Baroness Dido Harding is to succeed Sandy Dudgeon as Senior Steward of The Jockey Club in July 2024.
It has also been announced that Cheltenham Gold Cup and Grand National-winning amateur jockey Sam Waley-Cohen, who is now retired from the saddle, will join The Jockey Club's board of stewards from January 1, 2024.
Baroness Harding, 56, a former amateur rider herself and a Cheltenham Gold Cup-winning owner, has been on the board of stewards since the end of 2017, having been appointed a member of The Jockey Club in 2004. She was previously a racecourse committee member at The Jockey Club's Cheltenham Racecourse and a director of Racecourse Holdings Trust, which was later renamed Jockey Club Racecourses.
Her business roles have included being chief executive of TalkTalk Telecom Group plc, as well as senior positions at Sainsbury's and Tesco, and until October 2021 she was chair of NHS Improvement and executive chair of NHS Test and Trace.
Having been a member of the House of Lords since 2014, Baroness Harding sits on the Lords Communications and Digital Select Committee.
She said, “As a lifelong racing enthusiast, it is a huge privilege to be appointed Senior Steward. The Jockey Club holds a unique position to both protect the sport's heritage and tradition and also to innovate to attract and delight racegoers of the future to ensure horseracing can thrive for generations to come.”
Nine new members of the Jockey Club were elected at a members' meeting on Monday, December 11. The three new honorary members are HH Sheikha Hissa bint Hamdan Al Maktoum, HH Princess Zahra Aga Khan and Gaynor Rupert.
They are joined by six ordinary members: Guy Henriques, Sue Lucas, Rishi Persad, Zara Tindall, Michael Wainwright and David Wiggin.
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