here i go again, having a pop at the b.h.a.

​Anyone who might regularly visit horseracingmatters cannot but be aware that I have very little liking for the B.H.A. as a ruling organisation. They do not lead from the front, are not innovative and go about the business of running the sport as if it is a public limited company. Their many leaders have never given the impression they love the sport, only their salary. After reading today’s Racing Post I feel my stance is, if not vindicated, at least shared by better people than myself.
In what is in effect a resignation letter from the sport of flat racing, Craig Buckingham confirmed he will no longer have runners on the flat in this country, joining an ever-growing list of prominent owners either leaving the sport or reducing the number of horses they have in training. To quote from his letter published in the Post today (01-10-20) ‘Over the last few years, a shambolic and reactive B.H.A., an owners’ federation that does little for owners, and the total lack of respect for owners from many areas of racing, including the ones to whom we pay the bills, has knocked the stuffing out of us and led to this point. In short, we have lost the love.’
How will the B.H.A. react to this further depletion in the owners’ ranks? They will not, no doubt taking the view that it is not their concern. Or not their fault.
Yet also in today’s Post, there is a fascinating article by Scott Burton with Olivier Delloye, the director general of France-Galop. ‘We’re a single point of contact with the state, rather than a multitude of different voices, which simply doesn’t work’. What Delloye is telling us, refreshingly, is that the B.H.A. is not effective at running our sport. France-Galop is comprised of regional and national representatives across trainers, owners and breeders, which ensures, Scott Burton writes, that racing’s diverse interests are all inside the tent.
Contrast and compere the composition of France-Galop with the board members of the B.H.A.
Olivier Delloye is a horseman, with a deep knowledge of the sport built-up through a lifetime of involvement with horses and horse racing. His father was a trainer, his grandfather an owner. As a teenager he rode out for Criquette Head and ‘all my Sundays were spent at Longchamp and all my summers in Deauville’.
Again, compare and contrast his qualifications for running the sport in France with virtually every single incumbent of the high chairs at the B.H.A. since it gained control of the sport from the oft-maligned Jockey Club.
As human beings I dare say the succession of B.H.A.’s chief executives and chairpersons have been good and honourable people and that will include, no doubt, Nick Rust’s successor as supremo, Julie Harrington, but between them their experience of horse racing and horses would not equal the experience of Olivier Delloye. And that is my main criticism of the B.H.A. The top positions are merely a merry-go-round of city business executives taking the big-money positions, doing the least needed to satisfy its board of directors and then moving on to similar roles elsewhere. Job done(ish)
Why does the sport need both a chairperson and a chief executive? What is the advantage in having so many stakeholders, especially when, as now when dynamism is required in the fight for the sport’s survival, they cannot agree that 2 might follow 1? By definition, stakeholders have only one interest at heart, their own and they will fight and stamp their feet in defiance if anything is suggested that does not fit their wants and needs.
When two outstanding figures in our sport, and in time the history of racing, A.P.McCoy and John Francome, give the opinion that the sport needs a single voice at the top of the pyramid, someone who listens, gathers evidence and then takes a decisive decision based on his or her judgement and the advice and experience of others, the sport should listen. The present governance does not work. It is time to try another approach. If A.P., and I am quite certain he would not voice his opinion if the likes of J.P.McManus was against the idea, is in favour of the sport having someone of the calibre of Barry Hearn in the top chair, then it should be debated. And, of course, the very existence of the B.H.A. should be debated.
There are 11 directors of the B.H.A., 8 executives, including Luca Cumani, the sort of person who should be on the board, a chief executive and a chairperson, 21 people who, apart from Luca Cumani, have between them have very little experience of working with racehorses and the people who have the responsibility to care for them. We need change and we need it now.
I am not against the likes of Julie Harrington being employed within the top governance of the sport but she should not be ‘running’ the sport, her work-experience is the city, boardrooms, finance etc. People of her experience should be employed as advisors to whoever is given the job of ‘supremo’. Look how Barry Hearn has transformed the fortunes of darts and reinvigorated snooker. Has he achieved that by being dictatorial or autocratic, his word or no word? I doubt it.
Our system of governance leaves much to be desired, as Olivier Delloye diplomatically said. When Nick Rust put in his letter of resignation, the sport had many months when it could have discussed and debated the issue of whether we want more of the same or does the sport deserve better. Well, does the sport deserve better than the ordinary? Perhaps it could be organised for Nick Rust to leave a month early and monsieur Delloye brought in as a locum so he might provide a report on how he found things worked at the B.H.A. Might make for interesting reading, methinks!