Colm Greaves: How does racing bounce back from its horror year?

While Rachael Blackmore provided racing’s feelgood story of 2021, it couldn’t mask a disastrous year for a sport that was constantly mired in scandal.

Jockey Robbie Dunne leaving the British Horseracing Authority Headquarters in London after being banned for 18 months. Picture: Yui Mok

Given the heartache her family inflict on the poor woman in a normal year, 1992 must have really been some class of nightmare for Britain’s Queen Elizabeth. In her end of term speech to the great and good of London, she lamented that “it is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an annus horribilis.”

Her sentiments might resonate with the great and good of the horse racing across the two islands this new year as they post-mortem the corpse of 2021, which from a public relations perspective has been an indisputably horrible 12 months.

From start to finish the sport seems to have stumbled from one self-inflicted wound to the next and it turns the corner into 2022 in an anxious and brittle condition.

To recap, in no order of importance, here is a reminder of 2021’s finest own-goals:

• The Department of Agriculture, supported by the Gardaí, conduct a highly publicised raid on premises in Kildare. Animal remedies, unlicensed for use in Ireland, were found in the possession of the Scottish-based equine therapist John Warwick. None of the tested horses were subsequently found to have any trace of an illegal substance in their system, but the optics are dreadful.
• Irish racecourses remain Covidly closed to spectators for much of the year causing serious tension among many of the excluded, bill-paying owners. Frustration is directed at HRI whose efforts at political lobbying on their behalf are not thought to be nearly as robust and energetic as they should have been.
• Jim Bolger hurls another of his infamous fragmentation grenades at the reputation of Irish racing. Bolger has never been known to call a spade an agricultural implement, but this was strong even by his standards. “There will be a Lance Armstrong in Irish racing,” he said in a Sunday Independent interview, “I know who they are; if I had responsibility for rooting out cheats, I’d have them rooted out in six months.”
• He subsequently declined an invitation to expand on his inferences to an Oireachtas committee but his accusations still linger over Irish racing like a bad smell.
• A photograph of Gordon Elliott sitting astride a dead horse is made public during the lead up to the Cheltenham festival. Ructions ensue, high dudgeon reaches record level altitudes and while animal rights activists point and shout, Elliott gets a six-month stint on the naughty step for his moment of thoughtless insensitivity.
• Charles Byrnes, trainer of a (now) seven-year-old gelding called Viking Hoard, is also banned for six months as punishment for leaving the horse unattended in the stables at Tramore three years ago. The absence of oversight enabled an unknown intruder to administer a pre-race jumbo-sized dose of sedatives to the horse which could have been perilous to horse, rider, opponents and spectators alike.
• The creeping illness called ‘Cheltenham centricity’ increasingly infects the rhythm and tempo of the National Hunt season. Lucrative weekend graded races, particularly in Britain, attract small, uninteresting fields as trainers become even more reluctant to challenge their better horses before March. Historic races that were once much-anticipated programme milestones are now often little more than damp squibs. The imbalance in the programme and its impact on the distribution of scarce prize money presents a longitudinal threat to the health of the sport and its attractiveness to new owners.
• Little comfort is found in international news. Medina Spirt, trained by Bob Baffert, wins the Kentucky Derby, but is subsequently disqualified after a positive dope test. This is Baffert’s fifth violation in a year and the 31st of his career in total. Federal interest in the standards of governance in US racing deepens. At the High Court in London, damning findings of fact were made against one of Flat racings most prominent international owners, Sheikh Muhammed in his treatment of his family. Meanwhile, back in California last month, Medina Spirit drops down stone dead during routine exercise.
• Also in the High Court, ex-jockey Freddie Tylicki wins a £6m lawsuit against a former colleague, Graham Gibbons, for causing a fall in a race at Kempton in 2016 that left him with catastrophic injuries. The case was won on technical legal arguments but the supporting witness testimony on both sides did little to add to the reputation of the sport. Jockey Jim Crowley, who was also brought down in the incident, said he had noticed a smell of alcohol on Gibbon’s breath prior to the race, yet he stayed quiet and still chose to ride against him. Another rider, Pat Cosgrave, said that he had relied on the “code of conduct” afterwards and “not get involved” and tried to “stay as neutral as possible”.
• And it is the hallowed code of ‘self-regulation’ in the jockey changing room that remains front and centre of horse racing coverage as the year turned. 2021’s most high-profile and lurid story is the harassment of a young woman, Bryony Frost, by a senior male colleague, Robbie Dunne. The saga has been front page news for weeks, most recently for the tone-deaf reaction of Frost’s trade body, the Professional Jockey’s Association (PJA), who in an act of monumental stupidity attempted to remain neutral between (proven, not imagined) victim and aggressor.

