As part of the new ARC £1,000,000 All-Weather Bonus initiative, the Horse Of The Month prize for October & November will be shared between the Ruth Carr-trained Bobby Joe Legg & the George Boughey-trained Queen Of Ipanema. The duo will receive £15,000 each for finishing tied at the top of the leaderboard having won their first three starts between the start of the competition and the end of November.
In its inaugural season, the ARC £1,000,000 All-Weather Bonus runs from October 18th and will culminate on All-Weather Finals Day, on Good Friday, April 7th.
A further four Horse of The Month prizes will be awarded in the following months: December, January, February, March & April, with £20,000 for the winning horse, £10,000 for second and £5,000 for third. These amounts double for the February and March & April competitions.
Points are awarded for finishing in 1st place down to 5th, and the horse with the most overall points at the end of the season will receive a bonus of £100,000 and be crowned Horse of The Year. Points are accrued in a horse’s first three runs in any monthly period at Lingfield Park, Newcastle, Southwell and Newcastle.
Bobby Joe Legg has registered a hat-trick of victories on the all-weather in recent weeks at both Wolverhampton and Newcastle. His trainer Ruth Carr regularly runs her horses on the All-Weather at this time of the year and is a big fan of the bonus put on by ARC.
Carr said: “It’s a great initiative by ARC to introduce the £1m Winter Bonus. It makes racing more competitive and any way we can reward owners financially is great. What is really good about it is that you can win in it with any grade of horse, you don’t need a highly rated horse to have a bite at the prize money.”
On the eight-year-old’s upturn in form, she added: “We were starting to drop down the handicap and wondered if he’d lost his mojo, but we popped the blinkers back on as he hadn’t worn headgear for a long time and that just seems to have turned him round. He’s a very special horse to us anyway but to win a prize like this is excellent.”
Unlike Bobby Joe Legg, Queen Of Ipanema is a horse at the start of her career and the three-year-old filly has done nothing but thrive since switched to handicaps by George Boughey registering three consecutive wins at ARC racecourses.
Boughey said: “I think it’s a great initiative from ARC and something we are actively looking to target.. We have got a handful of horses who might try later in the year and into 2023. With the £100,000 bonus at the end of the season, it certainly keeps better horses in training and Queen of Ipanema is probably a prime candidate for that.”
Cloch Nua also registered 14 points throughout October and November for trainer Stella Barclay, which means he finished in third place on the leaderboard and connections will receive £5,000.
As well as owners and trainers, racing staff associated with the winning stables also receive a chunk of the bonus money on offer with £5,000 awarded to connections of the first placed horse, £3,500 to the second and £1,000 to the third. In the event that two horses share a finishing position, this money is split between both stables.
