Let’s unite to get our show back on the road

By the time these words are being read in early May I can only hope that those who work and participate in British horseracing have a clearer idea as to when racing will resume and under what conditions.

While we all yearn for some form of resumption, we have to balance this with the wider public concerns for the nation’s health and safety. It would, of course, be unthinkable to deviate from the government guidelines in developing a plan for the return of racing, just as it would for any sport.

But that’s not to minimise the dreadful effect the lockdown is having on every aspect of our industry. While this association’s primary responsibility is for the owners of the 14,000 thoroughbreds in training, we must acknowledge it is those 20,000 people who directly earn their living from this industry who are most in need of help.

It is widely accepted that when racing does resume, it will have to be ‘behind closed doors’ and under much stricter regulation as to who attends the events. But any racing, whatever the restrictions, will surely be welcomed with open arms after this period of isolation.

So what can we expect to see if, optimistically, there is a resumption in early June?

To begin with, there needs to be a sensible geographical spread of, say, two or three daily Flat fixtures. Although these might be based on the existing fixture list, the racecourses concerned will have to meet strict criteria, such as whether they lend themselves to racing behind closed doors and whether there are adequate medical facilities available to them.

Control of field sizes may be imposed so that restrictions on numbers of people allowed at the track at any one time can be met. However, all races will need to be competitive to ensure betting is maximised, with each-way opportunities.

A field size of ten runners would seem to be in the right ballpark and to help to achieve this a 24-hour declaration system might be temporarily introduced. Whether the races are handicaps or conditions events would not be an issue as long as they were all competitive and structured to cater for a wide section of the horse population.

The number of races at a single meeting could possibly go up to nine or ten, so long as an in-out system was carefully operated. As there would be no concern for paying customers, meetings could start and end at a time that best suited the remote audience and bookmakers, who would
be required to devise a system for returning an SP that was based entirely on the weight of money bet.

One can assume that betting shops would not be allowed to open in these early weeks so racing would not receive any of the lucrative income based on pictures in shops. There would, however, be some revenue from the streaming of live pictures, and, with the betting public starved of opportunities since Cheltenham, you would imagine betting and watching racing on remote devices would be very popular.

Racecourses would, nevertheless, have much reduced income from media rights and nothing from paying attendance but their costs would also be reduced.

In this environment, most prize-money would come from the Levy Board and owners’ entry fees. The distribution of the available prize-money would require careful planning but, for this period, racing would probably have to abandon its system of minimum values linked to class structure and spread the available prize-money to benefit the highest number of participants.

Most importantly, of course, our industry has to take a united plan to government. Once agreed, there must be no bickering between the industry’s various factions and complete co-operation between racing and betting operators. 

Forgive the cliché, but we are all in this together. And, you never know, we might also learn something from the experience.