The cold snap this winter has seen a great number of race day cancellations in Britain and Ireland. While in some ways it’s to be expected it has raised questions, especially about Premier Racedays.
Premier Days Have Highlighted an Issue
In fairness, this has been a typical winter blight. We can never know in Britain when or if it’s going to hit and how bad it’s going to be. Since the advent of undersoil heating and football pitch lights, we’re not so used to top football games being called off anymore. This highlights racing’s problems more.
Things reached a peak very recently when, on a key Saturday in the middle of the jumps season, cancellations meant ITV had no live racing to show. In theory, this should never be allowed to happen.
No LIVE racing on ITV today ❌
The @BHAHorseracing has made a statement on abandoned racing due to weather ❄️#ITVRacing | #TheOpeningShow pic.twitter.com/8RAfFwsNKm
— ITV Racing (@itvracing) January 4, 2025
The channel’s producer was left wishing an all-weather Flat meeting could have been drafted in to give us all something to watch. The problem was that, owing to Premierisation, the all-weather meetings were due to start later in the day and not during production.
Premier Racedays are in the middle of a two-year trial period. Their protected status means that other meetings are forced to start very early or late in the day. This means they likely fall outside of ITV’s broadcast window.
We also cannot bring late meetings forward at the last minute. Integrity and betting rules mean that we can’t bring a fixture forward after the final declarations have been made.
What Can Be Changed About Premier Racedays?
As stated, this is a two-year trial. It’s possible that we can keep Premier Racedays but tweak them somewhat.
Personally, I’d like to see certain elements kept. The guaranteed minimum prize money is obviously a good thing, as long as it doesn’t come at the detriment of other fixtures.
I’d like to see minimum grades too, i.e., no low-grade races at all on a Premier day. That could work if we shrink the number of Premier meetings down even more.
Premier Raceday protection status is the crazy part though and that has now been highlighted. Apart from the TV troubles and keeping the attention on these feature meetings, why should visitors to other courses suffer?
Those going racing away from Premier meetings should not be forced into an early start or a late meeting. They don’t care what’s on TV, they are attending their local track and frankly are paying the bills.
Argument For Including the All-Weather More
All-weather racing has been on a long journey of constant improvement. While Kempton and especially Newcastle are increasing the quality of races on their all-weather surfaces, the game as a whole could help this along plenty.
With fair surfaces on offer, there really should be an all-weather Group 1 on the calendar before long. Until that happens, some more winter Premier Racedays on the all-weather would potentially solve a few weather problems.
In the middle of winter, we could, in theory, keep a bunch of the better all-weather races on a particular week for one meeting on a Saturday. We could then give that meeting Premier status and have it broadcast on ITV.
Such days could even include some of the better novice races we see planned regularly on the Flat during the winter. These races so often show us the stars of tomorrow, with dozens of winter novice winners having gone on to Group success further down the line. It would be nice to see this highlighted more.
Whatever happens, it seems ITV will now have a major influence on what happens to Premier Racedays after the trial is over. What we don’t know is whether they stay unchanged, are altered or are withdrawn altogether.