Chairman's Blog: Drought leaves racing facing hard questions

At the beginning of last month, online news headlines proclaimed: ‘Romania declares a nationwide state of emergency after record-low Danube levels force a nuclear reactor shutdown’. To the best of my  knowledge the Racing Post did not cover or comment on the story, but it befits all of us in the racing industry to sit up, pay attention, and start thinking a bit ahead. 

In early July, my colleague Steven Schlegel, Aletheia Capital’s  global commodity analyst, wrote about the deepening problems with the hot weather in Europe. His report documented times over the last thousand years when heatwaves were so severe that they caused crop failures, deaths and rivers to dry up. As Steven pointed out, it was not until Daniel Fahrenheit invented the mercury thermometer in 1724 that accurate outdoor temperature readings began. By 1860, the thermometers he invented were in widespread use across Europe. In ‘hottest’ terms, this summer is probably only a record as far back as the 1940s. 

Rivers running dry are mentioned often in European farm gazette records. The Danube, Rhine, Seine, Thames, Loire, Vistula, Elbe, Shannon, Tweed, Volga and Samara are all named explicitly and “many rivers” appear more often. Perhaps of most interest to us was in 1171 when “…in London, citizens waded across the Thames as water ran out across all of Europe and East Asia” and then again in 1723, when “both England and Scotland noted that water was now more expensive than meat and was rationed. The drought is famous for ‘killing of the largest cattle herds in the British Isles’ as all rivers and streams dried up.” 

This is not an invective about man’s abuse of the planet and the need for ‘net zero’ policies. It is merely an observation that climate change has been part of the human condition for millennia. For most readers of this magazine, we have lived through a remarkably moderate period in European weather history where both summers and winters have been less extreme than in the past. 

Since the 1990s, and increasingly from 2000, we have entered the ‘modern warming’ period. Yet it is only this year that European rivers are running dry. Worse, although not close to past drought records, our modern infrastructure makes different demands on energy and water supply than in the past. 

Which brings us to the fixture list. Much debate has gone on over the 2027 fixture list and the failure of the deliberating committees within the BHA to properly cost initial proposals, let alone agree on solutions going forward that will address average field sizes and the dropping foal crop. It is regularly contended that there is too much racing in Britain.

But what if we are missing the bigger picture? There are those in the industry who tell us that British horseracing must avoid becoming like BAGS greyhounds. The 100-year history of greyhound racing is on  dirt and sand. ‘There is too much all-weather racing’ is a common refrain along with complaints about ‘low quality’, even though 50% of the horse population falls into that category.

Yet have these same people planned for a very different modern economy, one which is perhaps operating in a prolonged period of hot summer weather? The UK’s population, at close to 70 million, is the 
highest on record and that alone means greater demand on water resources, from toilet flushing to drinking water. Racecourse watering or human survival: which side wins that debate with the politicians?

Moreover, we are all constantly bombarded by the prospect of the growing demand for artificial intelligence (AI). To power AI, the world is producing record investment in data centres – huge warehouses  that are full of semiconductor chips and equipment that generate ‘compute’, the powerhouse of AI. Unfortunately, as well as being super-hungry for electricity, these centres require copious amounts of fresh water to cool the heat that the compute generates. 

Again, if it is a choice of watering a racecourse or providing coolant to a data centre, who wins? 

The sport must ask itself: where are our turf tracks located, do they tap into existing waterways, what are their current water use requirements, how would that change if average summer temperatures rose by half or one degree? These questions, and many more, need to be addressed and answered before we make decisions to close or forcibly reduce the profitability of existing racing alternatives. 

In future, it might not be a question of turf or all-weather. It might be a question of all-weather or nothing – at least during the summer.