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Some excellent – imo – and hard-hitting observations from the Racing Post’s editor-in-chief on page 3 of today’s paper.
I particularly liked:
"No business, never mind a sport whose very essence is under threat, can be run successfully by committees largely comprising people guarding their own positions or having to answer to a narrow constituency"
And:
"The system is not set up to work properly – sectional interests prevail while anyone speaking for the greater good lacks the power to implement."
the Topping term "rabble" (or "robl" or whatever) was in August 2009, and that was very far from the first time such an observation was made.
is Mr Byrne now proposing anything to advance matters ?
"When Harrison Fraser presented the findings of its comprehensive review of British racing more than a year ago, the first recommendation was simple: define the leadership structure…
…the decision to ignore the recommendation – or, at minimum, to file it in the ‘too difficult’ tray – was a serious mistake…
…The leadership structure doesn’t work. It wasn’t designed to facilitate change. The financial crisis has exacerbated that shortcoming. That is why change in the way racing is run is a prerequisite to any real progress. Without a change in structure and in personnel, the sport can never thrive…"
It seems pretty obvious what Alan Byrne is recommending. But without a leadership worth the name there is not even anyone sufficiently in charge to sack themself and appoint someone who could do a better job.
from what you quote, i get that he’s got as far as "sweep everything away, something new is needed".
but does he say what, or how to get there from here?
"leadership" suggests uniform purpose through a commercial "knocking together of heads" rather than through legislation ?
if so, how does he propose a non-legislative confluence of what are currently the BHA-represented interests, ie Racecourses, Owners, Breeders, Licensed Persons, with the betting interests ( backers, layers and the media) ?
The factional interests – and their power of veto, which they are only too ready to exercise – are the problem, not the answer. I am with him in this.
It requires someone (or some body) to take commercial and other decisions on behalf of racing’s "greater good", rather than have such decisions emerge from a Byzantine process involving committees and sectional interests.
For instance, it seems that REL should be forcing the running on all commercial issues, notably The Levy and the fixture list, rather than sitting on the side lines (I take his word for this).
In terms of more specific detail – who replaces whom, where power is moved etc – I suspect that Alan Byrne feels a bit like I do on giving advice on The Levy. Why should he give for free what others are being paid to provide?
I shall post the article in its entirety as you appear not to be able to access it.
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Diagnosis of a leadership vacuum is easy to make, but in practical terms it’s to be doubted whether the installation of any BHA Racing Supremo, no matter how determined/clear-sighted/imaginative, would make any difference.
Alan Byrne’s failure lies in the journalistic assumption that we are talking about one business, a sort of Racing PLC. As
Wit
clearly outlines, we’re talking about a conglomerate of diverse businesses over which the BHA has little actual say. It can only act as an honest broker between conflicting interests, appealing to the greater good. For this task, political skill and quiet diplomacy are the best weapons.
The Great and Good put in charge of Government spending reviews find it notoriously easy to diagnose problems, yet completely impossible to effect structural changes to do anything about them. In the end "events, dear boy" are what make for surges in efficiency and interest, declines – and sometimes falls.
Racing is no different. As with Government, its sheer complexity precludes any easy fix of those obvious problems arising when competing interests pull in different directions.
Once upon a time Chariot Racing used to be top sport, its drivers comparatively speaking the highest-paid sportsmen ever (Tiger Woods eat your heart out.) When the Roman Empire suffered fiscal implosion, it was the first thing to go, though some of the courses (such as the Roodee) eventually found another use.
At the height of the British Empire another form of horse racing evolved, based around the purity and speed of a cross-bred animal which came to be known as the British Thoroughbred. That form has had a good run of getting on for three hundred years, but it won’t be around for ever.
People will always race horses, for sure. But the idea that installing a charismatic leader might halt its natural arc of evolution is a testament to optimism rather than experience. The tide moves on. An all-powerful BHA King Canute could not be expected to turn it.
RACING POST COMMENT
Leadership structure stands in way of change
When Harrison Fraser presented the findings of its comprehensive review of British racing more than a year ago, the first recommendation was simple: define the leadership structure.
