Author: Peter McNeile

Winter’s icy grip on England is slowly subsiding which means that a return to warmer weather won’t be far away, and the past fortnight’s rain is going some way toward rectifying the winter’s dry conditions that have left British trainers constantly frustrated.

Indeed, Stratford-upon-Avon will soon begin to move into spring as the landscape of Warwickshire changes from bare to plentiful. Apart from breathing life back into us after a long winter, the first signs of the new season also mean a return to racing at the world-class Stratford Racecourse. We welcomed a bumper crowd for the opening fixture on Festival eve, including many friends from across the Irish Sea.

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The only place to be from here till November

The packed fixture list from March to early November is sure to energise horse racing enthusiasts in the area who call Stratford Racecourse their own.

For any visitors from far and wide hoping to make the journey to Shottery Meadow, Stratford Racecourse’s modern facilities and unrivalled hospitality packages will undoubtedly provide the perfect backdrop for an unforgettable day. 

As touched on, there is much to look forward to for horse racing purists now that the kindness of spring has replaced the hostility of winter.

With racing now set to be commonplace as the mercury continues to rise, there will also be an increased interest in which bookmakers to use given that horse racing goes hand in hand with a flutter. It would be safe to say that the options nowadays are endless which is why it pays to be discerning when choosing who to sign up with in time for a summer racing season.

Below, we’ll look through the key features that any horse racing fan from Stratford-upon-Avon or even further afield should consider before opening an account. 

Best odds

There is only one place to start and that is odds. Whether you’re betting on an event at Stratford or elsewhere, it’s good practice to join a bookmaker that is offering the most competitive race odds. Essentially, the odds offered by a bookmaker can have a significant impact on your potential winnings. You may have noticed during ITV’s coverage of Cheltenham in the betting shows the “overround” – a description of the margin in any bookmaker’s book. In some of the handicaps, this exceeded 30%!

The simple logic dictates that if you place a winning bet at higher odds, you will receive a higher payout than if you had placed the same bet at lower odds. Therefore, it’s imperative to choose a bookmaker that offers the best prices so that you are able to maximise your potential winnings in the event that your chosen horse gets to the finishing post first.

In addition to this, when you place a bet, you want to feel confident that you are getting the best value for your money and not wonder if you might make a bigger profit elsewhere. Choosing a bookmaker that offers the most competitive odds can supply you with that vital confidence given that you know you are getting the best possible return on your investment should your bet land.

But understand this. The value in betting lies in totting up the odds and seeing which horse is under-priced, rather than merely following napsters’ tips. The tipsters column at the end of a season to a £1 stake almost always shows a negative meaning following favourites is a mug’s game.

A variety of horse racing markets to choose from

They say that variety is the spice of life and that certainly applies when finding a bookmaker that offers a wide range of horse racing markets to bet on. By doing this, you will be provided with significantly more opportunities to wager on different events which ultimately means that you can cherry-pick the races that suit your interests and betting style.

When all is said and done, it is all about making informed decisions when it comes to betting on horses, and to do that successfully, it helps to be able to cast your eye over a series of eventualities. For instance, if you’re betting on a horse at Stratford Racecourse that you feel might not win but will certainly get placed, then you are going to want to make the most of that inkling by having access to place markets.

Although the same can be said for any bet that you want to make, whether it be a slam dunk single on history-making Gold Cup winning jockey Rachael Blackmore or a shoot for the moon, Super Heinz bet on a line-up of multiple winners, it pays to find the bookmaker that can complement your horse racing knowledge.

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Best bonus offers when signing up

Given how competitive the online sports betting industry is, you’ll find that you’re inundated with welcome offers when searching for which bookmaker to sign up with. At the bigger fixtures, the range of bookmaker offers is remarkable, from money-back specials to outlandishly large prices on fancied horses just to entice you to start betting.

