Lydia on welfare

“You can’t remove risk from life, let alone from a sport like racing, but this can often be a difficult message to communicate to those who have no experience of it, or no real interest beyond a woolly antipathy. Like most fans, I accept that the exhilaration of watching these elite-performance athletes compete, having been bred, nurtured and trained for the purpose and enriching the lives of those humans with whom they come into contact, is worth the comparatively rare instances of life-ending injury and fatality.

“This trade requires trust on my part in those who breed, own, raise, train and ride those horses, to do their best for them from birth to death. It requires me to trust that the physical tests undergone present no unreasonable risk to wellbeing; that those who regulate and participate in this sport ceaselessly strive to improve their understanding of that risk. I very much support the screening practices and data-driven research that David Sykes, the BHA’s director of equine health and welfare, is applying to the way this sport operates.”

The BHA's Nick Rust. Lydia Hislop beleives the industry has a real problem if it wants to attract good people to guide and lead the sport into the future \ Healy Racing

Lydia on the whip

“I’m not anti-whip and I don’t think it’s too late to develop a consistent and coherent position as a sport on its usage and how we regulate it. However, racing cannot seek to broaden its reach as an industry whilst at the same time saying the wider world has no right to question its practices. It’s one or the other guys.

“It should be evident that this is no longer a tedious internal row. It’s a public issue that has been debated in the Houses of Parliament, with the subtext of removing the sport’s right to regulate itself.

“The constant undermining of the rules and the BHA’s policy in this area increases the risk that this, and other perceived welfare issues, will be removed from racing’s control.

“If you’re a jockey, you hold the future of the whip in your hands every race, every day. If you’re a trainer or an owner, you carry the same responsibility by your attitude to this issue when communicating with your jockey, each other, the media and thereby the wider world. We should exercise zero tolerance on those who value the future of their sport too cheaply. We all need to move to a mentality whereby any breach of the whip rules becomes a rare and taboo thing, and not a daily occupational hazard.

“I realise that imposing a diminishing maximum on the number of times a whip can be utilised in a race does not logically mean inferior usage has been avoided – one strike might be too many and seven perhaps of no concern. Yet this rule has to date inspired a higher median standard of thoughtful whip deployment without changing the way a race competitively develops. It is paramount the sport plays to these rules, even when stakes are at their highest.

“It should not have escaped anyone’s attention that the Horse Welfare Board, having been specifically tasked with providing a policy position on the whip, threw that hot potato back into the hands of the BHA, ‘with a view to reviewing and increasing penalties’.”

Lydia on antipathy towards the BHA

“Stand by for an unpopular view. I think the industry as a whole has a real problem if it wants to attract good people to guide and lead this sport. It’s not right that those currently applying to be chief executive of the BHA must factor in the gut-churning certainty that they’re about to subject themselves, and their family, to at least four years of very public personal abuse. You might say he or she will be well paid for the trouble, but what price misery?

“It’s not just the CEO who experiences this. It runs throughout the industry in its dealings with BHA personnel at every stakeholder-facing position. It implies a fundamental lack of respect for, and trust in, the regulator – a massive disconnect that has, frankly, run out of control.

“Many will say criticism comes with the territory as a regulator, and there is much truth to that, but not to the extent it actually undermines their ability to regulate. Many will say the BHA has earned the industry’s disrespect and mistrust and, of course, they have made and will make mistakes. However, they’re likely to make far more of them when subjected to what at times appears intolerable tension; their every word and deed scrutinised from every factional angle for a misstep.

“We’ve started to talk about mental health in this industry, but we’re still not leading by example. It is entirely possible to disagree with someone without impugning their motives, doubting their honesty or constantly implying, usually without any knowledge of pesky detail but with unshakeable confidence in a loose overview, that they’re doing a bad job.

“The industry bangs on about the BHA needing to be more collaborative but, if anything, all I see is paralysis by consultation within a power struggle that sets up the regulator to fail, or else requires it to act as a lightning conductor for unpopular but necessary decisions. I’m not saying the BHA can’t do a whole range of things better and learn from past errors. Can’t we all? The industry needs to take a look in the mirror as well and see that its often partisan perspective is not the whole picture.

“The sport’s tripartite structure means accepting committee responsibility for decisions and abiding by them. Being consulted doesn’t mean that you, personally or collectively, will wholly agree with every outcome. It also relies on you engaging rather than complaining afterwards. The BHA actually has very little power these days, and that’s how the industry likes it. However, we’re kidding ourselves if we imagine that’s good for the sport.”

Lydia on fixtures

“The scale of the fixture list is intimately connected with levy production. It doesn’t necessarily follow that the sport’s levy income would be maintained if the number of fixtures were reduced.

“The ardent fan complains it’s impossible to keep on top of the formbook these days and, speaking personally, I have to tune out from summer jump and winter flat racing in order to do my day job and retain some semblance of a life outside it. That does mean racing is splitting its core audience.

“Racecourses have clearly predicated their businesses on the number of fixtures they hold, and any reduction in that number pulls a brick from their financial foundations. It’s also connected with a surfeit of moderate horses being bred from and their progeny trained. It feels as though we’re in a self-defeating vicious circle of excess quantity over quality. The impact of this global pandemic might force us to examine this subject more courageously.”

Lydia on prize money/funding of racing

“As a not-insignificant boost to the sport’s funds, I’d introduce a system of fines for anyone who complains about prize money without offering a feasible solution to the problem, or even betraying a rudimentary understanding of the issues involved.

“Equine price-tags perpetuated skywards by a global breeding industry that bears increasingly little relation to domestic European financial systems is an issue that has echoes in other businesses. The sport has to decide what its priorities are and structure its funding accordingly.

“Speaking specifically about British racing, it can’t afford to rely too heavily on history and tradition by underfunding its best races in an international context. There is a breaking point in the assumption that the best horses will always run in Britain’s best races. Although every owner and every horse has a value, the top end of the sport is what primarily attracts and inspires people. That’s not elitist; it’s a fact of elite sport.

“It’s quietly damaging to put on sport that nobody wants to attend – just ask greyhound racing. Kempton’s evening fixtures are highly profitable because of the betting turnover they generate, but they scarcely attract anyone to go. Yet these meetings are staged after work at a racecourse with an on-site train station, and a direct line into central London in the most populous area of the country. Try harder.”