Those who paid for the report and those charged with implementing it decided to ignore this advice. They did so for a variety of reasons. Some may have been scarred by the experiences of the last review that followed the internecine disputes which marred the last days of the post-Savill era British Horseracing Board. Others may favour the status quo and enjoy exercising such power as they possess under the present arrangements.
But the decision to ignore the recommendation – or, at minimum, to file it in the ‘too difficult’ tray – was a serious mistake and did racing a grave disservice. Time has been wasted because, to use the idiom politicians employ, the way British racing is run is not fit for purpose.
Who runs racing? Well, a variety of people really and in a variety of ways. Under the compromise structure – or hopeless fudge, if you prefer – that emerged from the wreckage of the BHB, the BHA is the regulatory body and is not supposed to concern itself with commercial matters. Yet it leads the discussion on racing’s single most important commercial matter, the levy, and largely controls another vital commercial driver, the fixture list.
Racing Enterprises Ltd is supposed to be the sport’s commercial body. Yet it doesn’t have any direct involvement in the most vital commercial issues, the levy and fixtures. And it is controlled by two shareholders, the horsemen and the racecourses, who increasingly find themselves at loggerheads.
It is a mess. The net effect is that racing is run by the power of veto. Different groups – racecourses, owners, regulators and others – have been granted or have seized control over elements of the show. They have the power to prevent change and they exercise that ability frequently.
As a result, the sport is not run in a way which will ever allow it to prosper. Who speaks for the ‘greater good’ in racing? Who has control over the levers that might allow decisions to be made that enable the sport to respond effectively to the greatest challenges it has ever faced?
The sad reality is that at present unless all of the key players are willing to give permission, nothing, or not enough, happens. The thirst for decisive action goes unquenched; frustration grows and racing’s problems are compounded.
No business, never mind a sport whose very essence is under threat, can be run successfully by committees largely comprising people guarding their own positions or having to answer to a narrow constituency.
Some may bemoan the lack of progress made by RFC, whose creation was in part a product of the refusal to tackle wider issues. The truth is that the structure of the sport makes it impossible for RFC, which has done some good work, to meet people’s expectations. There is no shortage of good ideas. Rather, there is a singular inability to deliver on many of those ideas because others exercise the power of veto.
The system is not set up to work properly – sectional interests prevail while anyone speaking for the greater good lacks the power to implement. Time and again, RFC has hit immovable forces, whether it be on what should be simple things such as adding drama to the results of photo-finishes or bigger issues like signposting the big Saturday races and introducing a finale meeting for the Flat season.
The leadership structure doesn’t work. It wasn’t designed to facilitate change. The financial crisis has exacerbated that shortcoming. That is why change in the way racing is run is a prerequisite to any real progress. Without a change in structure and in personnel, the sport can never thrive.
The greatest service those with their hands on some of the power can do for racing is to sort this out. Those whose livelihoods depend on the sport, as well as those who love racing, must insist on it.
Alan Byrne, editor-in-chief
But the idea that installing a charismatic leader might halt its natural arc of evolution is a testament to optimism rather than experience.
No-one is suggesting that racing’s "natural arc of evolution" – whatever that is – should be halted by a King Canute figure, charismatic or otherwise, just that it should be controlled.
It is the 21st century, we interfere with evolution and modify its consequences all the time. We long since came to the realisation – most of us, at least – that we are capable of controlling our destinies.
I find remarks to the contrary a testament to fatalism rather than experience.
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Thank you for posting Alan Byrne’s article,
Prufrock
. He outlines
what
‘s wrong with great clarity, but has nothing to suggest on
how
to improve things, other than "sort it out". Does it occur to him that it can’t be "sorted out", because the sport has evolved too great a complexity?
Above all, the repeated mantra about "a sport whose very existence is under threat" has little meaning. In the long term, of course Racing as we know it is in decline, for reasons of historical inevitability (as I put it, "events, dear boy".) But to suggest that doomsday is just around the corner is an emotional rather than thoughtful response.
