Thread by @Jonny_Zorro_12

An open thread/letter to @nickluck and @ayrracecourse wondering if anyone will maybe go on his podcast and help owners understand why some of the things listed below are happening or not happening at Ayr this week and even before this week. Firstly let me start this by saying..

I part own a few horses with @MprUpdates , which for a man of meagre means affords me to have some great days out to watch the sport I love and get the thrills and spills of being an “owner” however Small the share size is in each horse. Raymond Tusk for example took us to..

The Melbourne Cup last year. Money can’t buy these days and I’m sure every syndicate owner and especially sole, will agree that you buy into these horses for the love of the game, with no expectations to make any money, you want the experience, you want the days out on course!

I digress... so last season I imagine I visited 16-20 different courses as an owner and can say with total confidence that Ayr was easily the best owners experience I had all year for the whole Gold Cup meeting. So much so, a few of us booked again for this September..

Knowing 3-4 horses we have will be running there. Even in these tricky times courses have been very accommodating to syndicates for the most part recently, offering more and more badges it seems month on month... until @ayrracecourse it seems! Seemingly Ayr have a 2 badge limit..

Per horse. Which is a shock being their flagship meeting, and how they look after owners year on year. Reasons for this could be..
1) not enough space, therefore only room to be safe social distancing for 2 owners per horse. I’ll come back to this point shortly.

I ask you @ayrracecourse , if Musselburgh on a bog standard Saturday (4-5 days before your FLAGSHIP meeting) can offer champagne on arrival, 4+ badges with more for syndicates for reasons we delve into later, silks and names of owners printed on each table and a 3 course meal,

Why can you offer a packed lunch, and two badges? It’s things like this people will always remember fondly or otherwise...

(This has been thrown in at random as I forgot this point when I finished and it needed saying somewhere)
As many of you who have been racing this summer will know and sure agree on... I can’t think of a place I’ve felt much safer than on a racecourse. Certainly when you leave

The course amd go to a shop or a pub or go play a football match! This was ROYAL Ascot! Anyway back to my moaning...

2) Maybe Ayr has been talking to the Scottish Government and they don’t want people travelling from all over the UK “bringing the virus”. This made sense also.
It would amaze me they can host 10,000 fans and not host 300 owners a day if allowing 4+ per horse.

Let’s say it’s point 2. It’s a shame for the Ayr economy losing drinks and food bills and hotel rooms paid by many more owners.
If we step away from why it’s only 2 per horse now; and delve into the crux of this for syndicate owners.
Let me ask Ayr racecourse..

If you have 100 horses entered for racing, you have a “maximum capacity” for 200 owners (for whatever reason) Will you be reallocating badges to syndicates when you realise 36 hours before that no owners are going from 60 of these horses. For example if King Power have 5 runners

The only owner that will attend is the lovely lady who chats to Silva after his races and reports back to King Power HQ. Or of course Godolphin, Qatar, The Queen and may more of the big guns whoa dominate the sport of whom we all know will not go to Ayr on Friday to watch

The bronze cup! May I point out that @Goodwood_Races had a badge maximum for the festival this year, on the first day, a day on which they saw 50 ish owners attend. The next days of the festival they allowed many many more owners in from syndicates who wanted to attend..

As you can imagine, this, for an owners like myself and many others would’ve made their year, to have a runner at Glorious Goodwood you can only dream about, it may never happen again, and to miss out when there would have been hundreds of badges not taken would have been almost

Criminal! It so happens even when they opened up that week still only 100 or so owners attended. The year we are in of course.
This is Aura flagship meeting, you may never ever get a runner in the Ayr gold Cup again, or even on the same day. To miss out and see nobody there due

To above stated reasons would be absolutely terrible. Doncaster for the Leger meeting I am told had around 120 owners. Ayr, I implore you, let us small syndicate owners have badges, let us celebrate our horses that race for you to have meetings, let us fill the tills are your

Bars on course! Don’t let us miss one of the biggest meetings of the year due to laziness or utter contempt on your part for owners.

Let us have distanced fun and tell our friends how good racing is and how good Ayr was for owners again! Let 10 @MprUpdates owners celebrate Waarif winning on Gold Cup day like last year, let @OntoawinnerNEWS celebrate flying pursuit in the Gold Cup, i could go on but for anyone

Who got this far, we’ll played as I even bored myself! Probably won’t tweet again for a year now as my fingers are sore, but let’s hope we can come together and sort this out because prize money is already horrific, please don’t push even more people away from the game with

Awful owners experiences.
Have a great week everyone. I will report back from Ayr later this week, whether it’s from the beach watching racing on my phone, or it’s at the course with lots of other owners having safe fun!

Any RT’s welcome if you think it helps. @FellowesRacing , @hkseal @miketindall13