JOHNNY Murtagh hopes that the current crisis facing the Racing Academy and Centre of Education [RACE] will lead to a reboot of the world-famous trainee jockey programme.

Murtagh is perhaps the most successful graduate of RACE, having gone there in the mid-1980s with no horseriding experience and completed a 10-month residential course before going on to be a five-time champion jockey who was in demand for big races all over the world.

This week RACE made 21 of its 31 staff redundant, a month after the facility’s residential complex was shut down for safety reasons. However, all training programmes at RACE will continue, including the trainee jockey programme, albeit in a different format.

Murtagh said: “When I went to RACE the trainees were living in Portacabins but it was a safe environment which gave young people a chance to work with some of the top trainers on the Curragh. It gave us a bit of structure and discipline, which was needed.

“If there was no RACE, there would be no Johnny Murtagh. There haven’t been many jockeys coming out of [the full-time residential course] there in recent years and that might be because of pony racing. But we should be going to the parents of those riders and telling them to send their son or daughter to RACE, to polish them up. It should be attractive for them to do that.

“I remember a few years ago A.P. McCoy came to race one night and the place was packed with apprentices. But that was just one night. People like McCoy and Ruby Walsh should be invited in there all the time, so the trainees won’t want to miss it.

“It breaks my heart to see RACE in trouble but I believe something good will come out of it. Maybe the people in charge lost sight of what RACE was there for and now it can be built back up again.”

EIGHT ‘elite’ pony racing riders will be signed up for a 12-week trainee jockey course at RACE this autumn, marking the launch of a revamped training programme aimed at producing the next generation of professional riders.

The course will be funded by Horse Racing Ireland’s equuip division.

Simultaneously there will be a new 12-week work riders’ course for those who have some horseriding experience and a 12-week foundation course which aims to produce competent stud and stable staff. Both of these courses will have 24 places and be funded by the Kildare and Wicklow Education Training Board.

These new programmes have been created following the forced scrapping of the traditional 10-month residential course for trainee jockeys, which was set up 50 years ago. With the residences now closed, all trainees will live off-site.

A source close to RACE told The Irish Field: “It never made sense to have a ‘one-size-fits-all’ trainee jockey course. Some trainees have ridden hundreds of pony racing winners while others might only have ridden a pony around a housing estate. These new courses will allow people to go in different directions.”

Darren Lawlor, interim CEO of RACE, said: “The important message is that RACE remains open for business and all courses will continue. We still have 38 horses on-site and they are being well looked-after. The only change is to the format of the trainee jockey course.”

Set up 50 years ago by a voluntary board of industry professionals, the Racing Academy is a not-for-profit organisation and a registered charity. It receives funding from Horse Racing Ireland, some prize money deductions, and the Kildare and Wicklow Education Training Board.

It also generates revenue from running industry upskilling courses and training foreign apprentice jockeys.

According to a well-placed source, RACE has typically operated at breakeven level but fell into the red during Covid when its stream of foreign students shut down.

CEO Keith Rowe departed at the end of 2022 after 18 years in the job, and it was only during the process of recruiting a successor that the board came to terms with the Academy’s precarious financial position.

No new appointment was made and in July Horse Racing Ireland’s Darren Lawlor was seconded to RACE as interim CEO “to protect the financial investment that HRI was making on behalf of the industry”.

Within two weeks a decision was taken to shut the residential buildings which were reportedly deemed unfit for use and in need of significant upgrading. The 20 students who had been living on campus were forced to find new accommodation.

All 31 staff were also put on notice at around that time and this week 21 of those were formally made redundant. Most of those made redundant were involved in running the residential side of RACE, such as catering, security and housekeeping staff.

A source close to the Academy said: “There is a misconception in racing that RACE is only about the trainee jockey course. Some years there have been 800 people going through the campus on various courses and only 25 of them are trainee jockeys.

“It may not produce a Johnny Murtagh every year and it gets judged on that, but RACE is an industry training centre and a lot of graduates have gone on to forge successful careers in the racing or breeding sectors.”