British Black-Type Prize-Money is Best in Europe but Challenges Remain

Wandering Eyes · 2026-03-04T19:45:10Z

In recent weeks, Forever Young has won the world's richest race for the second time, Ka Ying Rising has set a new record in winning 18 consecutive races, Romantic Warrior landed his 13th Group 1 contest, and Rebel's Romance posted his 21st career victory. They have respectively earned the equivalent of approximately £23m, £13m, £26m and £12m. It would seem that there has never been a better time to own a top-class racehorse.

Calandagan, the world's top-rated racehorse in 2025, has just turned five and may be seen next in the $6m Dubai Sheema Classic, depending on the situation in the Gulf region in a few weeks' time. He has clocked up £6.2m in earnings, and then there is his bonus of approximately $3m (2.2m) for winning the Japan Cup, having also landed at least one of a series of races around the world designed to entice overseas horses to Tokyo in late November.

Ka Ying Rising looks to be about to chart a similar course to last year, which would see him launch a repeat bid on The Everest at Randwick in October. His 2025 victory in Sydney was the sole start for the five-year-old away from his home track of Sha Tin, not counting his dazzling barrier trial in his native New Zealand some three years ago. The David Hayes-trained gelding had been top of the wish list for Ascot's Nick Smith, whose job it is to sign up overseas challengers for Royal Ascot, the King George and British Champions Day. Ka Ying Rising appearing in Berkshire this summer seems unlikely to happen this year at least.

Hayes recently told Ray Thomas of Australia's Racing and Sports, “Maybe after a couple of Everests we might think about going to Royal Ascot but at the moment we are staying with the plan to give him three more runs in Hong Kong this season then prepare for Sydney and The Everest again.”

Smith, the director of racing and public affairs at Ascot, says, “When you're looking in from an American, Japanese or Australian point of view about sending horses to compete in Britain, you're only talking about sending them to compete in Group 1s. And regardless of the fact that we've made some pretty positive changes across the programme, [Britain's Group 1 races] still compare unfavourably with global Group 1s.”

Smith does however cite the rising prize-money in Britain – in the upper echelons at least – as cause for cheer in Europe.

He says, “Actually we are a very appealing destination now for French, German and Irish horses because they're competing across the [European] Pattern. And, therefore, the opportunities for those nations and the motivation to run horses in Britain has probably never have been higher.”

Ka Ying Rising's jockey Zac Purton has previously been a little less diplomatic than Hayes when discussing the chances of Ka Ying Rising running at Royal Ascot, describing British prize-money as “hopeless”. But is it though?

Trainers of horses in the lower ranks may well agree that it is, and the Class 5 and 6 races do feel more squeezed than ever. Some participants within British racing are calling for these races not to receive Levy Board funding and for the tracks who host them to find the money for this lower tier through executive contributions and sponsorship alone. There has, however, been a determined approach in Britain to raise the prize-money at the higher end. For some time now, the financial rewards for black-type races in Britain have compared favourably with those on offer in Ireland and France, and the minimum values have risen again this year. Ireland, too, has seen increases in this sector, while France, which has been forced to reduce in prize-money for 2026 by €20.3m, has imposed decreases in most black-type tiers bar Group 1 races. It is worth noting, however, that the figures in the accompanying tables (below) do not include the owners' and breeders' premiums available to French-bred horses on top of prize-money. Also, Britain, unlike France and Ireland, has a lower set of minimum values for its two-year-old black-type programme.

Dr Jim Walker, president of Britain's Racehorse Owners Association and owner of the Ascot Gold Cup winner Subjectivist, took issue with the focus on the top end in a recent column in Owner Breeder magazine, particularly in regard to the announcement by the Jockey Club of a £1.35m increase in prize-money for the 2026 Derby Festival. This included £500,000 extra in prize-money for the Betfred Derby – bringing the total purse to £2m – and for the Coolmore Coronation Cup, which is now worth £1m.

“Thirty-six per cent of £97.7m in Flat-race prize-money in 2025 went to Class 1 (i.e. Pattern) races. If we assumed that the horses competing in those races were rated 95 or better, less than 10% of the horse population vied for £35m (and a lot of it went to Ireland anyway),” Walker noted. “Meanwhile, at the bottom end, owners of the 4,500 horses rated 70 and below – more than half the Flat racehorse population – competed for £22m.”

His column concluded, “What the 'elite sport' brigade seems to forget is that every building needs foundations. The almost 50% of horses running in Classes 5 and 6 are the foundation of our sport. The owners of these horses are giving a home to the animals that the top trainers and top owners happily discard after a couple of runs or even a few training gallops that suggest they are sub-par. Without a strong foundation, the whole house will fall down.

