BHA: The Watchdog That Barks for Its Owner

The Referee Is Wearing the Team Kit

Picture the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) not as a fearsome, impartial regulator but as a weary substitute teacher trying to discipline a classroom where half the children are also on the school board. You shout, they yawn. You set rules, they delay them. You threaten consequences, and they give you a raise—for your silence.

This is British racing in 2025: a sport claiming to be professional, modern, and inclusive while still expecting its elite athletes to prepare for competition in what sounds suspiciously like the back end of a nightclub toilet. And at the centre of it all, pretending to wield authority, stands the BHA—part judge, part jester, wholly compromised.

The rot, of course, lies in the structure. Because while the BHA calls itself an independent regulator, it is, to borrow a phrase from the financial world, "functionally subservient." Or more plainly: how independent can a watchdog be when it shares ownership with the very kennels it's meant to inspect?

A 50% Stake in Inaction

Let’s not dress this up: the BHA is 50% owned—owned—by the racecourses through the British Horseracing Authority’s governance structure. That’s like Ofsted being half-run by a coalition of failing headteachers or the DVLA having to ask Kwik Fit for permission before issuing speeding fines.

This isn’t just a quaint quirk of racing’s centuries-old eccentricity—it’s a fundamental conflict of interest. And it’s never more glaring than when the BHA is meant to hold racecourses to account for failing to meet basic standards. Like, say, not making female jockeys change in damp cupboards next to the kettle. Or letting warm-up bikes live out their years next to urinals because, “Well, there just wasn’t space, was there?”

Fifteen racecourses have completed their facility upgrades on time. The other 44, staggeringly, have not. And rather than descending with the fury of a proper regulator, the BHA responded with something between a mild tut and a vaguely disappointed email. The sport missed a major deadline—October 2024—and the BHA's reaction has been as robust as a biscuit in the bath.

The Rules Are Optional, Apparently

Now, interim standards are in place—lofty phrasing for: “Do your best and don’t embarrass us again.” The BHA encourages people to report violations, which is lovely, like telling schoolchildren they can dob in the headmaster for using the staff bog as a bike shed. But what happens when these reports come in? Apparently very little, other than a flurry of internal emails and another PowerPoint at the next People Board meeting.

And when the PJA—the jockeys’ union—describes the current conditions as “prolonging discrimination,” the BHA’s response is to nod solemnly, issue a boilerplate statement about “working together,” and quietly kick the can past the 2030s.

Because here's the thing: they can't enforce what their co-owners refuse to fund. That’s the paradox at the heart of this whole charade. It’s like Ofcom needing TalkTalk’s permission to fine BT.

Culture Change on a Countdown to Never

The BHA and racing’s Human Resources Ministry—officially the Horseracing Industry People Board (HIPB), unofficially the Department for Managing the Obvious—unveiled a “workforce strategy”. This is the bureaucratic equivalent of sending thoughts and prayers to a burning building. Full of noble intentions: dignity, inclusion, gender equality. No mention, oddly, of urinal-adjacent gym equipment.

The strategy talks about moving to a more “professional working environment.” Which is lovely. But let’s be honest: you can’t professionalise a sport if the people in charge are still haggling over whether to fix the mould before or after the marquee gets blown away in the wind.

The HIPB says change “won’t be a series of quick wins.” No, clearly not. Because it’s barely even a series. It’s a loose anthology of vague statements, held together by the BHA’s inability to upset the people who bankroll them.

The Industry That Regulates Itself—Badly

Let’s take a moment to remember what the BHA is supposed to be. It’s not a cheerleader. It’s a regulator. Its job is to enforce standards, protect participants, and uphold the integrity of the sport—not rub the temples of struggling racecourses while whispering, “Take your time, darling, nobody’s watching.”

And yet, here we are. Racecourses are missing deadlines by half a decade, female jockeys are being gaslit into thinking this is just part of the job, and nobody—not one person—has been publicly penalised for the state of facilities that would embarrass a non-league football club.

When you’re sharing the purse strings with the people you’re meant to discipline, justice becomes a negotiation. Standards become guidelines. And deadlines become a "flexible ambition"—the sort of phrase you might find in an NHS strategy document, or a GCSE revision plan made on the back of a KitKat wrapper.

A Watchdog in Slippers

So, what is the BHA? In its current form, it is less an independent regulator and more a sort of ceremonial referee, waving its whistle around while the match is refereed by whoever owns the pitch. Its ability to impose consequences is hampered by the fact that it’s quite literally in bed with the racecourses—spooning, gently, under the soft duvet of shared governance.

Until that changes—until the BHA becomes truly independent, financially and operationally—it will continue to be the kind of authority figure the sport quietly ignores. Like a substitute teacher in a supply tie, desperately hoping someone else will step in and tell the naughty boys to behave.

In the meantime, jockeys will continue warming up next to the urinals, deadlines will continue to drift into the next decade, and the BHA will continue to do what it does best: issue statements, hold roundtables, and change absolutely nothing at all.