When it comes to making the right choice, the key is to do your research and in particular, use the information found on reputable sites that rank the best sign-up bonuses from every bookie. Racing experts have searched the vast range of providers to find the best horse racing betting sites in the UK for anyone wanting to sign up with a bookmaker to place bets. Some of the bonuses mentioned include £30 in free bets when you join Bet365, whilst BetUK will give any new customer £60 in free bets when they place a £20 opening bet.

These generous welcome promotions aside, the broader point here is that you don’t have to take the first joining bonuses that come your way as bookmakers often have a specific offer that will ensure you receive maximum value on your opening bet. 

Access to free streams

If you can’t get down to Stratford for whatever reason, the next best option is to watch the races live online. Most of the best bookmakers for horse racing will offer live streaming of events which means that you can always keep an eye on what is going on, irrespective of where you are in the world. 

In addition to this, by watching horse racing on a live stream offered by a bookmaker, you can get a better sense of the horses’ form and the track conditions, which crucially, can help you make well-informed and accurate betting decisions.

Another benefit of having access to live streaming is that you can also spot potential changes in the race that may affect who the potential winner might be, this is especially relevant if you choose to use the live-in-play betting market.

In short, you can gather a great deal of useful information that can substantially increase your chances of winning when you select a bookmaker that offers live streaming of races.

Bet on course or off

Of course, much of the appeal of actually going racing is browsing the bookmakers’ boards in the ring, where you get to exchange notes with the characters who ply their trade there. As witnessed by their joint sponsorship of our opening card last week, our course bookmakers offer another real-time betting opportunity, where winnings are passed back to you in old-fashioned notes. There is little better than the feel of a crisp bunch of twenties!

So there you have it, a comprehensive list of what to look out for when choosing a bookmaker. It promises to be another memorable season at Stratford Racecourse with a world of possibility awaiting the various horses, jockeys, and of course fans too. 

It’s not often that a race winner from Stratford goes off favourite for a race at the Cheltenham Festival. Our winners, by dint of race quality and summer time racing tend to be aimed at different targets. But that is exactly what has arisen tomorrow as Vaucelet stakes his claim to be the leading hunter chaser in Britain and Ireland.

Twice a winner at Stratford, first in 2021 of the John Corbett Cup for novice hunters, which is generally accepted as the championship for the upcoming aspirants of the hunter chase genre, then a 4l winner of the Pertemps Network Stratford Foxhunter last year, Vaucelet hails from the specialist Point-to-Point yard of David Christie in Ulster. For that reason, but perhaps that reason alone, he may count as a rare British winner at the festival in the glut of Irish tricolors flying this past week.

Fifty acres of pastureland near Derrylin in Co Fermanagh on the road between Cavan and Enniskillen finds a veritable powerhouse of Point-to-Point and hunter chase excellence, and Vaucelet is the apple of David’s eye. Winner of a modest £51,200 in career earnings, this son of Derby winner Authorized has graced the amateur scene for 3 years, since transferring to Christie in March 2021, just in time for a maiden victory over fences in a geldings only maiden at Portrush in May ’21. The rider that day was one Ben Harvey, who rode Seddon with such coolness this Wednesday at Cheltenham.

It’s not a fait accompli however. Like every other race at the Festival, the competition is stiff and numerous. The Foxhunter is perhaps the only conditions race to generally reach maximum numbers at the annual championships, and other contenders are lined up alongside.

Prominent among these are last year’s winner Billaway, from the dominant Mullins yard, Chris’s Dream for Henry de Bromhead, and The Storyteller for Gordon Elliott, all bidding to take the festival’s largest trophy back to Ireland. Billaway has yet to finish outside the first two in 3 runs in the race, but at 11, perhaps age may be his worst enemy. Chris’s Dream has obvious claims on form and would continue a hot streak for the de Bromhead yard that has suffered such ghastly personal misfortune these past months. The Storyteller won’t need directions around Cheltenham either.

But the biggest challenge may, for the first time in a while, come from British-based horses. Famous Clermont hails from Chris Barber’s Somerset yard, which lives and breathes the amateur code. The eight year old hasn’t put a foot wrong this winter, winning a Larkhill Open on New year’s day, and prepping up with victory at Wincanton in February and a comprehensive 18l demolition of Envious Editor in haydock’s Walrus Hunters Chase last month also – a well recognized prep for this race.