“The Premier League, which [former Jockey Club chief executive] Mr Truesdale wishes to emulate in racing, ensures the supply of future talent by funding lower leagues. That is smart thinking. If the Jockey Club had looked at the bigger picture and announced half a million pounds in enhanced prize-money for Classes 4, 5 and 6 across its venues – a material difference to keep small owners in the sport – I would have been cheering louder than anyone.”

Plenty in British racing will share Dr Walker's sentiments. Plenty of others will applaud the focus on high-end races – an approach aimed at retaining the best horses to race in a country which is one of the acknowledged world leaders of thoroughbred breeding, and at enticing some of the best around the world to race on these shores.

Smith takes a different view to Walker. He says, “This is about maintaining Britain's preeminent position on the global stage as a place to have horses in training above everything else. And if we're not a destination for championship-level horses, then these owners won't have horses in training with us going forward.

“It is only the top end of the sport that creates the halo effect for everything else underneath it. And if that halo continues to dim, then there's going to be consequences in five to ten years' time.

“Developmental races are fundamental to the whole programme. Prize-money should be allocated towards the Pattern and towards developmental races as a matter of absolute priority and everything else fits in. If you don't promote and enhance the top of the pyramid, the pyramid will just shrink and no one will make any progress.”

He adds, “But to be absolutely clear, it would be completely wrong for Ascot and courses like it to only focus on the top end. We've put prize money up across almost 50% of our entire programme, including not just the developmental races but also the lower-grade handicaps. So we are specifically this year spreading the prize-money increases much wider.”

In that key middle tier of racing, there has been focused funding from sponsors Juddmonte, Darley, Tattersalls, and the British EBF as well as from the BHA's development fund to stage a series of high-value maiden and novice races. Finding the balance between the opposite ends of the spectrum is not easy, especially when set against a background of turbulence within the British horseracing. The latest twist in that long-running tale has been the announcement on Tuesday of the resignation of British Horseracing Authority chair Lord Allen after only six months in the post.

Whichever way you happen to veer in the prize-money argument, there is no denying the determination among some of the major tracks in Britain – which in recent years have benefited from extra income derived from hosting World Pool fixtures – to raise the appeal of flagship meetings.

Prior to the Jockey Club's announcement regarding Epsom, Ascot had announced last summer that this year's King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes would become the first race in Britain to be run at £2m. York has raised the prize-money for the Juddmonte International to £1.5m (from £1.25m), while in 2025, the the Coral-Eclipse stakes was run at £1m for the first time.

At Royal Ascot, which this year is worth a total of £19.4m, two races – the Prince of Wales's Stakes and the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes are run for £1m each while the remaining six Group 1 contests offer a prize fund of at least £700,000. The Qipco-sponsored British Champions Day, which is funded by stakeholders Ascot, the Jockey Club, York, Goodwood, and Great British Racing as an 'industry day', is Britain's richest race day at £4.35m, with the Champion Stakes being worth £1.3m and the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes run for £1.1m.

These are far from derisory sums. Admittedly, with a rapidly expanding network of high-value races in the Middle East, and significant expansion of the Australian programme to include some newer races such as The Everest, The Golden Eagle and The Quokka, it is hard for Britain to lay up in some areas, but as the accompanying table of some of the world's most valuable races shows, the situation is far from Purton's assertion of “hopeless”.

That said, Smith says that headhunting international runners to race in Britain has become harder than ever. He does however say that here have been “positive noises” about Masquerade Ball, who on Tuesday was ruled out of travelling from Japan to the Dubai Sheema Classic, coming to Ascot for the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes. The Chris Waller-trained Australian sprinter Joliestar is also likely to head to Royal Ascot.

“The difference now to how it was 10 years ago is unbelievable,” he says. “I used to go to Australia with the confidence of getting seven or eight entries, three or four runners. Japan has always been a bit of a struggle, but America built from nothing, and we used to get horses from Hong Kong much more regularly.

“The prestige only takes you so far. Myself and William Derby [York] and Ed Arkell [Goodwood] and and indeed Sophie Able from the Jockey Club, we spend an awful lot of time talking to connections, and it's the same redounding message all the time and that's 'We'd probably love to race in the UK more than anywhere else in the world, but we can't justify it'.”

Ascot is still very much holding its own, however, and it staged three of the top-ten-rated races in the world last year, including the Qipco Champion Stakes, which tied at the top of the table with the Japan Cup. Sandown's Coral-Eclipse also made a top-ten appearance, and the Betfred Coronation Cup, Juddmonte International and Betfred 2,000 Guineas were all in the top 20.

In fact, Britain led the way in 2025 with 20 of the top 100 Group/Grade 1 races in the Longines World Rankings, ahead of Australia (19), America (16), Japan (15), Hong Kong (11), France (10), Ireland (4), United Arab Emirates (3), Germany (1), and Saudi Arabia (1). The key challenge now is to stay out in front.