MOVING THE SPORT FORWARD.

​Just recently two of our greatest ever jump jockeys have featured in The Racing Post airing their views on how best for the sport to move forward. I was particularly taken by A.P.McCoy’s (should I address him as Sir Anthony? It seems disrespectful to refer to him by his initials) belief that horse racing should appoint a supremo, someone in the mould of Barry Hearn, a man who, apparently, has reinvented and reinvigorated the pub sport of darts. (I’m not a fan of darts and think it more of a pastime than a true sport. But then I dislike rugby union and golf, so what do I know of manly pursuits?)
My only problem with horse racing adopting the supremo idea is the memory of Bernie Ecclestone getting involved with a horse trained by the late Terry Mills and in an interview suggesting the very idea of the flat jockeys’ championship that is a stain upon the sport to this very day.
Horse Racing is a good and sound product yet it is made too unwieldy to govern efficiently by having far too many ‘stakeholders’, all of whom are only interested in paddling their own canoe. What is required, as Sir A.P. suggested, is someone to listen to all sides of a debate and then come to a single decisive conclusion. Applicants could show their hand to the public, with the appointment being made not by the B.H.B. but by the professional men and women who will be directly affected by the decisions made by the head of their sport. I might put forward Baroness Harding as a possible first supremo. She has ridden winners, owned a Gold Cup winner, has been a C.E.O. of a major company and worked in Government. Others might have ideal applicants of their own. I, though, stick with Baroness Harding.
John Francome’s idea for financing horse racing needs to be taken seriously. Money from betting on horse racing should benefit horse racing, not shareholders with no interest in the sport. The annual hand-out from the Levy is humiliating, demeaning and inappropriate in an age when the 1.30 from Taunton can be viewed electronically from all corners of the world.
What interested me more though, was Francome’s views on the whip, mainly because they run parallel to my own opinion. As the great man said, the controversy of the whip would be banished tomorrow if use other than corrective use was outlawed today. As he said, there would be a fuss for a few weeks and then jockeys would get used to the new rule and the media would stop focusing on races lost because the jockey was not allowed to hit his horse and those people who cannot abide our sport because horses are beaten by whip-happy jockeys might like us more and attend a meeting or two.
Personally, I am in favour of setting a date in the near future to finally ban the use of the whip, except for corrective purposes, and would faze it in by incrementally increasing the number of ‘whipless’ races so that jockeys are fully primed for the new way of riding a finish come the due date. But if John Francome was to become horse racing’s first supremo and he declared April 15th 2019 as the day the whip is banned, who am I to argue with someone with far greater experience than I’ll ever hope to enjoy.
What struck me reading the opinions of McCoy and Francome is the sad history of horse racing ignoring the opinions of its heroes and champions. Fred Winter only became a trainer because the Jockey Club refused his application to be a starter, deeming him ‘unsuitable’. Not military or nobility, you see, for such an esteemed position. I remember being surprised when I witnessed a race started by someone who was neither a major nor a captain. My God! I’ve saw a race recently started by a woman of all creatures?
The recent stupid amendment to the rule on shoeing horses for racing demonstrates clearly that the people with the greatest experience in such matters were completely side-tracked when the B.H.B. came to their lamentable decision to ban horses from running unshod behind. This was a decision by committee, hence the furore it has brewed. If they had only asked Nicky Henderson they might have come to a different decision. But then what experience could he have brought to the table? When all is said, he is only a racehorse trainer, isn’t he?
It is time the powers-that-be stopped turning their backs on the knowledge, wisdom and experience of people like McCoy, Francome and all the other great jockeys, trainers and indeed journalists when high-profile jobs in the industry become available. Appointing from outside the sport has not, in my view, been a towering success in the past and cannot think such appointments will prove any better going forward. If John Gosden shook the racing world by announcing his retirement at the end of the season would he be swamped by job offers to head up any of the high-profile organizations that constitute horse racing’s stakeholders? Probably not. Neither did Fred Winter receive any invitations to avail the sport of his knowledge, wisdom and experience. But then he was only a jockey, even if he possibly at the time the most respected man in the sport.