"Win a race 1000 quid and its 1000 quid to train!!" (per month) and I thought we had it bad?
Prize money has been slashed by a further £2.1m as part of another round of cuts by the Levy Board, it was announced on Friday.
A total of £3.75million is to be cut in an effort to reduce expenditure for the remainder of 2010 with prize money bearing the brunt of the cuts.
The revelation comes on top of cuts announced earlier this year by the Levy Board totalling £4.6 million.
Friday's news will come as another blow to an industry that only last month Paul Dixon, President of the Racehorse Owners Association, said was already 'in crisis'.
A month before Friday's announcement Dixon, who is also a member of the Levy Board, described the situation as 'a joke' and called for action.
"We are in a crisis. Racing as we know it cannot continue," he said in interview on the ROA website
www.racehorseowners.net
.
Unwelcome
"We have been tinkering at the edges, putting on more fixtures and hoping that would increase the return from the levy, and the opposite has happened."
"It can't go on. We cannot ask people to buy and keep racehorses when they are getting only just over £1,000, less than a month's training fees, if they win a race. It's a joke."
The latest round of cuts will also include £450,000 from fixture incentives, while £625,000 of savings are expected to come from other departments - such as breeders' prizes and in veterinary and research costs.
Horserace Betting Levy Board chairman Paul Lee said on Friday that the cuts were necessary because of a dramatic fall in revenue from bookmakers.
He said; "The Levy Board very much regrets having to make further expenditure reductions in 2010. And we all understand that these will have a considerable and very unwelcome effect.
"Indications from bookmakers of the estimated yield of the 48th Levy Scheme ending on March 31 proved very inaccurate earlier in the year.
"As a result, the Bookmakers' Committee has agreed to provide information to assist the Levy Board in its efforts to improve forecasting."
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