Premier Racedays: A Year On

The BHA’s grand vision of 170 Premier Race meetings a year has come to this: its chief architect, Julie Harrington, is making a sharp exit, hand-in-hand with her Chairman, before their feet are fully held to the fire. After a year of the most overhyped racing calendar overhaul in recent memory, it seems the masterminds behind Premier Racedays are leaving the mess behind for someone else to clean up.

It’s hard to avoid the feeling that this sudden departure is less about career progression and more about getting out before things go from bad to worse. After all, when your grand plan for British racing ends up being 170 doses of mediocrity dressed up as ‘premier,’ it’s probably best to leave before the entire sport turns around and asks what on earth you were thinking.

170 Premier Race Meetings: A Failed Experiment?

Let’s not mince words: the BHA’s push to introduce 170 Premier Race meetings a year has been a damp squib from the start. This wasn’t just a minor tweak or a scheduling shuffle. This was supposed to be racing’s renaissance—a grand, sweeping reimagining of how the sport would attract crowds, grow prize money, and finally stop the rot.

But a year in, the public has yet to see what’s so ‘premier’ about these meetings. Spread out across the calendar like some kind of forced feast, the Premier label has been slapped on with all the enthusiasm of a low-budget marketing campaign, and the results speak for themselves: flat attendance, uninspired racing, and a growing sense that the BHA may have bitten off more than it could chew.

If Premier Racedays were meant to revolutionise the sport, they’ve fallen miserably short. Saturdays, supposedly the crown jewels of the Premier overhaul, haven’t lived up to the hype. The protected two-hour window between 2-4pm, meant to showcase elite racing, has instead offered up a series of underwhelming contests that feel more like a midweek slog than a marquee event.

Sundays, too, were touted as the next big thing, with Sunday evening racing pitched as the solution to empty racecourses. But as we’ve seen, no one turned up, and the whole thing fizzled out faster than a cold pint at the end of the Grand National. The BHA’s gamble on Sundays fell flat, and now it seems Julie Harrington and her Chairman are folding their hands before the final bets are called.

Julie Harrington and the Chairman: Running for Cover?

And now, just as the questions start to roll in about why Premier Racedays haven’t lived up to the hype, both Harrington and her Chairman are heading for the exit doors. There’s no denying the timing looks… convenient. A year into the most significant calendar shake-up British racing has seen in years, and suddenly, the top brass have decided it’s time for a career change? You’d almost think they saw the writing on the wall.

After months of radio silence from the BHA on how Premier Racedays have actually impacted the sport—because who’s going to brag about a disaster?—Harrington’s departure feels less like a graceful exit and more like jumping off a ship that’s taking on water fast. The promised £90 million boost to racing’s finances hasn’t materialised, the ‘elite’ prize money looks less impressive by the day, and the Premier overhaul hasn’t exactly set the grandstands alight. It’s almost as if the BHA realised this wasn’t quite the golden age of racing they’d envisioned.

The Legacy of Premier Racedays: An Overdose of ‘Premier’

When Harrington and her team first announced the Premier Raceday concept, it was hard not to feel a pang of hope. British racing had been struggling, and here came a bold, sweeping initiative to shake things up. But 170 ‘Premier’ Race meetings a year? It quickly became apparent that this wasn’t going to deliver the racing renaissance we were promised. Instead, it felt more like being force-fed the same meal over and over, with the kitchen insisting each one was special when it clearly wasn’t.

The result? A year of oversaturation. The more the BHA labelled every other race meeting as ‘premier,’ the less anyone believed it. You can’t expect fans to get excited about 170 events and still feel like they’re attending something rare or exceptional. It was a classic case of quantity over quality—and in racing, as in life, no one likes to feel like they’re being conned.

Who Will Clean Up the Mess?

With Harrington and the Chairman gone, the question now is: who will be left to clean up the mess? Premier Racedays were supposed to fix British racing’s problems—smaller fields, dwindling prize money, flagging interest—but they’ve done little more than paper over the cracks. The problems are still there, and whoever steps in to replace Harrington will have one hell of a task on their hands.

There’s no denying that Harrington’s departure comes at an awkward time. Premier Racedays are still in the middle of a two-year trial, and the early returns haven’t been promising. The BHA will need to either drastically rethink the concept or risk dragging racing through another year of ‘premier’ mediocrity, alienating punters, owners, and trainers in the process.

The fact that both the Chief Executive and Chairman have decided to exit stage left before the second year of this trial suggests they aren’t holding out much hope for a turnaround. By leaving now, they dodge the heat of accountability before the racing community fully realises just how far short Premier Racedays have fallen.

The Future of Premier Racedays: Is There One?

So, what’s next for Premier Racedays? With its architects bolting for the door, the BHA finds itself at a crossroads. Does it continue to push forward with 170 Premier Race meetings, hoping that year two will magically deliver the goods? Or does it cut its losses and rethink the entire strategy before British racing loses even more ground?

There’s still time for the BHA to salvage something from this mess, but it’s going to take bold thinking—something that’s been in short supply lately. Instead of force-feeding the public 170 ‘premier’ meetings that barely register as special, the sport needs to focus on quality over quantity. After all, racing fans aren’t asking for more races—they’re asking for better ones.

Whether the BHA will listen remains to be seen. But with Julie Harrington and her Chairman making their exit, the responsibility for the future of British racing—and the Premier Racedays experiment—now falls to whoever has the courage (and good luck) to take over.

For now, it’s clear that Premier Racedays, as they stand, haven’t worked. The BHA’s leadership has left before the fire gets too hot, but someone, sooner or later, will have to answer for the mess left behind. The racing public deserves better than 170 bland race meetings dressed up as premium content. Here’s hoping the next leaders have a clearer sense of what that might look like.