Coming Out of Lockdown – The Resumption of Racing Appears to be Getting Nearer

Has anyone experienced an April like the one we’ve just been through? I was uncertain whether to start this blog with a small number of personal reflections, or to concentrate on the gravity of the situation and the grim news that we have all been encountering – lighter news prevailed, before the sombre.

We’ll all have our own personal memories of the crisis, and for me they will be triggered in future years by the five photographs. Without any doubt (subject of course to disasters!) I’m going to come out of the lockdown in a far healthier state than when I went into it. My wife and I are having an hour’s walk around the Cotswold hills every day, and the trudge back to our house is quite steep. We’ve both enjoyed watching the newborn lambs, and our local farmer amused the village by painting “NHS” on the heaviest lamb that had been born to date, and his mum.

Earlier in the month, our mare Mayfair Rock produced her first foal, and we’re all hoping that this lovely grey filly will go on to great things. She is by Gr.1-winning Havana Grey, trained by Karl Burke, and he very generously helped us with a free nomination to this stallion, who has been well supported by breeders.

It has been very interesting to see all the various forms of communication being adopted by the racing world, not least our network of trainers, studs and pre-training yards. Several of them have really risen to the challenge of keeping owners fully informed and in touch with their horses, and I particularly want to commend Claire Hart and Martin Keighley for the almost daily flow of super photos and videos. Claire is looking after Luttrell Lad, who was due to race at Stratford, but alas the meeting had to be cancelled due to the lockdown. He’s a horse we’re particularly looking forward to seeing out and he’ll run for Philip Hobbs in bumpers at the end of the summer or early in the autumn.

Many of us have been disappointed by and / or incredulous about the performance of politicians. There has often seemed to be a considerable gap between the rhetoric of what they blather on about and the reality on the ground. If that has been a frequent public criticism in the UK, it has been nothing compared to the reactions to the “Leader of the Western World”, President Trump. A new drink has even made its appearance – although one quickly expressly prohibited by all right-thinking people. No-one wants to consider a Gin & Trump made of disinfectant. Nothing is further from my mind – indeed, every Saturday my wife and I have been enjoying a top-quality wine tasting, the latest being a superb 2003 Château Léoville-Barton from St-Julien. This estate is owned by the admirable Anthony Barton, who represents the longest-standing vineyard ownership in Anglo-Irish hands. His philosophy has always been to produce top-quality Claret and sell it for a (relatively) reasonable sum. Superb.

Now back to the grim reality. As of the end of April there had been 165,000+ confirmed cases of coronavirus infections in the UK, and 26,000+ deaths in hospitals, care homes and the wider community. Apparently 1:3 who have been ill enough to be admitted to intensive care have died. It’s hard to comprehend the sadness of this, nor the amazing dedication of the NHS and the front line of care. The country has been rightly appreciative of the bravery of all these staff, and none of us will forget the accomplishment of Captain (now Honorary Colonel) Tom Moore who has raised £31m for NHS charities by walking 100 laps of his garden.

Doubtless there will be many commissions of enquiry into the preparedness of the country for dealing with this pandemic. Already several experts, with vastly more insight than I possess, have been highly critical. As one example, Richard Horton, the Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet, has published a number of articles accusing ministers and their advisers of failing to scale up capacity for testing, contact tracing and intensive care, and adopting a laissez-faire response and a misguided strategy of “herd immunity”. The first paper on the existence of Covid-19 was published in The Lancet on 19th January, but the assessment within it was passed over by Whitehall. Horton’s withering accusation is that this has become “the biggest science policy failure in generations”.

There has been no racing in the UK since Taunton and Wetherby on 17th March, but very encouragingly the whole of racing has come together to work collaboratively in the Resumption of Racing Group, and it is looking increasingly likely that Flat racing will come back behind closed doors around the middle to end of May, with the return of NH racing provisionally announced for 1st July. The breadth and detail of work within this group has been impressive, as has its close liaison with government and, particularly, the Department of Culture, Media & Sport. The government has provided considerable sums of money to support businesses and many trainers have taken advantage of grants and loans. In addition the Horseracing Levy Board and the Racing Foundation have provided £22m of emergency funding to help sustain racing and its participants through the pandemic, particularly concentrating on the most vulnerable. This has been an excellent piece of self-help.

Unfortunately one major crack in the collaborative endeavour made its appearance when the frustration of trainers Ralph Beckett and Mark Johnston spilled over, with calls for the immediate departure of BHA Chief Executive, Nick Rust. The timing and tone of this outburst could not have been worse, as it is essential for racing to present a united front to government while also being sensitive to, and reflective of, public opinion. It would be potentially damaging for racing to be seen to be putting a mere sport ahead of public health and the needs of the population. Apart from this, the level of co-operation has been magnificent, although without any doubt deep divisions and factions remain within the sport. Once racing resumes, the various stakeholders will most certainly need to concentrate on an even more demanding plan – the Recovery of Racing. Achieving co-operation and consensus on that plan will be a huge challenge for the leadership of racing, which will be the theme for the next blog.

Normally the blog for 1st May would have been reflecting on the end of the NH season at Sandown, the pleasures of the Punchestown Festival and the excitement of the Guineas meeting coming up at Newmarket. Alas, not this year, but at least there is likely to be fine racing ahead, and who knows – we might see some of it in May. Stay safe and well.

