we need hercules and we got a lady.

​“We’ve got the right person, for the right job, at the right time,” says Annamarie Phelps, the B.H.A. chair. Though not wanting to question the Racing Post or the excellent Bill Barber, but I think Ms. Phelps is a chairperson or chairwoman, not a piece of furniture. It must be so demeaning to have worked your way up from the bottom rung to the top only to be thought of as part of the furniture, the chair, when you get there.
As with everyone involved in any sort of way with the sport, I wish the new B.H.A. chief executive every damn bit of luck going. I just hope there is a sport left for her to govern come January 4th 2021.
Unlike her predecessor, Nick Rust, Julie Harrington (good racing name, bodes well, anyway) she has experience of racing on her c.v., albeit in a nice dress and shoes, sort of capacity. I am not convinced being formerly a board member of the B.H.A. cuts much ice in comparison to anyone who for many years had got out of bed pre-dawn to muck out and exercise volatile racehorses, clean tack and put-up with the grumpiness of their employer. To be fair to her, she was also operations director for Uttoxeter racecourse. Her credentials are okay and her presence in the B.H.A. boardroom should be invaluable. I just wish the sport’s head honcho was someone in the mould of John Gosden, Baroness Harding or (some might say God forbid!) Mark Johnston, the trainer not the commentator, with someone of Julie Harrington’s business acumen as a chief advisor. But there you are, it is what it is.
Hugo Palmer described what is expected of Ms Harrington as herculean and with Hercules unavailable due to prior commitments the steering group for finding Nick Rust’s successor plumbed for a lady who for all we know might have hidden superpowers. If she is a miracle-worker it will be a definite help to her over the coming years of head-banging and tears as she tries to unite racing’s stakeholders into a uniform fighting force for the betterment of racing.
Before she begins her new job, I would advise her, when her position as head of British cycling allows her the opportunity, to visit, as an unannounced individual, a few racecourses, pay a visit to a few trainers’ yards (announced as just turning up might be embarrassing for everyone) and to either buy a racehorse outright, if she is not already an owner (the Racing Post did not mention she is an owner) or if her purse is tight to part-own or have shares in a horse. Practical experience of the sport she is to rule over can only be a help on her day in the office. She should also have an informal meeting with Emma Lavelle in her capacity as president of the National Trainers Federation and John Gosden, who for a racehorse trainer is incredibly erudite and downright sensible on all matters horses and horse racing.
Hopefully, though there is no hope of the first (and pray God only) politicised virus being over the hill and far away, even if the virus has died and gone to viral heaven, we might at least have spectators on racecourses, with the muzzling masks and sanitisers despatched to the out-tray of every racecourse chief-executive and clerk of the course.
The first issue she must resolve is the whip issue, either ordering an experimental trail period of hand and heel racing, just to ensure ‘whipless’ racing is practical or to restrict its use to one crack and no more. And then she must bring to the table the idea of a ‘Tote Monopoly’, as that is the only method of funding the sport that will bring about the level of prize-money to ensure the health and wealth of the sport into the long-term future.
All we can do, is wish her more good fortune than she has experience and that in gaining experience she has no need of good fortune in her endeavours to chart her way through the stormy seas of our racing future.