English Thoroughbred Racing will most likely still be around – and still in decline! – in a hundred years time. Its constituent parts faced down the once all-powerful Jockey Club decades ago, and will continue to resist any return to stronger centralised control. That’s the salient economic fact of racing life, and Mr Byrne’s nostalgic conservatism cannot mask it.
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It is the 21st century, we interfere with evolution and modify its consequences all the time. We long since came to the realisation – most of us, at least – that we are capable of controlling our destinies.
I wish I could share your humanist optimism,
Prufrock
. Don’t the facts of climate change and natural disaster, the current economic collapse – for which the bankers were only the catalyst – and the ability of the internet to take on a life of its own outside the control of the fiscal elite (to name but three) make it hard to sustain the idea that we "control our destinies"?
Doesn’t every country have this illusory belief every time it installs a new government/dictator/pope? Racing is no different, of course. I’m not saying we don’t need illusions to simply keep us going. Of course we do. But as far as Racing is concerned an illusion is what this is – and paradoxically Mr Byrne’s good piece does more to highlight that fact than suggest any other possibility.
Could you explain what you mean by "nostalgic conservatism" in this context, please?
It seems an odd phrase to use to describe the views of someone who proposes something which, according to you
Pinza
, has never been achieved before.
I am glad that we are agreed that the comment is written with clarity, even if we disagree with other matters.
Don’t the facts of climate change and natural disaster, the current economic collapse – for which the bankers were only the catalyst – and the ability of the internet to take on a life of its own outside the control of the fiscal elite (to name but three) make it hard to sustain the idea that we "control our destinies"?
I don’t wish to go off topic here,
Pinza
, but climate change and economic collapse
prove
the point that we can manage (and **** up) our own destinies, IMHAHO.
You are correct that natural disasters remain beyond our control, and on reflection I think you are right that Alan Byrne is wasting his time, as we will surely be hit by a giant asteroid some time in the next billion years.
Prufrock
It is the 21st century, we interfere with evolution and modify its consequences all the time. We long since came to the realisation – most of us, at least – that we are capable of controlling our destinies.
I find remarks to the contrary a testament to fatalism rather than experience.
Are we entirely capable of controlling our destinies?
Could remarks to the contrary not be considered realism, rather than fatalism?
Many ’empires’ have declined. Some have done so because of events completely out of their control, others because those in control have been obdurate, stupid, or greedy.We are capable of exerting control over our destinies – something worth remembering when you next step out into a road as a ten-ton truck comes round the corner – if not of controlling them entirely. The former is the important aspect in this argument.
Good grief, this is getting philosophical. Sometimes I prefer the threads that descend into name-calling.
Prufrock wrote…Good grief, this is getting philosophical. Sometimes I prefer the threads that descend into name-calling.
Your wish is my demand, Prufrock.
I think that Matthew01 is just a big girl’s blouse. And so is Nathan Hughes.
There you are, Prufrock…you’ve had your ‘fix’ for the day. Glad to oblige.
Anymore?- Total Posts 17716
Could you explain what you mean by "nostalgic conservatism" in this context, please?
It seems an odd phrase to use to describe the views of someone who proposes something which, according to you
Pinza
, has never been achieved before.
Nostalgic, because the thrust of Byrne’s article is that Racing needs "fixing" (i.e. returning to a functional state in which it could control its own destiny) and as we know, such a view requires the donning of unusually large rose-tinted spectacles. Racing PLC hasn’t been in control of its own destiny since the Jockey Club lost the reins of the sport’s economics round about 1900, with the advent of American money and commercial models.
Conservative, because he doesn’t consider the idea that Thoroughbred Racing itself might need to die and be reborn as something different from The Sport As We Know It. Of course, I’m with him (and most other people around here) in resisting that radical possibility.
Like your meteorite,
Prufrock
, it is going to happen in the end. But of course you’re completely right to say that, practically speaking, it’s our duty to exercise damage limitation in the interim.
What a change all this is from Jockey Bashing threads… my own nostalgia, for those at least, is extremely limited!
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