French Racing / La Casaque Noire / 10 December 2007 / Leave a comment

La Casaque Noire calls says subsidies to trainers merely reward over-production...

The recent bloodstock foal sales in Ireland (Goffs) and Newmarket (Tattersalls) have yielded results that leave a lot to be desired. As ever, the cream at the top sells well, with Sheikh Mohammed, in particularly, very active.

However, anything less than perfect in terms of conformation or pedigree has generally not found a buyer, unless the vendor is prepared to take a whopping loss - most aren't - and so the horse is taken back home. This leads to a general bleating about over-production and how the bad mares should be culled. Of course, those doing the moaning are the very same that have suffered losses, and it's never their mares that are the problem - it's others that should have been more prudent and taken the decision to remove their mares from active service.

The problem is well-illustrated by the size of the catalogues. At Tattersalls, the number of lots offered rose by 265 to 1395, with 780 finding buyers, that's just 30 more than last year. Statistics at Goffs were near identical.

Saturday saw the start of the Deauville winter sales, amid worrying concerns from the French breeders about whether they'd be able to sell or not (read: whether they'd be able to sell for a profit). The British and Irish sales' over-production is simply a case of supply and demand - the prices will drop and eventually market forces will force the bad-producers to stop (unless, of course, they are happy to continue taking losses).

However, this side of the water there is something more sinister in action. Many go to the sales expecting a loss but quite happily continue breeding from any mare they can get their hands on. How come? Well, firstly land is cheap here, and many larger properties come with acres of land that needs to be kept. What to do? One option is to breed horses, whether it be trotters or thoroughbreds. Normandy is full of quasi-farmers that do just that. But surely the numbers bred would be tempered by the fact that nobody in their right mind is going to produce young horses that make financial losses year in, year out? The answer is found in that ugly word, probably invented by the French - "subsidy".

Every breeder in France gets paid a premium in the form of a payment of around 20% of the prize money that every horse earns. Because of the handicapping system and the mediocrity it encourages, even these badly bred (or just plain bad) horses will normally manage one win per year. With a minimum win prize of around £7,500, these bonuses can equate to £1,500 per horse, per year - and that ignores the place money. So, a breeder churning out two or three bad horses a year, can easily earn a good living, even if he has literally given the horse away in the first place. Remember, most of these horses will continue racing until they are no longer able, as unlike the equine stars, they won't be retired to stud! This crazy situation shouldn't be allowed to continue, but who's going to face up to the farmers? The Common Agricultural Policy rules over here.

Unfortunately some mares are so bad, that the offspring aren't fit to race. A recent study found that four out of five horses that end up at the slaughter house are trotters. If we needed a more compelling reason to argue for the scrapping of these crazy subsidies, then this surely is it.