Racing opinion: What are the key crisis issues facing racing at present?

Crisis – what Permacrisis?

The Collins Dictionary’s word of the year – which describes the feeling of living amid war, rampant inflation and political turmoil – certainly rings true in racing after a tumultuous 2022.

You could be forgiven for thinking that managed decline is the best the sport can hope for given some reports but are things genuinely as bad as they seem?

In some cases, the answer is a resounding ‘yes’ and the smart money is on Permacrisis enduring well into 2023 and beyond.

Still, the good people at Collins also nominated Vibe Shift – which denotes a significant change in the prevailing atmosphere – as another key phrase of 2022.

The File will return over the holidays to assess the potential vibe shifts of 2023 but, with the BHA issuing an important Strategy Update this week, it’s time to ask two key questions:

What are the key crisis issues facing racing at present?

And, as we address the challenges of the post-Covid era, how does each topic score on the PCR (Perma Crisis Ranking) test?

The Return of the Whip

Those who lived through the punishing whip winter of 2011 thought they would never see another to match it for swithering absurdity but, as the latest timeline shows, its modern counterpart is giving it a fair old go.

BHA boss Nick Rust departed in 2020 having hinted that the whip might be on its way out but a Steering Committee (yes, they did call it that) had other ideas and recommended various changes including demotion for winners given four cracks over the limit. And since then….

• Big Betting joins the chat and leans on the BHA to kick the raceday demotion can down the line to a Whip Review Committee
• Turkeys, sorry jockeys, who voted for Christmas by keeping schtum in the vital discussion stage find their voice with a vengeance (again) once the tree is going up
• The Telegraph seizes on an open goal with a damaging headline that reads ‘Jockeys write letter of complaint at having to whip their horses less.’
• And, after two years of careful planning, the BHA rushes out a Friday bulletin saying they will “continue dialogue to explore options that address concerns being raised.”

BHA heating bills will soar with the midnight oil being burned in the run-up to Christmas and the race is on to find an elegant solution which satisfies rule makers and riders alike.

But the proof of this Christmas pudding will be in the eating – and veterans of 2011 will recall that things tend to reach boiling point once a new rule comes into force.

What happens next?

Perhaps we can learn from history. A whip crisis has several side effects – including giving racing media a rare chance to feel it’s doing proper journalism – and the first quarter of 2023 could rival Wimbledon for forehand and backhand mentions.

Whether they mirror the 2011 dramas – which saw memorable meltdowns from R Hughes, C Soumillon and R Walsh among others – remains to be seen but it is often forgotten that the last major crisis gave way to a long period of relative stability when the number of whip bans reduced dramatically even though riders were being held to a far tighter standard.

As one who enjoys the call and response of a thoroughbred being asked for maximum effort it is reassuring to see the BHA still willing to endorse use of the whip for encouragement.

That praiseworthy stance will be lost in the shuffle as the governing body prepares for another kicking but predicting where we will be this time next year is much harder.

The forehand/backhand discussion doesn’t resonate strongly with me – and I suspect it will abate over time – but the DQ debate still leaves an uneasy feeling.

Paddy Brennan said he would be amazed if riders risk crossing the demotion threshold while presenting a disjointed case on last week’s Luck On Sunday, while Sir Mark Prescott has long argued that the deterrent effect of brandishing the expulsion tool means “it will happen once then never again.”

Those theories will be put to the acid test in 2023 but, for what it’s worth, I have fears for what could happen at both ends of the scale.

The first sees messrs Luck, Chamberlin and Hislop ending a major day by telling viewers that the big race was a cracker but the result could be reversed once the WRC start counting down the hit parade.

And the second involves conniving connections having their conkers on a Class 6 plot and giving their rider ‘by any means necessary’ orders knowing they will cash in (at the expense of hapless punters who backed the runner-up) provided they hit the line in front.

Allowing a fatally flawed result to stand purely to keep gambling wheels greased is scarily on brand for British racing in 2022. The BHA are punting hard on jockeys doing the right thing in 2023 - but history suggests there will be a settling day.

Perma Crisis Ranking: Tick, tick, tick…

The Fixture List

This week’s strategy document stresses that racing’s “core product must be consistently competitive with field sizes that drive revenue” and names BHA Chief Operating Officer Richard Wayman as head of “a team that will make proposals for innovation within the Fixture List.”

Levy Board chief Paul Darling told this week’s Gimcrack Dinner that “we cannot accept continual small field sizes” as he called for “sacrifices all round” but I can’t help suspecting there is a truth that dare not speak its name within this industry that goes as follows:

THERE IS NO REAL WILL TO SACRIFICE MORE THAN A TOKEN NUMBER OF FIXTURES.

The BHA is acutely aware that we have far too many meetings but they also know British racing is funded by a betting model based on quantity rather than quality and that slashing fixtures in a major way would risk reduced turnover and job losses.

And so we get a strategy document headed TIME-CRITICAL AREA that swerves any mention of significant fixture reductions and noses on a need to make the best races “more easily identifiable” with boosted prize money to “better engage new and existing audiences.”

Call me a cynic, but this sounds worryingly like the seeds of a system that will bolster the top end of the market while leaving lower tiers to plug away for minimal money at a time when inflation is running at ten per cent or higher.

