Too much racing or not enough. It depends on where you live

The British Horseracing Authority (BHA) released the UK racing fixture list for 2027 last week and many within the sport are not happy.

There will be 1,440 fixtures, just 18 fewer than this year, and stakeholders such as the Jockeys' Association, National Trainers Federation and the Jockey Club have expressed their disappointment.

Each of those representative bodies had been calling for a significant reduction in the number of race meetings that take place annually.

There are various reasons cited by those looking for more significant reductions in the fixture list - existing horse population cannot sustain the current levels, staff shortages linked to difficulties in retaining staff and less competitive racing from a betting perspective with smaller field sizes - are the main issues.

The BHA's Director of Racing, Richard Wayman, issued a statement explaining the process that went into next year's fixtures: “This process always involves balancing commercial considerations with the impact of staging the number of intended races from the perspective of competitiveness levels and, as a result, the sport's wider appeal to the public, alongside the capacity of our participants and workforce to service it.”

“This was a particularly challenging discussion for 2027 because, since the pandemic, we have seen our horse population declining, falling by between one and two per cent each year. The key questions, therefore, were what size of fixture list could be serviced by our horse population and how can that fixture list help us to achieve our aims as we seek to stabilise this decline and, over time, to recover.”

“In the end and after considerable debate, the BHA Board concluded that the sport's interests would be best served by seeking to support prize money and our long-term growth agenda, meaning, therefore, the volume of racing would remain largely unchanged in 2027.”

Despite the relative status quo in the UK fixture list for next year, it is interesting that there is such considerable debate about the need to constrict the number of fixtures going forward.

In Ireland the official stance is quite different. Horse Racing Ireland's (HRI) current 5-year strategic plan (2024-2028) has a stated goal to increase the number of annual fixtures from 390 to 430 across the life of the plan.

Even at 390 fixtures it works out at around 1 fixture per 19,000 inhabitants of the island.

The 1,440 fixtures across England, Scotland and Wales equates to 1 fixture per 45,500 of population.

More than twice as many racing fixtures in Ireland per head of population and we are looking to increase those numbers going forward, while in the UK a considerable section of industry stakeholders believe they already have too many.

In Ireland we are also in the process of building a new All-weather facility in Tipperary which will require a considerable allocation of annual fixtures if it is to be financially viable.

I would be most surprised if Tipperary had anything less than 50 fixtures a year when it's up and running. HRI has borrowed €34 million to build the Tipperary facility and will need to show the Government and the public some return on that level of investment.

Whether the Tipperary all-weather course will further swell the annual fixture list in Ireland or simply result in a reduced allocation of race meetings for other tracks is as yet unknown, but the decision makers within HRI have some difficult choices ahead of them in the near future.

Switching topics, I had presumed the connections of Constitution Hill were going to have their own difficult decisions to make after Saturday's defeat at Kempton Park. Official BHA reports stating that the horse “had bled from the nose” seemed to signal the end of the road for the former jumping star, but Nicky Henderson remains remarkably upbeat.

The trainer has stated that it was merely a trickle of blood in one nostril and that his own vet's endoscopic examination showed nothing untoward.

According to Henderson “there was no significant blood and it could not possibly make any difference to his performance. This horse has categorically not bled, he has not broken a blood vessel.”

It is food for thought that the regular veterinary reports we receive from races in Ireland and the UK which identify whether or not a horse has ‘bled from the nose' have varying levels of severity that we are blissfully unaware of.