sport but Mullins appears to feel that even incremental progress is not enough. “All people seem to do is keep edging it up a little bit every year. Someone should break out and say, right, we’ve really got to reinvigorate this sport before it goes down.”

He spoke of a number of his fellow trainers who have closed their businesses recently, predicted more of the same and said that even his own yard, which hoovers up so much of the available prize money in Ireland, operates to “a very small percentage profit”.

“I’m probably not the person to say all this but someone has to say it and go look at the figures yourself. I think the other countries have got their act together. The ones that haven’t have fallen by the wayside. Have a look at [racing in] Italy, Germany, Belgium, all those countries that didn’t get the thing right, they’re just disappearing down the tubes.”

A Cheltenham official said prize money at next month’s Festival would total £3.9m, up £100,000 on last year, and expressed the hope of reaching £4m next year. She pointed out that recent increases in prize money on the Flat were due to extraordinary sponsorships from Qatar and Dubai that have no similar connection with the winter branch of the sport.

Mullins said his squad for this Festival was “definitely” his strongest ever and might extend to 50 horses in total, around 10 more than he has taken before. He trains the favourites for five of the seven races on the Festival’s opening day, 10 March, including Douvan, “one of the nicest horses we’ve ever taken over there”, in the Supreme Novice Hurdle.

Of the Champion Hurdle, the trainer said: “It’d be my dream result for the whole of Cheltenham if Hurricane Fly can win,” and he dismissed the general concerns over the horse’s age and inconsistent course form. Most observers feel Mullins has a better chance with the favourite, Faugheen.

Mullins notoriously leaves decisions about running plans until the last possible moment but gave strong indications that Annie Power is more likely to run in the Mares Hurdle than the World Hurdle and that Champagne Fever is being edged towards the Champion Chase rather than the Ryanair.