THERE’S nothing quite like a strike to get people all riled up, and while the word tends to sum up images of working-class revolt in grimy industrial towns, this weekend’s version takes place in the genteel setting of leafy Surrey.

The action by trainers in protest at prize money cuts at the Arena Racing Group-run Lingfield sees the final race on Saturday’s card reduced to a walkover, with the other novice event scrapped.

This has come about as a result of Arc’s decision to cut their contribution to purses in response to the expected shortfall in levy funding, which has the knock-on effect of denying certain races a contribution from the Horserace Betting Levy Board (HBLB) Race Incentive Fund. Many trainers feel that a stand must be taken regarding the general level of prize-money on offer, and while this is specifically in response to the offering from Arc, other tracks aren’t immune, with Newmarket also coming for criticism of its offering.

Arc as a business will argue that it isn’t viable for them to dig any deeper into its own coffers to subsidise racing which is poorly served by the levy in the first place, and the fact that racing has been relying on the money generated by roulette players on FOBT’s merely underlines how poorly managed the mechanism for funding the sport is.

MAXIMISE PROFIT

Those critical of the group, which now operates 16 racecourse in Britain, will argue that Arc are merely operating their business to maximise profit at the expense of those who provide the real entertainment.

Filling the gap isn’t simple, but there must be a minimum that owners, trainers and jockeys can expect from the industry at grass-roots level.

LIVING

There has never been more money around at the top end of the sport, but elite racing doesn’t simply stand alone, and the skills of the participants needs to be honed at a mundane level in order to produce the top-class action served up in the sport’s showpiece events.

In order to ensure that jockeys gain the skills they need to compete against the best in the world, they need not only the prospect of a reasonable living out of the sport, but also the opportunities to gain that experience.

Top-notch trainers don’t spring up overnight, either, and most need to spend years at the coal-face before they can start digging for diamonds.

For racing to thrive for more than the elite, there must be a broad spectrum of owners, and those owners can only maintain their involvement if there is a realistic aspiration, or a sense of getting value from a significant investment.

For those participants, they need the day-in-day-out slog to offer some kind of return just to make it possible to keep going. Everyone in the racing game latches on to a dream, but while the dream can help maintain vision in trying times, it won’t pay the mortgage.

It’s pointless for racing to trumpet the possibility of million-pound handicaps if there is not enough incentive and investment at the bottom end of the scale.

We are in essence talking about the same trainers, the same jockeys and in terms of the maiden and novice programme, the same owners, and racing’s reward for its participants shouldn’t equate to a lottery.

Squeezing the margins at the bottom of the pyramid is also, self-evidently, bad for the sport in the long term.

STRUGGLES

The big operators will continue with the inconvenience of poor reward at the lower levels because the big money remains in the top events, but the smaller owner and the small trainer will struggle with the result that many will leave the sport, and as they depart, they take some of the character and variety of the game with them.

In order for racing to flourish, it must retain colour, character and a recurring theme of the underdog getting an occasional reward in order to appeal to its traditional base. It seems counter-productive to save a few pennies in the grand scheme if it ends up damaging racing’s very foundations, but that appears to be what we are facing.