British Racing Cannot Keep Assuming the Weather Will Behave
The BHA is contingency planning for an autumn jumps season threatened by drought, and while nobody should declare a crisis after one dry summer, the wider question is becoming harder to ignore: can racing continue organising its calendar around weather patterns which are becoming less reliable?
British racing has always had a slightly obsessive relationship with the weather, and most people who have spent any length of time around the sport can probably recall conversations in which the state of the ground has been discussed with greater intensity than matters of considerably greater importance.
Usually, of course, the complaint is rain.
Too much of it, arriving at precisely the wrong moment, turning good ground soft or reducing a carefully assembled field because half the trainers decide conditions have gone against them.
This summer has provided the opposite problem, and potentially a rather more serious one.
The BHA has acknowledged that the prolonged lack of rain is beginning to threaten the autumn jumps programme, with officials now discussing possible contingency plans involving trainers and racecourses. Some tracks which have watered successfully through the summer may be asked to extend their seasons, while other courses traditionally associated with the early part of the National Hunt campaign could be forced to delay their return if they cannot produce safe ground.
That would once have sounded like an unusual response to an unusual summer.
The uncomfortable question is whether unusual summers are becoming less unusual.
Nobody should pretend that one prolonged dry spell proves British racing needs to rebuild its entire fixture list, and the sport has enough genuine problems without manufacturing another one for dramatic effect. Yet it would be equally foolish to dismiss the present situation as something which can simply be solved by turning the taps on for a little longer.
Watering has limits, both practical and environmental, and racing knows it.
BHA chief executive Brant Dunshea made the wider point when he noted that the challenge is not confined to Britain. Other European jurisdictions have experienced extreme heat and water shortages, while the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities has identified water resilience as one of the important sustainability questions facing the sport.
Once the conversation reaches that point, this becomes something more than a debate about whether Worcester or Newton Abbot should stage an extra meeting in September.
It becomes a question about how racing plans for a climate which may no longer respect the assumptions on which its calendar was built.
Jumps racing has less room for compromise
Flat racing can operate successfully across a relatively broad range of ground conditions, even allowing for the preferences of individual horses.
National Hunt racing is rather less forgiving.
A two-mile Flat race on fast ground and a three-mile chase over fences are very different physical demands, and the acceptable margin becomes narrower when horses are being asked to jump obstacles at speed while tiring.
That is why the current concern deserves to be taken seriously without becoming alarmist.
If traditional autumn tracks cannot produce suitable ground, moving fixtures or extending the programmes of courses which have managed conditions better is a sensible short-term response. What matters is that officials are prepared to change rather than feeling obliged to stage a meeting simply because it has occupied the same weekend in the calendar for years.
The decision at Thirsk on Friday, although involving a Flat meeting and a very different problem, provided a useful example of that philosophy.
Once Calaxy slipped on the bend in the opening race, officials inspected the track with senior trainers and jockeys and eventually abandoned the remaining races which required use of that section of course. It was inconvenient, costly and disappointing for racegoers, connections and the racecourse itself, but once confidence in the surface had gone, there was little sensible alternative.
Nobody serious wants racing to become so risk-averse that meetings are abandoned at the first sign of uncertainty, yet nor should the sport be embarrassed about stopping when experienced horsemen believe conditions are unsafe.
The same principle should apply on a larger scale to the fixture list.
If the ground isn’t there, pretending otherwise doesn’t make it appear.
The calendar was built around seasons we thought we understood
For generations, racing’s programme has followed a reasonably predictable climatic pattern.
Flat racing dominates the warmer months, the major jumping yards begin stepping up as autumn arrives, and by the time the National Hunt season reaches full speed the expectation is that lower temperatures and regular rainfall will have created the sort of conditions on which staying chasers and hurdlers can operate safely.
There have always been exceptions. Racing has lost winter meetings to frost, snow and waterlogging, while dry autumns are hardly a modern invention.
What appears to be changing is the frequency and severity of the extremes.
If warmer and drier conditions become more common during periods when the jumps programme traditionally expands, racing may eventually have to consider whether flexibility should be built into the calendar rather than introduced only when circumstances become difficult.
That does not necessarily require revolutionary change.
