Whether you class it less as self-employment and more an indulgent hobby, training racehorses must rank as one of the riskiest and stupid activities to risk capital in. While there are many in the ranks who are content to plug away for zero financial gain in the hope of that life changing animal arriving to put them on the map, it is traditionally a profession that is the ball court of the wealthy, who are able to sustain a loss for a reasonable period off time.
I came across an interview with a certain Nicky Henderson in a copy of the November 1980 edition of Pacemaker International. The then 29 year old was in his third season as a trainer, with an increasing string that had reached fifty, but revealed that he was still operating at a loss. He forecast that he may just be in profit by the end of the 1980/81 season.
Henderson had worked for a short while in his father's stockbroking firm and could have continued to do so. Fortunately for him, he was privileged to be afforded the opportunity to ,in his words, "spend my life doing something I really enjoy", and to set himself up as a racehorse trainer in the less financially rewarding area of national hunt racing.
Henderson had served as assistant trainer to Fred Winter, with whom he was also an amateur rider.
The writer of the aforementioned article was Ivor Herbert, himself a former licence holder who trained the 1957 Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Linwell. He eventually handed in his licence because "without any inherited capital, being a national hunt trainer was economic nonsense."
If both the writer and subject of that article had at the time been given an insight into the state of affairs forty years on, it would be inconceivable for them to get to grips with the threats to the future well being of the sport. And moreover, that there were imminent reductions in prize money levels due to the Government limiting the minimum stakes on gaming machines that had become the bread and butter of many LBO's.
Then the knock on effect of lower prize money resulting in many trainers unable to justify increases in owners bills to pay their staff sufficient to retain them in a time when there exists a shortfall of one thousand in staff numbers, double that from just four years back previous.
At a time when Henderson would have rarely had any situations vacant, and had the usual one lad to three horses, mucking out the three and riding two or three lots, he would have scoffed at the idea that a day would come when lads and lasses were looking after half a dozen horses.
And that he himself would have one day been part of what feels like coordinated bugle calling, whereby several trainers and figures in racing make dramatic, individual statements, within a few days of each other, about the staffing crisis in yards across the country.
From the outside these admissions have the shape of 'we are stuck and need help' . They seem to be appearing more regularly and this latest episode last weekend certainly had an orchestrated vibe about it, from Henderson's statement, to the industry recruitment guests brought in on The Opening Show, to the endorsement from Dan Skelton.
While Henderson is unlikely to find himself in a position where finances force him out of business, anyone expressing sympathy for licence holders unable to make it pay should remember there are enough of them who were aghast at the decision to reduce the stakes on the FOBTS, who looked upon the addicts as merely loses in the precarious world of market forces influenced by Government, yet now find that they themselves exist on the brink of being sunk under the same rules.
Indeed,there is actually a plus side to this in the sense that the resultant loss of trainers from the ranks would result in a meaningful re-adjustment involving the staff shortage.
But to solve the problem on a more permanent basis we return to the basic agreed fact that younger people are not in interested in horse racing in the same numbers and with the same intense enthusiasm as past generations.
Admittedly, the passion for the horse as an animal more than as just a racehorse is a preferable trait for those seeking to work with racehorses. Many of the female stable staff in particular come from pony club or equestrian backgrounds. The girls on average are smaller and lighter to their male co-workers, many of whom have the lanky, wiry Richard Hughes and George Baker type gaits, as do an increasing number of active flat jockeys, Adam Kirkby being a prime model.
Even without any available figures in the public domain, if at all anywhere, we know for sure that the ratio of lads versus girls working in racing yards as altered notably from the 1970's, with the girls now outnumbering their male counterparts.
But there still has to be a link between the staff crisis and the amount of time the average person is exposed to the sport in today's hundreds of channels world in which the national broadcaster washed its hands of the sport, and in a world where the under 35's link betting predominantly to football.
Yet those with control continue to tread down the futile path where they believe gimmicks added to race days will draw people into the sport and lock them into it for life.
This is plainly not working. It has been tried again and again, beginning with Tom Jones and Suzi Quatro nights at Newmarket in the mid-80's. Those able to make influential decisions blindly keep on going with some tinkering here and there, believing that attendances and food and drink sales forms an accurate gauge.
In times gone by a small in stature lad who had picked up an interest in horse racing via betting may have gone about trying to acquire an opportunity to work in the industry. And when unemployment was alarmingly high, racing yards offered an opportunity to escape the out of bed at 11 am and down to the Off Licence for cheap cider lifestyle.
Nowadays, that small in stature lad will be betting on footy, will have plenty of watered down qualifications and will, if he makes the effort and is in the right location, have the opportunity to go from job to job in the public sector, permanent or fixed term.
These public sector organisations regularly have vacancies, most with super flexi working hours.
Both recruitment and promotion are based on 'competencies', written down by the individual. Those who are persistent and are expert enough at being able to demonstrate their self-proclaimed talents in writing, using the desired phraseology, can go far without possessing any discernible skills.
Working with racehorses demands a level of real competence at the job which is acquirable by those willing to work and learn. Those without any experience working with horses who are prepared to apply themselves can now attend pre-training schools to shape them up to a level where they can hit the ground running on entering a yard.
And encouragingly, an increasing number of trainers are now open to offering flexi working patterns which will accommodate parents who have the school runs to take care of and who would otherwise have to look elsewhere for employment. These zig zag shifts can be balanced by those who would be delighted to turn up at the yard at 6am, put a good shift in, then have the rest of the day to themselves.
It's messy and variable, lacking the uniformity of the old school, regulated to the minute routine, but it is now being accepted as the way forward.
The baffling part of it all is that for an industry that is desperate to pull in employees, we have still to see an recruitment advertising campaign that would ideally be broadcast during intervals when the racing is being shown. Many would have thought that would be a necessity.
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