Julie Harrington’s Farewell: £370k for Corporate Jargon While British Racing goes into Managed Decline

Julie Harrington is trotting off into the sunset, leaving the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) after four years of corporate double-speak, hollow PR triumphs, and a focus on the wrong priorities. And you won’t find any glowing farewells from me. After all, I’m a punter, and punters don’t care much for buzzwords—they care about racing that’s worth watching and prize pots that don’t look like pocket change. So, what did Harrington achieve during her reign? For £370k a year (we won’t go on about it, but that’s a tidy sum for a few years of "strategic reviews" and corporate smiles), the sport has been left to fester while the real problems were neatly filed under "too difficult."

Premierisation: The Debacle No One Noticed

Take Premierisation, for example—Harrington’s marquee "reform" that was launched with all the impact of a feather falling off a jockey’s cap. The idea was to create a "Premier League" of elite races that would grab the public’s attention and elevate British racing back to its rightful place. And what happened? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Premier races were announced, but if you’re still squinting at the programme at Market Rasen, trying to figure out what’s "premier" about a damp midweek card featuring mostly second-string runners, you’re not alone. The great Premierisation experiment was so poorly executed that no one even noticed it. It was less a "Premier League" and more like an over-glorified pub league. The only thing "premier" about it was the marketing spin, which, much like everything else, felt forced and flat.

Diversity & Inclusion: Straight Out of the Alison Rose Playbook

Then there was diversity and inclusion, a cause Harrington took right out of the Alison Rose NatWest playbook. While Rose was busy at NatWest turning the bank into a monument to the latest woke trends—sometimes at the expense of its core banking duties—Harrington did much the same at the BHA. Suddenly, it felt like the priority wasn’t getting the sport back on track, but making sure everyone at BHA HQ had their pronouns in their email signature and an awareness seminar on the calendar.

Now, don’t get me wrong—diversity is important. But when the BHA is more focused on diversity tick-boxing than the core business of running British racing, we’ve got a problem. Racing’s biggest issues—declining attendance, diminishing prize money, and a fixture list bloated with pointless races—seemed to take a back seat while corporate jargon and PR-friendly initiatives took the reins.

In a sport dominated by tradition, old money, and a tweed-heavy demographic, the BHA’s diversity drive felt less like a genuine effort to open up the sport and more like a clumsy attempt to tick a few corporate boxes. Everyone had their pronouns; inclusion seminars were rolled out like confetti. But did it make racing more accessible, or did it just make the BHA feel good about itself while ignoring the real work needed? If you want to make racing more inclusive, perhaps focus on making the sport itself more appealing to new audiences—offering thrilling races, better prize money, and a less cluttered calendar. You know, the core business.

Affordability Checks: Bookmakers Steer the Ship While the BHA Watches

And then there’s the affordability checks—the great white whale of Harrington’s tenure. The BHA couldn’t stop them, of course—it’s the Gambling Commission and bookmakers who instigated these checks in an attempt to curb problem gambling. And what did the BHA do? Well, aside from nodding politely, not much.

To be fair, the BHA’s powers are limited when it comes to this issue. They can’t overturn the checks. What they could do, however, was lobby intelligently—push for a more nuanced approach that didn’t alienate punters with bureaucratic nightmares. Instead, we got a blanket system where punters, trying to place a modest bet, are asked to cough up bank statements and proof of income as if they’re applying for a mortgage, not a flutter on the third race at Newton Abbot. This blunt-force approach has driven away the very people who keep the sport alive—regular, loyal punters who now feel like suspects every time they hand over their betting slip.

What did Harrington and the BHA do to propose an alternative? Not much. They sat back, let the bookmakers pull the strings, and watched as the checks rolled out, irritating punters and further alienating racing’s core fanbase. It’s not that the BHA could have stopped affordability checks entirely, but they could have been tactically astute—lobbying for a system that protected vulnerable gamblers while not treating everyone like they’re one bad bet away from financial ruin.

With prize money reduced to laughable levels and an oversaturated fixture list, owning a racehorse in Britain has started to look more like an expensive exercise in masochism than a path to glory. Meanwhile, punters—the sport’s backbone—have been ignored, squeezed by affordability checks, and left wondering why they should care about a sport that seems to care so little about them.

Whip Rules: A PR Win That Fell Flat

The whip rules. Harrington’s big PR victory—if you’re measuring success in column inches rather than actual progress. The new rules were meant to tackle the thorny issue of horse welfare by limiting how many times jockeys could use the whip. Sounds noble, right? In reality, it was more of a mess than a muddy steeplechase.

The whip rule changes had all the hallmarks of corporate governance in crisis—make a big, splashy announcement to distract from the fact that nothing of real substance is happening behind the scenes. It’s all about managing perception, not about addressing the actual issues. In this case, the BHA didn’t save any horses; they just created a bigger mess for everyone involved.

Jockeys were left counting their strikes like accountants on race day, trying not to slip up in the middle of a fast-paced event. The whole thing felt more like a numbers game than a genuine welfare improvement. It may have looked good in the press releases, but ask the jockeys and trainers what they thought, and you’d probably get a less glowing review. The rule changes, while well-intentioned, were more about managing public perception than addressing the actual needs of the sport. A PR coup, yes—but a practical win? Not really.

Does the Next CEO Need to Be Tough, Unpopular, and Innovative?

So, what kind of CEO does British racing need now? The next leader of the BHA will need to be tough, probably unpopular, and certainly innovative. They’ll need to go far beyond Harrington’s corporate platitudes and actually tackle the sport’s biggest problems head-on. They’ll have to stand up to the bookmakers, racecourses, and entrenched interests, who’ve been dictating the terms for far too long.

The next CEO needs to fix the bloated fixture list—cut the meaningless midweek meetings that drag the sport down—and improve prize money so owners aren’t left wondering why they bother. More importantly, they need to regain the trust of the punters, who have felt increasingly ignored and mistreated under the current system.

The affordability checks mess? That needs to be reworked. The next BHA boss needs to lobby for a smarter, fairer system that addresses problem gambling without alienating the average punter who just wants a bit of fun.

And let’s not forget the need to restore passion to British racing. This isn’t about PR wins or corporate slogans—it’s about bringing the sport back to its roots while making it exciting for a new generation.

Julie’s £370k Lesson in Corporate Jargon

So here we are, waving goodbye to Julie Harrington, who takes with her a £370k salary and a generous pension. Her legacy? A whole lot of corporate jargon and not much else. “Stakeholder engagement,” “diversity initiatives,” “Premierisation”—all the buzzwords were there, but they didn’t fix the sport’s fundamental issues.

British racing is still stuck in neutral. The next leader of the BHA will need to have a lot more vision, a lot more guts, and a lot less concern for PR-friendly slogans. Because if British racing is to survive, it needs a leader willing to fight for the sport’s core business—not someone happy to follow the latest trends from corporate culture while the horses run themselves into the ground.