There may be scope for greater movement of fixtures between courses, more intelligent use of tracks with stronger water supplies, adjustments to when certain venues begin their seasons, or greater regional planning rather than treating every racecourse as an entirely separate operation.
Some of those ideas will have commercial consequences, because racecourses understandably value established dates and trainers plan campaigns around familiar programmes. Changing a fixture isn’t merely a matter of moving a race from Tuesday to Thursday.
But neither is producing safe racing ground simply an operational detail.
If climate resilience becomes a permanent issue, the sport will eventually have to decide which traditions are essential and which exist mainly because that is how things have always been done.
Water cannot be treated as an unlimited resource
Perhaps the most difficult part of the debate concerns watering.
Racecourses have become increasingly sophisticated in their ability to manage ground, and modern irrigation has undoubtedly saved countless meetings which might previously have been lost or staged on unsuitable surfaces.
It is also expensive and depends upon access to something which may become increasingly valuable outside racing.
That matters.
If parts of Britain are experiencing drought conditions, a racecourse cannot reasonably behave as though its access to water exists entirely independently of surrounding communities, agriculture and environmental pressures.
The optics matter as well as the practicalities.
Racing already operates in an environment where questions about sustainability, animal welfare and the sport’s wider social licence are becoming more prominent. Using very large quantities of water simply to preserve a traditional fixture date will become harder to justify if shortages elsewhere are becoming more severe.
That does not mean racecourses should stop watering. It means the sport needs to be able to demonstrate that its use of water is responsible, efficient and proportionate.
There is a considerable difference.
The BHA’s willingness to discuss the issue internationally is encouraging because this is plainly not something Britain can solve in isolation. French racing, Irish racing and major jurisdictions farther afield are dealing with their own climatic pressures, and sharing data and practical solutions makes considerably more sense than every country independently discovering the same problems.
Racing is usually better when it adapts before being forced to
There is a tendency within most old sports to treat change as an admission that something was wrong with the previous system.
It needn’t be.
The British racing calendar evolved around the conditions, economics and practicalities of its time. If some of those circumstances change, allowing the calendar to evolve with them is not an attack on tradition; it is probably the best way of protecting the sport which tradition created.
The difficulty comes when adaptation is delayed until circumstances leave no choice.
Friday at Thirsk was relatively simple. A horse slipped, confidence in part of the course disappeared and the relevant races were abandoned.
Climate and water availability will never present racing with such an obvious moment. There will be no single afternoon when somebody can point to the ground and declare that the old calendar no longer works.
Instead, the evidence will accumulate gradually through abandoned meetings, watering costs, delayed seasons, changing ground patterns and increasingly complicated fixture adjustments.
The sensible response is not to panic.
It is to pay attention.
British racing cannot control the climate, and nobody expects it to. What it can control is whether it begins thinking seriously about the consequences before those consequences start making decisions on the sport’s behalf.
This autumn may turn wet within a fortnight and much of the immediate concern could disappear.
If that happens, racing should enjoy the rain.
It shouldn’t forget the conversation.
The John Mills View
The thing that interests me about the current situation is not whether Britain happens to get three weeks of rain in September and everybody forgets about it until next year. That may very well happen.
What matters is whether racing has learnt anything if it does.
We are very good in this sport at dealing with the problem immediately in front of us, and generally the people on the ground do a decent job. Thirsk was an example of that. A horse slipped, experienced jockeys and trainers were concerned, the track was inspected and they made the sensible decision.
The climate issue is harder because there isn’t one obvious decision to make.
My concern would be racing continually trying to preserve every existing fixture in exactly the same place on the calendar regardless of what conditions are telling us. If a course which traditionally starts jumping in October cannot safely do so, I don’t see why moving or delaying those races should be regarded as some sort of failure.
The horses don’t know what date the fixture was supposed to take place.
I also think water is going to become a much bigger subject than racing sometimes appreciates. Nobody objects to sensible watering which produces safe ground, but if droughts become more common the industry will inevitably be asked harder questions about how much water it uses and why.
We should have good answers before somebody else starts asking them.
None of this means National Hunt racing is facing some imminent catastrophe. Far from it. British and Irish jumping remains one of the great spectacles in the sport.
But preserving it may occasionally require us to change the way we organise it.
Tradition has always been one of racing’s strengths.
It shouldn’t become an excuse for standing still.
John Mills
Pro Racing Edge
