The Sport of Kings… With the Leadership Structure of a Lost Village Parish Council

All the horses, no jockeys upstairs

In the grand tradition of British institutions proudly going nowhere fast, British racing has now achieved a stunning hat-trick: no permanent chair, no permanent CEO, and now—just for a little extra garnish—no one to flog it to the public either. Simon Michaelides, the de facto marketing wizard of Great British Racing (GBR), is off to become CEO of ISBA, presumably because advertising shampoo to Tesco mums is less Kafkaesque than promoting a sport where you cannot mention betting let alone advertise it.

To recap: Lord Allen, the man appointed as chair, still hasn’t taken up the role, presumably because he’s waiting for the governance structure to resemble something more substantial than a soggy Rich Tea biscuit. David Jones is interim chair. Brant Dunshea is acting CEO. And now the one person who knew how to use Adobe Premiere Pro is packing his ring binders and heading for the hills.

Yes, this is the same Simon Michaelides who, just one month ago, unveiled the sport’s biggest marketing campaign in history—The Going Is Good, a £3.6 million media blitz that promised to digitally rejuvenate racing's image for a modern audience. And now he’s legging it faster than a favourite at Ascot with a Labrador on its tail.

It’s not exactly what you'd call confidence-inspiring, is it?

The Going Is Good, But the Going Has Gone

Let’s talk about this campaign, shall we? The Going Is Good—a name so magnificently banal it could’ve been conjured up by a National Trust committee. It sounds less like an exciting call to action and more like something a 78-year-old says after a visit to the toilet. This £3.6 million brainchild is supposed to modernise the sport’s image by blasting TikToks and podcast ads into the attention spans of people who wouldn’t know a furlong from a French toast.

Now Michaelides, the man who championed it with all the messianic fervour of a LinkedIn influencer holding a ring light, is exiting stage left before anyone’s had a chance to Google what GBR even stands for.

It's like launching a luxury cruise liner, cutting the ribbon with a flourish, and then jumping onto the first speedboat back to shore. “Look, I laid the foundations,” he says. Yes, and then promptly left just as the roof was catching fire.

Racing: A Sport Run by Ghosts and Gap-Year Students

British racing isn’t just in a leadership vacuum—it’s practically held together by paperclips and wishful thinking. Nobody knows who’s really in charge. It’s not Lord Allen, because he's still on sabbatical waiting for someone to explain the org chart. It’s not Brant Dunshea, who has all the permanence of a part-time barista. And now the marketing guru has left, meaning the entire promotional effort is going to be run by the same people who thought putting a QR code on a hay bale was “immersive engagement.”

Meanwhile, the Racecourse Association's David Armstrong has politely insisted that Michaelides “transformed” GBR. Which is true, in the same way a house transforms when a hurricane blows the roof off. There’s certainly been a lot of movement. Just not necessarily in the right direction.

Betting the Farm on Vibes

What does this mean for racing fans? Well, apart from yet more confusion, strategic drift, and the grim suspicion that the only long-term plan is to hope Frankie Dettori never retires, not a lot. The people who run the sport are still very good at writing open letters and forming "working groups"—British racing’s equivalent of yelling into a wheelie bin and expecting policy reform.

No one’s denying Michaelides brought energy, but energy without stability is just fireworks in a tumble dryer. Now he’s off to peddle crisps and car insurance, leaving racing to once again pretend that its leadership vacuum is a “flexible and agile governance model.”

Which is, frankly, like saying a car crash is an unplanned kinetic sculpture.

So off he trots, Simon of House Marketing, leaving British racing's PR department emptier than a vegan butcher. And the rest of us? We’re left watching a headless bureaucracy gallop round in circles, hoping that one day—maybe—someone will remember to steer.