Bank holiday cards in May are perennially among the best-attended meetings of the season at Windsor, but a bumper gate at the track on Monday was not matched by a similar turnout on the other side of the running rail. Two dozen non-runners from an original total of 90 declared runners, almost all of which were due to the good-to-firm going, left the card as a whole looking distinctly threadbare.
The biggest hit was to the initial 15-runner field for a 10-furlong handicap, with a £10k prize to the winner, which ended up with just six starters are eight ground-related scratchings and another due to a bad scope.
Bank holiday crowds are a lifeline for plenty of the country’s smaller tracks. It is – and there is no shame in it – a case of never mind the quality, feel the width. The paying punters do not expect to see next year’s Derby winner running in the novice but they do expect excitement and a spectacle. On that basis, the depleted fields at Windsor on Monday were not a good look.
It is a look, though, that promises to become increasingly familiar, at least if Charlie Rees, Windsor’s clerk of the course, is correct. “I think it’s just a sign of the times, really,” Rees told the Racing Post. “Trainers are obviously desperate for a bit of cut in the ground for certain horses and unfortunately the promised rain we were once forecast hasn’t delivered.”
Rees had watered the track in the run-up to Monday’s card and it was officially good when the course raced on Saturday evening – and reported as good, good-to-soft in places at 7am on Saturday morning – but no rainfall and strong winds combined to dry it out to good-to-firm in 48 hours.
The British Horseracing Authority’s general instructions to racecourses state that Flat tracks “should aim to provide good-to-firm ground”, but that description has become an increasing rarity in British Flat racing over the last 20 years, as clerks of the course have turned on the taps with increasing regularity and persistence. While 46% of Flat races in the 2005 season were run on good-to-firm going or faster, by 2024 the figure was down to just 29%.
Over jumps, meanwhile, the BHA instruction is that tracks “should aim to provide good ground, and no firmer than good-to-firm.” The extent to which officials have taken this to heart is evident from the fact that just 31 National Hunt races were run on good-to-firm ground in 2024 (and eight of those were at meetings staged in mid-November).
The primary welfare issue around the speed of the ground has always been seen as the rate of fatal and serious injuries to runners, and the statistics leave no doubt that racing on good-to-firm ground, over jumps in particular, has a higher fatality rate than competing on an easier surface.
On the Flat, meanwhile, while the fatality rate is much lower overall – just 0.09% in 2024, representing 55 fatal injuries from 59,194 starts – but the chance of a minor injury or issue – getting “jarred-up”, for instance – is also higher on faster ground.
So good-to-firm ground will remain a sticking point for many owners and trainers, despite being the BHA’s official “target” for racecourses, and while Windsor’s depleted card on Monday is still a relative rarity, in the medium-to-long term, as global temperatures are predicted to creep ever higher and water becomes an increasingly precious – and therefore expensive – resource, the clerks can expect to be fighting a losing battle.
Smaller tracks in particular could start to find that maintaining an acceptable racing surface – or acceptable to the majority of trainers and owners, at any rate – is no longer economically viable.
The sport is currently spending £3.62m on a marketing campaign to attract a fresh new generation of fans, the results of which remain to be seen. Future-proofing the sport to ensure the racegoers of 2035 and beyond have something to watch, however, promises to be an even sterner challenge.