Bouncebackability: What will 2022 hold?

There have been significant recent changes in the executive leadership of Irish racing. The head of the regulatory body, (IRHB), Denis Egan, stepped down in September and his successor has yet to be named.

Brian Kavanagh, CEO of HRI for the last two decades is moving aside, replacing the retiring Pat Keogh at the Curragh racecourse. Kavanagh is succeeded by Suzanne Eade, who, following a successful career in the private sector, moved to HRI as chief financial officer six years ago.

Her most immediate challenge will be to steady the ship and then navigate it safely through choppy post-pandemic, post-Brexit and hopefully, post-scandal waters. As Iain Dowie once memorably said when he managed Crystal Palace – Eade will need to reinvigorate her organisation’s ‘bouncebackability.’

Unsurprisingly, most of the key performance indicators in the racing industry such as sales, ownership levels, attendance figures and gross revenues, all suffered badly through the pandemic. Recovery is up and running, but an imaginative business and marketing strategy will be needed to rekindle public trust and loyalty among existing and prospective customers.

The question is how will this be approached?

In relation to horse racing, the general public can be segmented, like traffic lights, into three colours. Greens are the ones that you will find on the early morning flights to Bristol or Birmingham on the Tuesday of Cheltenham. Wax jackets, warm jumpers and eyes glued to the racing pages, hoping to spot something they missed during hours of constant study since Christmas. Gordon Elliott could be photographed ‘in a shui’ on ten dead horses and they wouldn’t bat an eyelid. Captured customers.

The Yellows enjoy a couple of lively summer evenings of high jinks and low bets at tracks like Ballinrobe or Bellewstown but remain largely uncommitted to a return. If racing attendances are to be maintained and improved it is vital that this segment is engaged and nourished. This has been a long-held ambition for HRI and represents a crucial continuing challenge for the marketeers in 2022.

It’s the growing numbers and louder voices of the third group, particularly in Britain, which represents the most dangerous threat to racing. Ironically, few of these are likely ever to visit a track and become a customer. The ‘red’ people passionately believe that horse racing is an archaic, cruel and elitist pastime and should be immediately defunded by government, if not banned completely.

Complacency in the shadow of this threat would be foolish as the foxhunting and hare coursing communities on the other side of the Irish Sea will testify. It is vital that both the BHA and HRI get out in front of this debate with confidence and determination because momentum in the anti-racing groups is growing stronger with each passing year.

The normal business question, ‘where do we start?’ is the wrong one for the turn of 2021, horse racing’s annus horribilus.

The real question is ‘what do we stop?’ It is critical that those who damage the industry take this seriously and bring racing out of the courts and back to the course.

Stop leaving your horses unattended at racetracks. Stop excluding owners from racecourses.

Stop posing for silly photographs. Stop making unsubstantiated accusations. Stop wrapping your better horses in cotton wool and going ‘all in’ for Cheltenham only. Stop using unlicensed remedies. Stop the misogynistic harassment of colleagues in the workplace. Stop causing harm through reckless riding. Stop inviting the painful external scrutiny and judgment that could eventually threaten your livelihood. Stop shooting yourself in the foot.

2022: The neighbours are watching. Just stop.