HOW MUCH DIVERSITY DO WE REALLY NEED?

​I am a little muddled as to why there needs to be a ‘steering group’ to guide horse racing toward achieving greater diversity within the sport. Don’t get me wrong, it is a splendid initiative that can only bring the sport good publicity, with Stonewall already congratulating the sport for making public its aim to stamp out prejudice in all its forms. I have already put forward my ideas for increasing opportunities for female jockeys to pass through the glass ceiling that remains prevalent within the sport, so I am neither ignorant of a bias that has existed for centuries nor am I suggesting that action is unneeded.
If ‘diversity’ in racecourse attendance is part of the aim of the ‘steering group’ I would suggest the easiest way to increase the number of British/Asian and other ethnic groups on race-days would be to organise free coach trips and free admission for this target audience. Perhaps Leicester, as one example, could entice the local British/Asian community with a ‘Bangra’ inspired night of racing. Nottingham, to give a second example, could stage an Asian Fair, with race titles befitting such an occasion.
If another aim is for there to be greater diversity of people amongst the workforce in British racing stables a similar strategy could be established, with the National Trainers Association, perhaps funded by the B.H.B., appointing someone to visit schools and colleges with large ethnic populations to give talks on why racing would make an exciting career choice. Of course, it would be useful if there were a successful British/Asian jockey in this country, though there are a great number of owners from India and the Middle and Far East for perspective applicants to identify with.
I have written on the problems of recruitment in racing stables before and my thoughts remain the same. To ride a racehorse takes great skill. It is not something that can be ‘shown’; it takes many years of falling off, being run away with and generally made to look a fool before the skills to prevent such incidents evolve. Yet the skills required to do the ‘on the feet’ part of the job, the mucking out and grooming etc, can be learned from being shown. It is a waste of a skilled employee to have a top-class work-rider mucking-out etc, when he or she could be on the back of a horse. And stablemen do not need to be under nine-stone or jockey-size. For most of the stable duties larger people would be more beneficial. Work-riders should ride horses, grooms should be the wheel that bears the load.
Of course, employers need to be educating young people to gain the expertise to become work riders and these younger employees would both exercise horses and groom before advancing to the role of work-rider. Yes, this would mean a far greater number of lots per day, though in my view of how a racing yard should operate work riders would only ride, with all the other facets of stable life carried out by people with those skills.
There must be thousands of unemployed people in the country or people disillusioned with the hamster-wheel routine of the nine-to-five day who could fill the empty spaces in racing’s workforce. Trainers, I suspect, would rather stick to traditional methods of running their business rather than experiment with something as shocking to the system as a new idea. It is, though, worth someone experimenting. Perhaps a young trainer, someone unfettered by tradition.
And just by watching horses in the parade ring it seems to be there is already diversity in the workforce, with most stables employing grooms of ethnicity.
The problem with discriminatory practices, if the clarion call becomes ‘diversity, diversity, diversity’, is that instead of the best applicant getting the job, the most politically correct person gets the job. It is not so much ‘diversity’ that should be championed but the need to rid the sport, and society in general, of prejudice. Of course, there should be a female jockey as well-known and successful as Frankie Dettori, there should be a greater number of racing pundits of non-white skin-tone, and being gay, Asian, Chinese or Inuit should not be a bar from getting to the top in a sport where the main character, the horse, really does not care a jot what you are or where you are from.