They say you learn from your mistakes, writes Tony Stafford. If that is so, how come I managed to lose a mobile phone ten yards from the place in Ascot’s number two car park on Saturday, going home after a low-key Shergar Cup, where I mislaid the last one, never to re-surface?

The process was identical. Speak to a friend between the track and the car park; close the phone, open the car and rest the device on top while the luggage (straw hat and Racing Post) is placed inside. Drive off.

Last time I got to Legoland before I realised my missing means of communication. This time I was past Slough and closing on the roundabout leading to Pinewood Studios before I twigged. All the James Bond films were part-produced there. Wonder what he would have done?

Back to Ascot, scrabble about in vain on the grass-denuded ground – I’ve never seen that car park so sparsely-occupied or less strictly monitored - and leave details at the track’s Reception with two very helpful ladies.

Sunday was devoted to buying a sim card, some call minutes and trying to figure out vital numbers. In my prime I knew every number – as I did every horse in training, honest! My knowledge of the latter is much diminished, maybe partly as there are so many more races and meetings nowadays. As remembering phone numbers is no longer needed with lists to speed dial from, hardly half a dozen of the 150 or so that resided in Saturday’s lost soul are securely known. Honestly!

August was always reckoned to be the silly season in the newspaper business. There was even an Ian Balding horse called Silly Season in the mid- and late-1960’s who won plenty of races and was a great favourite with racegoers, including me.

August 2022 will take some beating for silliness. We’ve had no rain, heatwaves, inflation, war, strikes, disgraced politicians and the prospect of massive mortgage rate hikes and crashing property values. It’s mad and almost unrecognisable from even a year ago when we were still entrenched and totally pre-occupied with Covid.

It’s still there, but like Ukraine we’ve become all Covid-ed and Ukraine-d out with everything else we have to contend with.

What’s all that got to do with racing you ask? Well that also seems to get sillier by the week. The Shergar Cup was a great innovation two decades ago, but this latest episode suggested to me that it has played itself out. Frankie Dettori still turned up, but the team idea, once earth-breaking, now seems contrived.

Prize money was lavish, of course, but that doesn’t guarantee much of a response, so much so that having been scheduled for 12 runners each race, Ascot and the BHA decided to cut it to ten, with the fear of some teams having less than equal opportunities.

One race did indeed have only eight acceptors – and one of those came out on the day too – but the horse I was there to see on behalf of its owners, was number 11 and of course, he stayed in his box. Nothing came out of his race, but he had to travel from HQ in case one did. Hopefully he’ll make the cut at York.

Two other relatively new additions to the Racing Calendar are in the process of their second year of activity. Last Thursday, the first of six late afternoon/early evening fixtures comprising the Racing League was staged at Doncaster. Seven races, each worth a total value of £50k, all handicaps and mostly 0-90, but occasionally 0-85, attracted decent fields.

Teams of trainers and jockeys representing six regions in the UK, as well as one under the Ireland banner, take part. All six races are staged on Arena racecourses, with Lingfield this week and Newcastle (two), Windsor and Southwell to follow, concluding under lights at Newcastle on September 15. All are shown on Sky Sports Racing.

Meanwhile the second big idea, the Sunday Series, will come to its conclusion, with its sixth edition also, at Sandown on August 21st.  Once again this caters for an almost identical portion of the horse population, in this case mainly 0-85, but with the odd 0-90 and at Sandown a 0-95. There is a single maiden race on the Sandown schedule of seven races, but with a much-reduced prize. Yesterday’s fifth chapter was at Haydock, all six staged at non-Arena tracks and shown on Racing UK.

Where there is a reported £2 million to share out with the Racing League, that drops to more like £1.4 million for the Sunday Series, with its usual first prize being £15k rising to £18k at Sandown. While any stable can have Sunday Series runners, trainers and the horses they regard as suitable for the races have had to be registered for the Racing League.

It seems silly – that word again – that the East of England team in the Racing League extends to as far as 32 yards mostly in Newmarket with many of the very top involved. As each team can have only two representatives in each race, ridden by their nominated riders, even those Newmarket or rather the East, handlers might find it tough to get a runner.

They are at the foot of the table after the first day when London and the South are leading. Time was when Andrew Reid, in Mill Hill, was the only trainer with a London post code. He’s no longer in operation sadly.

The awful thing, for all the energy of the people that run the events, is that my reaction as a reformed punter is “so what?”  Racegoers can hardly be expected to adhere to any team for all Matt Chapman’s conviction. They want to back winners!

Owners lucky enough to get a horse in one of the three out-of-the-norm events can be rewarded by much better money than for normal races in those handicap categories. But it is far from easy for ordinary horses to get a run and even when they do, even tougher to win one.

To cater for the Racing League, races have had to be taken away from existing programming, thus limiting opportunities for stables that have not been registered. I have been told that notification of when that registration could and should be made had not been easy to find on the BHA site, or timely so for that matter.

The Shergar Cup started at around the time that Peter Savill was the boss of the BHB, the regulator's previous guise. Now Savill has intervened in the debate on whether the number of races and fixtures should be reduced. A figure of 300 - William Haggas among other top trainers likes that number – seems the starting point, but at a time when the BHA seems less able to control either fixtures or the individual races in them, with the tracks calling the tune, it will be an uphill battle.

Racecourses, in these times of falling attendances, are aggressively opposed to any reduction as their media rights return is based on the number of races staged. Arena is one grouping apparently implacable in resisting any cutbacks, but the trainers want fewer races, with the available money to be shared out to bolster the races and cards that remain.

One Racing League trainer, Joseph Tuite, listed in the Wales and the West team, will not be participating.  The Lambourn handler had a complement of 25 in the 2022 edition of Horses in Training but when last week he announced he would be closing his stable, he was down to a bare nine or ten.

His plight reinforced my conclusion that the biggest stables simply get bigger and more powerful. The handicap system plays to their advantage as they monopolise the 0-90 categories. Their best horses can be left to the Stakes races. Those lower down the scale get workable marks after their qualifying runs and can exploit the system to the detriment of the smaller stables – and that’s the 50-80 strong yards, not just those like Tuite’s.

With three wins in the Shergar Cup on Saturday, one 0-90 Classified and two handicaps, William Haggas is the ideal trainer to illustrate the point. So skilful has he been in playing the system, he is the acknowledged master of producing winners of valuable handicaps, often running up multiple sequences.

With 12 wins from his 46 runners over the past fortnight, he had an astonishing 27 (around 60%) of them starting favourite. He is most unlikely to catch Charlie Appleby as he goes unchallenged at the top of the trainers’ table. But, with his yard so stocked with lightly-raced, progressive handicappers, he has clearly supplanted the Gosden yard as the most feared challenger for the biggest handicap prizes in the programme. For a start, what’s he got in the Ebor?

- TS