True, a few positive changes are afoot, including a will to weed out or modify underperforming races like the Free Handicap and Leicester’s Richard III Stakes. But the programme for 2023 won’t be much different to 2022 - and nothing I see or hear makes me confident this BHA has the minerals to make sweeping changes to the 2024 programme

Perma Crisis Ranking: Meet the new List, same as the old list

Small Fields

Average field sizes are at an all-time low; dozens of races every week generate buttons or nothing in revenue for the sport; punters and fans alike are weary of seeing the sport they love failing to address the problem; and what does the sport do in return?

It gives paying customers less for their dollar by lopping one contest off around 170 seven-race summer cards in 2023 and tells us there will be “no big reveal” as to what the wider plan consists of at this stage.

That wider plan needs to include a notable reduction in fixtures if the day-to-day racing programme is to become more compelling. It won’t, of course, and that’s because many racecourses simply aren’t here for having their ability to do business reined in.

The core of this problem became painfully clear last month on the very day it was revealed that the BHA has finally become the sport’s ultimate decision-making body.

Racecourse Association Chair Wilf Walsh could have given Harrington his full backing to make radical changes but instead gave a broad hint as to what will follow by saying “it’s not about the BHA getting its own way, it’s about the BHA acting on behalf of its shareholders.”

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that the RCA is a major shareholder in the BHA. And, with lawyered-up racecourses holding the whip hand, the advent of a leaner and more efficient calendar seems as remote as ever.

Perma Crisis Ranking: Jam tomorrow or spam tomorrow?

The Talent Drain

Let’s face it, this worthy but unrealistic plan to reduce the number of promising British horses being sold abroad is akin to France’s Ligue 1 Uber Eats (yes, that’s what it’s called) trying to keep good young players when the Premier League comes calling.

Take the case of Outgate, for example. A progressive miler for the Kublers, he won two valuable Chester handicaps off BHA marks of 88 and 93 in May and June, taking his earnings through the £100,000 barrier before being sold to join Tony Cruz’s powerful HK team.

Daniel Kubler revealed an offer of £350,000 was on the table after the first success and that subsequent “telephone number” offers proved impossible to resist

It seems fair to assume that number was half a million plus – and do you really think that adding five or ten grand to the value of races a horse like Outgate might contest here would persuade owners to decline when the call comes from HK, Australia, America or the Middle East?

The BHA surely knows the numbers don’t add up and it isn’t just an equine drain. The number of good jockeys basing themselves abroad for significant chunks of the year is on the rise and the temptation for ambitious youngsters in all walks of the sport to try their luck elsewhere is growing, too.

Perma Crisis Ranking: This horse has already bolted

Attendances

Short of hiring the bloke responsible for announcing the crowd figures for some of the early World Cup group games it’s tricky to see what racecourses can do to right this ship.

Covid and the cost-of-living crisis have clearly dealt a double blow and run-of-the-mill meetings feel ever more like a made-for-television product these days.

Some tracks do seem to get what’s needed – with Chester and Catterick among those reducing prices and Go Racing In Yorkshire offering an excellent season ticket deal for the committed racegoer.

But the old guard are a dying breed. Younger customers have no appetite for high admission prices and low-quality food and beverage options at mediocre meetings and the feeling that some tracks simply don’t care for much beyond opening the gates and collecting media rights money is hard to avoid sometimes.

Perma Crisis Ranking: Hard to arrest this slide

The BHA and leadership

I was thinking of apologising for the ‘Bah, Humbug’ tone of this lengthy piece until I realised my Racing Post colleague Chris Cook had used the Scrooge metaphor to much more telling effect in an excellent Friday column that struck at the heart of racing’s current plight.

Cookie’s ghost of Christmas past tells Racing Scrooge that “you’re so caught up in being an industry that you’ve forgotten you need to be a sport as well.” And that one simple yet searing line should be framed and hung on the wall of every office at 75 High Holborn.

Julie Harrington wasn’t holding aces when she became the BHA’s CEO almost two years ago but she got off to an abysmal start by telling Radio 4’s Today programme that racing faces an existential crisis.

Subsequent comments have included talk of warning signs, removing shackles, data sharing and projects in their infancy but meaningful action has been minimal and this week’s “the hard work really starts here” was another zinger from the corporate word salad playbook.

Harrington’s assertion that “sorting out the governance” has left her handcuffed thus far has merit but, with a revamped structure designed to loosen the shackles, there can be no excuses from hereon in.

How much she can do about late abandonments, erratic stewarding, excessive watering, questionable integrity, the march of the Gambling Commission, intermittent low sun and occasional high farce remains to be seen.

However, her big reveal, when it finally comes, needs to set down a jargon-free template on exactly how and by how much the BHA plans to grow crowds, prize money, field sizes and betting revenue.

It needs to make racing more compelling with a significantly slimmed-down programme that stops good horses avoiding each other; and it also needs as much backing from racing’s feuding tribes as possible.

And therein lies the problem. The BHA may appear to have control of racing’s reins in 2023 but if you believe the powerful bodies representing racecourses, bookmakers, owners and trainers won’t continue to tug on them vigorously from behind the scenes then you will have no problem with the notion of a bearded fat bloke coming down your chimney next week.

Christmas is no time for pessimism, of course, but it is a time for realism so let’s end with a blend of both.

Things can get better for British racing’s governing body in 2023 and they bloody well need to – if only because Omnishambles (2012) and Dumpster Fire (2016) have already had a turn in the Word of the Year spotlight.

Perma Crisis Ranking: The wrapping is shiny – but what’s really in the box?

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