anyone able to post the julian muscat article , 11 more G1 in 25 years

It must have been galling for connections of Arapaho Gold to see their horse beaten in the Dubai Duty Free Mill Reef Stakes on Saturday. The narrow margin of his defeat was tough to bear. He succumbed by less than half a length, but what really turned the tide was the 3lb penalty he was burdened with.
That is because Arapaho Gold had won the Group 2 Gimcrack Stakes on his previous start. Since the Mill Reef was another Group 2, he was obliged to carry the penalty, as decreed by the race conditions. Without it, the Michael Dods-trained juvenile would almost certainly have won.
As harsh as that may seem, there is method behind it. Horses are asked to carry such penalties when they contest a Pattern race of a grade they have already won in before. This encourages connections to raise their horse’s sights rather than farm races at a lesser level, which does nothing to promote competitive racing.
However, the problem today is that not all Pattern races embrace such penalty structures. It is a regrettable development which emasculates the original ethos. Quite why the Pattern’s guardians permit it is hard to understand. It is obviously in any racecourse’s interests to attract horses of a higher standard than would usually be associated with the type of Pattern race it has scheduled, but the penalty structure should be applied rigidly across the board. It should be fair to everyone.
There are rare occasions when exceptions can conceivably be justified. The Group 3 Greenham Stakes at Newbury is an early-season trial for the 2,000 Guineas. Because of that, the argument goes that Pattern-race winners should not be asked to give weight away on their seasonal comebacks with the Newmarket Classic following on two weeks later.
NEWBURY, ENGLAND - APRIL 18: Clifford Lee riding Alparslan win The Watership Down Stud Too Darn Hot Greenham Stakes at Newbury Racecourse on April 18, 2026 in Newbury, England. (Photo by Alan Crowhurst (Getty Images)
Clifford Lee riding Alparslan to victory in this season's Greenham Stakes
Credit: Alan Crowhurst (Getty Images)
Conversely, Newmarket’s Group 3 Craven Stakes, the other front-line 2,000 Guineas trial, used to penalise previous Pattern-race winners – and suffered for it. Sir Henry Cecil prepped Frankel in the Greenham because the colt, a Group 1 winner at two, was not required to carry a penalty. Nor were the plethora of other Pattern-race winners down the decades who favoured the Greenham for that reason.
So it was no surprise when Newmarket abandoned the Craven’s penalty structure in 2016. The Craven had been operating at a clear disadvantage, but the simple truth is that if the Greenham had required Pattern-race winners to carry penalties, there would have been no need to level the playing field. As they say, two wrongs do not make a right.
Sadly, such misplaced thinking is now commonplace. It extends far beyond trials for the Newmarket Classics, where there might have been a sympathetic case for it. The vogue today is that any racecourse striving to upgrade the quality of a Pattern race will abandon penalty structures altogether while simultaneously beefing up prize-money. This obviously helps to attract a better class of horse, which is what is required for any race to ascend the Pattern ladder.
It does not always work, of course. Goodwood has been actively promoting the Group 2 Lennox Stakes by the combination of abandoning penalty structures and boosting prize-money.
However, it was beaten to the Group 1 punch by the City of York Stakes, which was a humble Listed race as recently as 2015. In that year, the winner’s purse was £56,710, but successive prize-money boosts and the absence of a penalty structure saw the race promoted to Group 1 status last year, when the winner collected a whopping £377,121.
What is wrong with that, you may ask? Well, consider what happened this year. The City of York Stakes attracted Notable Speech, who picked off the valuable prize with ease. But Notable Speech’s presence at York came at the direct expense of the Group 1 Sussex Stakes, which was won by Bow Echo.
Bow Echo beats Gstaad and Opera Ballo in the Sussex Stakes
Bow Echo (right) beats Gstaad in the Sussex Stakes
Credit: Edward Whitaker (racingpost.com/photos)
The season was barely up and running when Bow Echo and Notable Speech posted spine-tingling victories in the 2,000 Guineas and Lockinge Stakes respectively. Their collision on the track would surely have settled the champion miler accolade, but the City of York’s recent promotion to Group 1 status robbed us of that spectacle. The two horses went their separate ways, Bow Echo then got injured and we were denied the much-anticipated match-up.
It was one more disappointment in a season that promised so much but has come up short. That is because there are now too many Group 1 races, which serves to stifle competition. Even in a year that opened with an older-horse tribe stronger than at any time this century, the wow factor has proved elusive.
It is easy to see why. No fewer than 11 new Group 1 races have been introduced over the last 25 years in Britain alone. That is a 41 per cent increase, from 27 in 2001 to 38 this year. Can we really claim that there are now 41 per cent more horses worthy of winning a Group 1 race than there were at the start of the millennium? The suggestion is totally absurd.
But that is what happens when the foundations of a brilliant concept like the Pattern are eroded over time. Races should receive Pattern upgrades only through organic growth, rather than fallacious inducements like abandoning penalty structures. And while the racing and bloodstock industries slap each other on the back over increased opportunities for better horses, the losers are the racing public. They are rarely served the kind of contests that made fans of them in the first place.

nobody writes more sense than JM.

It wasn't at all cut and dried that Arapaho Gold was beaten by the 3lb penalty. Given that he was keen, and struggling from an early stage, it could have been down to any number of things - one race too many, quick ground, jock.....Probably not a very good example to sell the piece.

thx damascus