The final day of the Flat season on turf at Doncaster in November will no longer seal a championship of any kind following a decision by the National Trainers’ Federation to redraw the boundaries of the 2016 trainers’ title race with the campaign already underway.
The 2015-16 Flat trainers’ championship was originally set to run from November 2015 to the end of October 2016, but will now cover the calendar year from 1 January to 31 December. As a result, all prize money won in the first two months of the old format will not count towards the title, although that prize money will already have counted towards the separate All-Weather Championship during the winter months.
The biggest loser as a result of the change appears to be Richard Fahey, who finished runner-up behind John Gosden in the 2014-15 championship with £3.7m and had won £337,000 under the format for 2015-16 which has now been abandoned. His total for the season drops by nearly £100,000 to £240,000.
It is highly unusual to change the conditions of a contest in any sport while it is already in progress, but Rupert Arnold, the chief executive of the NTF, said on Wednesday that the new format is the “most logical” available.
“There has been much debate about the championships in recent years and Flat trainers were keen to establish a simplified format that was a true reflection of the Flat racing season and the races for which trainers compete,” Arnold said. “Reverting to the original format achieves this. We know it won’t satisfy everyone but it is the most logical format in the context of a sporting competition.”
Classic-winning trainer Ralph Beckett, a member of the NTFs Flat Committee, said: “When analysing statistics, Timeform and others use the calendar year as their model and we wanted our championship to reflect this approach. As all horses’ official birthdays are on 1 January, it makes no sense to have November and December’s two-year-old statistics shunted into the following year, as happens under the current format.”
Punters who had placed a bet on the title race will be given a chance to ask for their money back by William Hill.
“It’s not fair on punters or bookmakers to change the rules part way through a betting event,” Jon Ivan-Duke, the firm’s spokesman, said. “People who have placed a bet with us before this announcement will be able to void their bets upon request until end of play on Saturday. Having said this, we feel it will have little impact on the championship and our odds have not changed as a result.”
John Gosden is a 4-5 chance to retain the title, with Aidan O’Brien at 9-4 and Richard Hannon, the winner in 2014, a 5-1 chance. Fahey is quoted at 12-1 and it is 33-1 bar.
Mark Johnston, a 33-1 chance for the championship, welcomed the new format after saddling Sutter County to win a juvenile event at Newmarket on Wednesday.
“I’m absolutely in favour,” Johnston said. “It’s logical. I’ve been driven insane by looking at figures and not being able to compare with last year.
“I enjoy looking at the stats and comparing what we’ve done with last year. If you look at it at the moment, it says we’ve run 30 two-year-olds or something, which is silly. So it’s great to be back to a logical format, and I can’t wait to the first table so we can see what the two-year-olds have really done.”
The Flat Jockeys’ championship also underwent a sudden and controversial change last year, when about seven weeks of the turf season and several valuable meetings were removed from the reckoning by a switch to run the title race from the Guineas meeting in early May to Champions Day at Ascot in mid-October.
As a result, Doncaster’s November Handicap card, the last turf fixture of the year and a meeting where the champion Flat jockey was traditionally crowned, is no longer the climax of the title race.