Corinthian David Maxwell fields Cat Tiger and Bob & Co, who bids to give Alice Stephens a memorable ride on the biggest stage.

However, if you’re looking to oppose the favourite, French-bred Le Malin might be the one. He ran to his best recent form in mid February when going down just a half length to Billaway in a hunters chase at Naas in February and has won since. Francois Nicolle doesn’t let many go but this one has more to prove.

Reassuringly, there are a number of amateur-trained British entries, pushing back the invasive reach of professional trainers into the race these past few years. It’s a race to savour, and there’s every chance we may see many of the competitors back her in early June.

Oh, and by the way, the previous race that day looks mildly interesting too.

There are more obvious dates to enjoy a bumper crowd than a damp Monday in March, but such is the fever for racing in this Cheltenham Festival week that we are able to open our season with a vociferous and jovial crowd, keenly anticipating the most awaited 4 days of the year. So despite intermittent showers and a keen wind, our six race card enjoyed a very respectable audience, underwritten by the on-course bookmakers.

Alan King is looking for a 34th festival winner with Edwardstone in tomorrow’s Queen Mother Champion Chase, but meantime showed that his team is in good fettle by taking the opener in a bloodless 17l victory with chaser Grandeur d’Ame. The race was something of a procession, with 5l separating second and third, and a further 14 to the only other finisher. the stable was enjoying its 45th jumps winner this term, that wellbeing demonstrated by the fact that nearly 60% of runners have reached the frame.

There wasn’t any more happiness for the on-course bookmaker sponsors in the next, when odds-on favourite Bo Zenith landed the odds in the juvenile hurdle. The winner turned over JCB Triumph Hurdle favourite Blood Destiny at Auteuil last April, and his rating would merit a look at the Anniversary Hurdle at Aintree. Trainer Gary Moore is not one to avoid a strong race.

Another horse bound for a valuable race is Bubble Dubi, the third of four favourites to win on the day, who broke his duck at the seventh attempt in the feature Better Value with Racecourse Bookmakers Handicap Hurdle. Trainer Stuart Edmunds is aiming him at a £100k hurdle at Sandown on the closing day of the season. Meantime, he was a 20th winner of the term for rider Cieran Gethings.

Another to break his duck was amateur rider Huw Edwards, who rode his first winner in the novices hunters chase at the 48th attempt for JJ O’Shea. And if frustration had held up the pursuit of success thus far, it was never in doubt here once Edwards took up the running 3 out on runaway winner Time Leader. O’Shea has Cousin Pascal on track to run in the Aintree Foxhunters next month.

Tristan Durrell is another amateur who has graduated to the professional ranks, and there would be few more coveted positions than with Dan Skelton. Of his 24 winners to date, 21 have been for his boss, who goes to Cheltenham well armed this year. Go Steady, winner of the Cash is King in the Ring Handicap Chase was a nice pump primer, even if poorly named for a sport where speed is of the essence. In what may prove a definitive week in the Trainers’ Championship, Skelton is “only” £600k behind his mentor and rival Paul Nicholls.

Sean Bowen has a date with Noble Yeats in the Boodles Cheltenham Gold Cup on Friday, and warmed up for that with a 2l winner in Flying Fortune for his father in the concluding bumper.

Nick Lees, director of Stratford for over 45 years and Leicester over 50, died last week at home at the age of 83. And so departed one of modern day racing’s greatest innovators.

Lees was an old school racing administrator, yet with the heart and mind of a youngster. An hour in his company always left you in the “glass half full” camp. Never short of an anecdote, he was an easy conversationalist, with a pragmatic and keen eye to how racing could adapt to changing cultural mores and retain its relevance to contemporary society.

Captain Nick Lees, formerly of the 17th & 21st Lancers, joined Leicester Racecourse in January 1970 as assistant secretary, graduated to the Clerk of Course position 2 years later, and retired from the post in 2004. Within the same timeframe, he became Clerk at Newmarket in ’74, Yarmouth in ’77, and Towcester, which he relinquished on retirement. Along with Hugo Bevan, who also died in 2022, he was amongst Britain’s busiest clerks.

