First Ebony, now park palace ponies.

​No matter what you think of I.T.V.’s coverage of British racing, when they brought Ebony Horse Club in Brixton to our attention it did the greatest service to the sport in all the live-long years I have watched racing on the telly. Now, picking up I.T.V.’s baton, the Racing Post, no doubt thanks to its admirable editor Tom Lee, we are informed of a similar set-up in Liverpool, Park Palace Ponies.
The final paragraph in Lewis Porteous’ article on Sunday ‘While the kids are gaining riding experience, the real beauty of Park Palace is that the entire community is benefitting. If it can be replicated the possibilities are endless.’
‘The possibilities are endless’. Prick up your ears all you at the B.H.A. and get your asses into gear because with a bit of resourcefulness the principles that guide Park Palace could be transferred to benefit racing.
Park Palace was once a music hall, now thanks to the inspiration of former city councillor, Keith Hackett, it is a riding school for four to ten-year-olds, not only teaching kids who have never ridden in their lives to ride and how to care for ponies but also taking their experiences at Park Palace back into the classroom. Like Ebony in Brixton which is also surrounded on all sides by urbanisation, it is proving hugely popular in the Liverpool district of Dingle and seemingly has the support of everyone in the community.
As anyone who is a frequent visitor to this site is aware, I do not look favourably upon the B.H.A.. For a regulatory body they rely far too much on being reactive to situations and rarely ever deliver the sort of innovative ideas the sport needs to take it purposefully into the future. So, I hope Nick Rust reads the Racing Post on a Sunday and can visualise, as I can, what places like Ebony and Park Palace could do for racing’s future.
It is my considered opinion that horse racing, through the leadership of the B.H.A., should at the very least contribute to the financing of Park Palace and similar schemes around the country. But the sport can do more than mere charitable donations. It could, of course, hold race-days in support of such places, as it does for Greatwood. But it also could, and in my opinion should, set-up similar schemes at selected racecourses where local schools could bus-in pupils who otherwise would have no connection to horses and ponies. Teach these kids, as Park Palace and Ebony do, to ride and to care for horses. Connect them to another living being. Give these kids a positive experience of a racecourse and racing people.
Why invest in children? Because horse racing has a severe staffing crisis, due, I believe, to the disconnect between kids and the living, breathing countryside. Once upon a time horses and ponies would be common even in urban streets, pulling milk or coal carts. Ponies and horses would be grazed in fields that remained scattered amongst the housing estates. Until the 2nd World War the heavy work on farms relied on the power of the horse. To most kids, I suspect, a horse is now just a unicorn without a horn.
Use these B.H.A. sponsored riding schools to inspire kids to connect with horses and ponies, to love and care for them and to show them that there is a career to be forged with them if they should so desire. The talented kids could then be introduced to pony racing, an activity that must be promoted in this country as it is in Ireland – just read Henrietta Knight’s book ‘Starting From Scratch’ to understand how instrumental pony racing was to so many of Ireland’s top jockeys, flat and N.H. – and provide a pony so they can experience the sport for themselves.
In a world that is increasingly becoming mechanised, with A.I. replacing the human workforce in factories, horse racing, indeed the whole of the equine disciplines, can provide young people with career prospects to last them from college to retirement. The sport, the B.H.A. especially, must grasp this opportunity, to display wisdom and foresight, and replicate the proven success stories already illustrated. ‘The possibilities are endless’. From these proposed horse-racing inspired riding schools pupils could pass on, perhaps with some kind of bursary, to the racing colleges around the country to be trained to be the jockeys of the future, though more likely the stable staff of the future. It is my opinion that the colleges should not only be teaching its pupils how racehorses are cared-for today but given an insight into the stable husbandry of a hundred-years-ago for no other reason than racing colleges should be turning-out the best qualified horse-carers, the sort of potential employee that any equine discipline would want to employ.
Ebony and Park Palace must inspire those in positions of authority within our sport to lend support and finance and to ultimately replicate their success stories. Go on the Ebony website and listen to what the kids who go there say it does for them. Horses and ponies inspire kindness, self-respect, caring; kids with anxiety, autism and learning difficulties tend to blossom, kids with problems at school find solace and peace. The wonderful and inspirational Khadijah Mellah came out of such an environment.
The B.H.A. go on about encouraging diversity; look at the faces of the kids who attend these places. That is true diversity. Ebony and Park Palace change lives for the better. Horse racing may not be awash with spare cash as many outsiders might think but surely it can raise the finance to fund such schemes. Horse racing, too, could change the lives of kids for the better. Is that not worth striving for? Come on B.H.A. show some initiative and daring. The possibilities truly are endless, you know.