BHA to the Rescue: Slowly but Surely… Or Maybe Just Very Very Slowly

If there’s one thing the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) excels at, it’s the art of delayed reactions. Like a jockey left in stalls with just a cigar, the BHA has finally decided to address the sharp decline in top-quality jumps horses—though not without first filing a lengthy blog update and tinkering with some performance targets for 2024.

The issue is stark: the number of jumps horses rated 130 or higher has dropped by a jaw-dropping 14.2% in just nine months. To the untrained eye, this might seem urgent, but the BHA’s approach resembles that of a half-hearted gardener wondering if a dead plant really needs watering.

Target Setting: The BHA’s Favourite Hobby

Never let it be said that the BHA isn’t doing something. Among its 12 shiny new Premier racing trial targets are lofty aims like increasing the number of high-rated jumps horses by 2.5% and elite Flat horses by 5%. Admirable, except the jumps scene is already in freefall, and a 2.5% increase feels about as ambitious as vowing to take the bins out twice a month.

Meanwhile, Flat racing is enjoying a 4.4% uptick in 85-plus-rated horses, which the BHA has taken as a sign of progress. It’s not quite a victory lap, but you get the sense they’ve already cracked open the cheap fizz.

Blame the Ground, Blame the Euros, Blame Anything but the System

In classic bureaucratic style, the BHA has found no shortage of excuses for the state of jumps racing. Ground conditions, they claim, are partly to blame. Presumably, the same ground conditions that Ireland doesn’t seem to have a problem navigating, as their top horses continue to dominate British events. Then there’s the Euro 2024 football tournament, because of course racing can’t compete with 22 men kicking a ball around.

And who could forget the Grand National’s earlier start time? Moving the race from 5:15 pm to 4:00 pm is cited as a factor in declining engagement, as though diehard punters suddenly lost interest because it clashed with their mid-afternoon nap. It would seen these administrators lack self belief in their own sport and are being blown in the wind with only bookmaker data to guide them.

Incentivising Mediocrity: A Programme Built for Plodders

Trainer Nick Alexander on point, bless him, has summed up the real problem with the kind of no-nonsense clarity that seems to baffle the BHA. The current prize-money structure actively rewards mediocrity. Owners have more incentive to keep horses running in lower-grade races than to aspire for greatness.

“At the moment, people are incentivised to make their horses worse,” Alexander said, a line so scathing it deserves to be etched into the BHA’s next meeting agenda. His solution—a clearly scaled prize-money structure that uplifts per class—is so simple and logical it’s a wonder the BHA hasn’t already spent five years debating it without resolution.

Racing on the Back Foot

British racing has been on the back foot for over six years, lagging behind its Irish counterpart and clinging to outdated systems and thinking that fails to deliver meaningful progress. There is no coherent strategy to improve the sport’s competitiveness or long-term viability—just a series of half-baked initiatives that vanish into the ether as quickly as they appear.

Take Premierisation, for instance, once heralded as the great hope for modernising British racing. It was supposed to boost prize money, improve field sizes, and elevate the product. And now? Hardly a mention. The supposed flagship policy has drifted into obscurity, a footnote in the BHA’s growing archive of unrealised ambitions. When is the big launch? Can anyone spot any real difference between the product today and that of a year ago.

Instead of bold structural reforms, we get tweaks to fixture lists and vague targets that fail to address the sport’s most pressing issues. It’s reactive policymaking at its worst, endlessly shuffling the pieces without ever playing to win.

Falling Turnover: A Slow-Motion Collapse

If declining horse quality weren’t enough, the BHA is also grappling with falling betting turnover. Major festivals have seen a 12.4% drop in turnover, and average figures for Premier fixtures are down 3.9%. Saturdays, with their protected betting window, are the lone bright spot—though the concept of not cramming races together seems to have been treated as a groundbreaking discovery.

Chairman of the Thoroughbred Group Julian Richmond-Watson noted that “the cake is no longer growing,” which might be the most British way of describing financial decline ever uttered. His solution? Stop squabbling over the crumbs and share them fairly. It’s a fine sentiment, but one wonders if we’re just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Collaboration clearly isnt cutting it, for what little collaboration is in place.

2026 Fixture List: The Definition of ‘Too Little, Too Late’

Data from the Premier racing trial will apparently help shape the 2026 fixture list. That’s right—2026. By the time these “key factors” come into play, the number of elite jumps horses may have plummeted further, attendances will have sagged even more, and the sport’s betting turnover will likely be in the same condition as a five-year-old favourite with a pulled tendon.

Where Is the BHA’s Leadership?

Which begs the question: where is BHA CEO Julie Harrington and her board in all of this? Harrington, set to leave at the end of the year, her swan song seems to involve little more than coasting through the final furlong while collecting a handsome £1,700 per working day.

At nearly £3,000 a month just to train a horse, you’d think British racing might get more bang for its buck from its leadership. Instead, it feels like we’re watching someone count down their remaining days in the office while British racing buckles under the weight of endless "trials" and vague "strategies."

What’s next? Another round of task forces? A working group to analyse working groups? It’s all becoming an exercise in bureaucracy while the Irish racing scene continues to claim some of the spoils.

A Sport in Desperate Need of Urgency

British racing deserves better than this molasses-paced problem-solving. The issues facing jumps racing—declining horse quality, inadequate prize money, and falling engagement—are not new. They’ve been galloping towards crisis for years while the BHA fiddled with targets and blog posts.

What the sport needs is a clear, bold strategy—not another round of tinkering, half-hearted initiatives, or trials that achieve little more than padding out reports. Racing doesn’t need to aim for incremental increases in high-rated horses; it needs to overhaul its systems, modernise its approach, and restore its competitiveness.

If the BHA and its stakeholders don’t wake up soon, British racing risks becoming a shadow of its former self, an industry that fiddled with its spreadsheets while the Irish claimed the glory—and Julie Harrington’s legacy may end up being little more than a footnote in racing’s decline.