Horse Racing Ireland keep options open on return to action

Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) has a series of programming scenarios in the pipeline for whatever date racing does eventually resume in Ireland.

The sport ground to a halt here on March 24th due to the coronavirus emergency and is cancelled until at least May 5th after Friday’s confirmation of an extension to the Government’s restrictions on sporting events.

HRI chief executive Brian Kavanagh said the extension announced by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was no surprise.

He added that the next board meeting of Irish racing’s ruling body won’t take place until next Friday and that there’s no change to the position of the industry preparing itself to be “racing ready” for when given the green light by Government to start again.

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Separately, however, the first signs of a potential resumption of the sport in one of Europe’s major jurisdictions has come from Germany where racing could resume on May 1st.

That country’s success in combating the Covid-19 pandemic means the racing authorities there have outlined plans for an initial six-week programme behind closed doors, albeit with 50 per cent prizemoney cuts.

Officials in Britain are still working on the basis of some return at the start of next month, with reports of a plan to race on a regionalised basis at quarantined tracks, including all-weather circuits at Lingfield and Newcastle.

HRI has ruled out any such move here and is instead concentrating on being “racing ready.”

The date of any start back, when a month of Flat racing, most likely behind closed doors, will take place, will be crucial to how the 2020 programme book and fixture list is revamped.

“We’ve got various option for a May 1, a mid-May, a June 1, a middle June, any of those starts. When you start, stating the obvious, dictates how much you have to make up and how much surgery you have to do on a programme after you start,” Kavanagh said on Friday.

“We had this discussion with the board [of HRI] on Wednesday about the Classics and the Guineas [at the Curragh] and they felt at this point there was no need to make any changes to that. They are still six weeks away,” he added.

What appears certain though is there will be no attempt to regionalise racing when it starts again here.

“We’re not looking at regionalisation. I don’t know if they [the British Horseracing Authority] will divide Britain into four regions. Ireland is less than a quarter the size of ‘GB’ anyway,” Kavanagh said.

Like every other sector of society much of the racing industry has been thrown into disarray by the public health crisis and even when the sport resumes HRI is anticipating an impact on prizemoney levels.

“We’ve already lost prizemoney from Punchestown and Fairyhouse, although we’ll endeavour to supplement the autumn programme in that regard.

“But there’s no certainty around sponsorship that might have been thought to be in the bag. Companies may be in trouble themselves. Or they may not fancy sponsoring if there’s a prolonged period of behind closed doors and they can’t do their entertaining on race-days.

“If there’s an exclusion on runners there would have to be a refund to entries from overseas trainers and that could have an impact.

“But the objective when we come back is to provide opportunities across the whole range of horses, from the top to mid-table to bottom,” Kavanagh said.