I am always interested to hear your views so please do leave a comment. If you can't see the comment box at the bottom of this post then navigate to the post using the right hand navigation or click here > and scroll to the bottom of the page. Look forward to hearing your views. Thanks very much for sharing them.

The New Year’s Resolution for the Racehorse Owners Association Should Be to Publish the Long-Awaited Industry Ownership Strategy. Then Come Up with Ways to Incentivise Owners to Increase their Involvement.

For the last two years I have been pressing the ROA to produce and publish the Industry Ownership Strategy for which they received £1.65m of funding from the Racing Foundation. There has still been no sign of it, and I’m just hoping that the powers-that-be in Holborn have this output high up their list of New Year’s resolutions.

While they dilly and dally, ownership is in decline. Indeed, sole ownership has been declining for ten years, while the age profile of owners has been only increasing. As the prime investing stakeholder in the sport, it is absolutely vital that new owners are brought into the game, while retaining the current ones. At the heart of the Industry Ownership Strategy there has to be a commitment to promoting shared ownership through syndicates, and that needs both resources to run national marketing campaigns and the creation of incentives designed to prompt owners to increase their involvement.

There has been a lot of discussion during 2019 about how to deal with the increasing numbers of owners within the facilities of the racecourses. As syndicates increase in number and in size, a much greater strain has been placed on O&T facilities. Racecourses only really have two options available: they can increase provision and / or restrict access. It is quite likely during 2020 that racecourses, individually or collectively, will adopt one of two solutions. Either they will introduce a tiering of owner privileges (rather like First Class and Business Class lounges on airlines) or they will start to offer a “package” of benefits whereby, for example, a syndicate can trade off free lunches for additional badges.

I’m sure a number of these blogs will be devoted to this subject because it has potential for unintended consequences. For example, racecourses could be tempted to treat owners as first-class or second-class citizens with sole owners “up in first class” and syndicates and partnerships “down the back of the plane”.

What is really needed is a much more thoughtful approach which actually incentivises owners to increase their involvement in order to access different tiers of benefits, which I believe is the model used in Australia. Basically the more horses / shares in horses you own (and the greater your economic contribution to racing), the greater the benefits that you enjoy. It also has to be emphasised that, at the moment, racing has no real insight into that economic contribution. So, for example, there are many syndicate owners who have multiple shares in horses but there is no way for racing to pick that up and respond to them as to more valuable sole owners. It is essential in an ownership strategy that this capability is developed and applied across the whole ownership base, and that requires a different registration process, ownership IDs and technology platforms to support it. However, none of that process / technology is particularly innovative, and has been in use in the retail and airline sectors for thirty years or more. Racing is well behind the wave on this, but the good news is that none of the systems required are particularly complex and should not be expensive to introduce.

At the same time, such a registration process would remove the potential abuses such as those encountered by one of our owners through his involvement in the Supreme Racing Club. Ged Shields recently had a letter published on the subject in the Racing Post, and it is worth reproducing it in full below:

“As one of the many victims of the Supreme Horse Racing overselling scandal I think its long overdue that the racing authorities in the UK and Ireland introduce an owners’ registration system that is fit for purpose. The current approach is hopelessly inadequate. Obviously.

Since the scandal broke, we’ve heard the BHA and ROA and other bodies making the case for syndicate operators to sign up to strengthened codes of conduct and suggesting some sort of licensing scheme may be the answer. The blunt truth is that neither suggestion would have prevented the Supreme situation.

What we need is a transparent online share register that allows owners, no matter what size of share, to check their share has been registered and the combined ownership shares for each horse. So, for example, John Smith can see he has been registered for 5% in Horse A , 10% in Horse B etc and then when he clicks on Horse A he can see his 5% and the % shares other owners have in the same horse. He doesn’t need to know the names of the other owners so GDPR shouldn’t be an issue. He just needs to see his share has been registered accurately and that the combined shares in the horse don’t add up to more than 100%. This kind of online platform would allow owners themselves to police the share register of the horses they are involved in and would have prevented the overselling undertaken by Supreme Horse Racing. It would represent a huge improvement on the current system.

As racehorse owners we invest thousands in the sport and deserve a registration system that works much harder to protect our investment. This needs to become a top priority for the racing authorities in the UK and Ireland and there is no sensible reason why it should not be implemented in a matter of months. I hope for once they will act quickly.”

All of this shows the urgent need for an Industry Ownership Strategy that is genuinely innovative, and backed up by detailed operational plans required to introduce these much-needed changes. It has taken the ROA almost two years to produce very little, and yet a number of owners with whom I am regularly in contact could readily create the framework of the strategy during the course of a long dinner and a few bottles of fine wine. And British Racing would have received a lot of change from its £1.65m. Indeed, my view is that unless there is progress quickly, this strategic initiative should be taken away from the ROA and put in the hands of a new industry leadership group with the insights, motivation and skills to do something about it. In short, ROA – get on with it or move out of the way.

I am always interested to hear your views so please do leave a comment. If you can't see the comment box at the bottom of this post then navigate to the post using the right hand navigation or click here > and scroll to the bottom of the page. Look forward to hearing your views. Thanks very much for sharing them.