Memorable moments have been many. His tenure at Newmarket coincided with the hurricane of 1988, where quick thinking saved the Dewhurst and Champion Stakes for another day, and the fateful aeroplane crash on the July course in 2000, in which Ray Cochrane and Frankie Dettori nearly lost their lives, and their pilot sadly did. As Managing Director over a period of 27 years to 2001, he oversaw much of the modern day development of the home of racing.

At the same time, a string of top flight horses passed through the races on the Rowley and July courses, and one or two top flight maidens appeared at the lesser venues. Yarmouth in particular remains favoured by Newmarket yards introducing youngsters for the first time.

The seventies and eighties were remarkable for the emergence of sustained Arab support of the sport. Sheikh Mohammed, whose horses now run in the colours of Godolphin, fielded a string of impeccably – bred horses like Pebbles, Oh So Sharp and many more in the once familiar maroon and white sleeves, and was accompanied by Sheikh Hamdan and others like Robert Sangster. It was a time when a bright and enthusiastic promoter of racing could enthuse wealthy owners to underwrite Newmarket’s valuable Pattern races, and Lees set to with a vigour. Many of those sponsorships exist even now.

But it was another innovation that really left its mark. In 1987, Lees booked The Spinners, a band on the way down, for an after racing party on the July course. The evening drew a substantial crowd, and Newmarket Nights rapidly became a genre of racing to draw in new crowds of a younger demographic. Of course, any summer racegoer will tell you this is the way to go racing of an evening nowadays. British racecourses, and the Jockey Club in particular, are among the largest music promoters in the UK.

But Lees was also a realist. Whilst Newmarket Nights now books major acts like Madness and Ed Sheerin, I once asked him if the same would apply at Leicester. He scoffed at the idea, recognizing that the genre requires “horses for courses”. His business acumen never left him, whether applying it to choice of music, or the racing programme.

As a one – time amateur rider, Lees’ thoughts were never far from the Jumps game. A series of wet winters focused in his own mind the opportunity for riverside courses and those with adequate watering systems to switch from winter to summer calendars. The introduction of summer jump racing wasn’t welcomed by the more conservative members of the training fraternity, and many remain opposed to it even now. But its introduction was supported by a cadre of stables for whom the opportunity to earn all year round was welcomed, and racecourse finances for summer tracks – Stratford included – were transformed.

A one -time auctioneer, Lees was a fan of the selling race too, on the face of it, the lowest class type of contest. Yet the sale process was heavily loaded in the racecourse’s favour, a fact not lost on Nick as he encouraged bids from new and existing owners. Even Newmarket had sellers in the eighties and nineties, and very lucrative they could be too. Nowadays, those courses where he had an involvement remain the only venues still staging them, in part for the theatre, part for the financial return.

In over 40 years’ experience of racing, I came across Nick Lees in just about every capacity you could imagine. Engaging, with a boyish grin and an infectious enthusiasm, his wealth of experience, both in the saddle and from behind a desk, was well employed in keeping both the home of racing fit for purpose over a period of 27 years, but also as a champion of the smaller independent courses, like Stratford and Leicester.

Nor did his curiosity leave him post retirement. I recall sitting at my desk at Hoppegarten Racecourse in Berlin some 10 years ago, only to receive a call from Nick, seeking advice on a trip to Berlin’s only Flat track with other directors from Stratford – an annual familiarisation visit to enjoy racing abroad, and learn best practice to apply back at home.

He leaves behind a wife, Joss, and two adult children, Lottie and Sophie, but beyond that in a professional capacity, he leaves a sport in better shape than when he arrived, for which all fans can give thanks.

Like all racecourses in the UK, here at Stratford, we understand how important owners are to the sport of horse racing. As such, we do all we can to make sure owners have the best experience possible when watching their horses in action at our venue. Our own Stratford Racing Club is one such example which has met with great success. Owning a horse can take you to the grandest places!

