Before beginning Godolphin Flying Start I was fortunate to spend time in Australia working for Gai Waterhouse. The first lady of Australian racing is an unbelievable teacher and one of her many tools is the use of inspirational quotes. During my time with Gai I collated a list of these and there is one in particular that resonates with me: ‘necessity is the mother of innovation.’
For me, this simple quote perfectly encapsulates the current crisis that the racing industry and the rest of the world are experiencing because of COVID-19. The virus has devastated all corners of the planet. However, like all challenges, it can also present the opportunity for adaptation and evolution. The pandemic has necessitated some positive changes for the Thoroughbred industry and it has the potential to deliver more.
One such change came into force when British racing returned on June 1, with jockeys being restricted to one meeting per day. The intention of this was to minimise the potential for virus spread; however, the policy seems to have had many beneficial side effects. One of these is positive mental health implications. An Irish study recently found that 79% of jockeys meet the criteria for at least one mental health disorder. The career of a professional race rider is a stressful one, with the pressures of riding winners, weight management and often in excess of 70,000 miles a year behind the wheel. Therefore, limiting jockeys to one meeting a day may go some way in helping riders with their mental health and restore a level of work-life balance.
Another benefit of this policy is the potential for rejuvenating the flat jockeys’ championship, which in recent years has been fought out between one or two jockeys taking twice the amount of rides as anyone else. The jockeys’ championship can provide the sport with a great rhetoric, as evidenced by the 2007 contest between Jamie Spencer and Seb Sanders, a gripping battle which went down to the final race of the season and ultimately ended in a draw. Limiting jockeys to one meeting a day increases the possibility of these great stories occurring in the future and will allow the jockeys’ title to really stand for the ‘champion rider’ rather than simply the ‘champion motorist.’ For this reason, alongside the increased opportunities for apprentices, it would be great to see this virus-necessitated change retained going forward.
Virus-prompted adaptation within the industry has not been limited to racing, with the COVID-19 restrictions prompting sales companies to establish online bidding platforms. This is something that was already common in the Southern Hemisphere, and indeed it is surprising that it never really took hold in Europe on a large scale prior to 2020; until a catalyst in the form of COVID-19 necessitated it.
There have been silver linings for stud farms as well. With the rapid societal changes brought around by COVID-19 coinciding with the early stages of the 2020 covering season, there were fears that stallion barns across Europe would be shut down. Thankfully these fears didn’t materialize, but in order to continue covering, stallions farms had to do everything in their power to minimise the virus’s spread, like requiring the paperwork for visiting mares to be sent electronically. It is surprising that the breeding world had not previously adopted such a policy; however, without an adequate incentive, positive changes can often be left undiscovered.
The current crisis has presented our industry with immense challenges as it has all walks of life. But it is in the face of adversity that systems are most capable of positively adapting. This can be seen in the industry’s evolution over the past few months and this evolution can continue going forward. With this in mind, whilst my list of quotes from Gai Waterhouse is full of many pearls of wisdom, I would like to add one great idiom: ‘every cloud has a silver lining.’
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