Unprecedented strike on Wednesday shows horse racing unified on  betting duty crisis

Racing, the only major sport that derives an essential part of its income from a share of betting revenue, could be trapped in a slow, and inevitable, spiral of decline

NON RUNNER: Action at Haydock Park over the weekend but British racing will fall quiet Wednesday, with meetings at Lingfield, Csrlisle, Uttoxeter and Kempton all off due to unprecedented  strike action.

THERE was just a single day of racing in Britain between December 22 and March 9th during the famously bitter winter in 1962-63 and dozens of blank days during the foot-and-mouth outbreaks in 1967 and 2001. Even in the era of racing on Polytrack and Tapeta, which dates back almost 40 years, there are occasional days when, to the delight of headline-writers, the so-called “all-weather” surfaces cannot cope.

But there has never been a day throughout those decades when a scheduled programme of racing has been called off voluntarily, so the decision to “strike” on Wednesday, when meetings were due to be staged at Lingfield, Carlisle, Uttoxeter and Kempton, is a sign of how seriously racing’s administrators and stakeholders view the threat to the sport’s finances from a government proposal to “harmonise” the rate of duty charged on profits from betting on sport and other uncertain events, and fixed-margin casino products such as online slots where the operator takes a guaranteed percentage of turnover.