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— Ascot Racecourse (@Ascot) October 26, 2022

If you have ever considered owning a National Hunt racehorse before, or it is something you’d be open to in the future, here are some of the benefits involved. 

Jumpers are generally cheaper then Flat horses

One of the obstacles that puts people off from becoming racehorse owners is the sheer cost involved. In flat racing at the highest level, some well-bred horses are sold for millions of pounds, with these sales often well documented in the press.

Jumps horses are generally much cheaper than those which run on the Flat. By dint of the fact that most chasers and hurdlers are geldings, there is no breeding potential to impact upon your purchase price. There is also Jump racing on turf 12 months of the year, which means there are far more opportunities for your horse to feature on the track at a summer or winter racecourse.

HIS. LAST. EVER. RIDE. 😮

Sam Waley Cohen wins the @RandoxHealth Grand National on NOBLE YEATS! #RandoxGrandNational pic.twitter.com/uYAMvjjCnK

— Aintree Racecourse (@AintreeRaces) April 9, 2022

Hopefully, a National Hunt horse fits within your budget. Even if they come in at the lower end of the scale when it comes to their price, it does not mean you should not dream of running in the biggest races in the sport at the likes of the Cheltenham Festival and Grand National Meeting. Noble Yeats won the Grand National in 2022 after being sold for just £75,000 as a four-year at the Tatts Cheltenham December Auction.

By contrast, when dairy farmer Sirrel Griffiths won the Cheltenham Gold Cup with 100/1 outsider Norton’s Coin, he had bred the horse from a mare he bought for £500 and a stallion for £700. The offspring – Norton’s Coin – showed some promise in Point-to-Points, at which Griffiths bought him back for just £5,000. The horse won over £130,000 in prize money! Now that’s a fairy tale ownwership experience.

Racing Clubs & Syndicates

Another way to make racehorse ownership much more affordable is to join a racing club or syndicate. If you have ever wondered, how do I buy a share in a race horse? Essentially, it is a relatively easy process. All you need to do is decide how many shares you want to buy. After you make your purchase, there are no further payments required in your opening year, as all the costs such as training and service fees are covered within your shares.

With race clubs like RaceShare, some of the benefits of being part of the club is that you will get the inside scoop from your trainer on the chances of your horse. You will be the first to know when it is declared for a race. 

As a racing club or syndicate member, you also become part of a racing community. There are regular stable visits involved for you to see your horse up close, You will get to experience the thrill of seeing your horse on the track at courses like Stratford. Before you sign up for your shares, you can view the horses which are owned by the club. All their details such as their bloodstock, age, and experience will be available to view on their profile pages.

Stratford Racing Club members have enjoyed visits to Charlie Longsdon’s Cotswolds yard to see their horse, and there has been much back-slapping at racecourses across the Midlands as Jamacho has done the club proud, winning last summer at Worcester, Stratford and Uttoxeter (see below for a celebrated win in our Summer Salver).

Stratford Ownership experience

As an owner at Stratford, you have access to an owners and trainers suite, where a complimentary buffet lunch will be served. There will also be tea and coffee available to you throughout the day. With your owner’s badge, you will get access to the parade ring before your race. This is where you will speak to your jockey and trainer before the former jumps on board the horse.

If your runner is successful in their race, a racecourse director will guide you through the presentation and you get to take away a memento of the day. You will also get access to a private room where you can celebrate your success. Make the most of it! Winners are infrequent and there will be disappointment alongside success, which makes the latter so precious!

But what makes ownership so special is that instead of being a bystander, you achieve full immersion in the sport. Before long, you are reading the Racing Post from cover to cover every day, and you get to meet other owners, both in your own stable and beyond. Although you compete with each other in friendly rivalry, there’s a terrific community spirit that binds everyone together. And all of a sudden, loads of friends want to accompany you to the races!

Good luck if you do take up racehorse ownership in the future. Hopefully, we will see you soon at Stratford Racecourse where we will be ready to welcome you with open arms.