EMHF UPDATE - Dr. Paull Khan reports on the Asian Racing conference, Cape Town, stewarding from a remote 'bunker' and the 'Saudi Cup'.
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By Dr. Paull Khan
ASIAN RACING CONFERENCE, CAPE TOWN
The Asian Racing Conference (ARC) is the most venerable institution in our sport. It may seem strange, but the Asian Racing Federation (ARF) is older than its parent body, the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities (IFHA). Its conferences, while only biennial compared with the IFHA’s annual get together in Paris after the ARC, go back further—60 years in fact. And, because of the liberal definition of ‘Asia’ employed by the ARF, the conference found itself this year in Cape Town, South Africa, just as it had done once before, in 1997.
What might one glean from conferences such as this about the state of racing globally?
Well, attendance at the Cape Town event could be taken as evidence of an industry in reasonable health. The gathering attracted around 500 delegates from some 30 countries, but despite the Coronavirus effect, a large contingent of intended delegates from Hong Kong and smaller numbers from mainland China were unable to travel. Ten years ago, when the conference was hosted in Sydney, 550 attended from 36 countries. So, attendance has held up well over the past decade.
But the content of the conference perhaps tells a different story. Back in 2010, the ‘big debate’ centred on the funding of racing, and the relationship between betting and racing in this regard. What struck me about the subject matter in 2020 is that it was less about maximising income, more about the long-term survival of the sport. By way of evidence of this, there were sessions on the battle against the scourge of the rapid expansion of illegal betting, the threats to horse racing’s social licence in the wake of growing global concern of animal welfare and the mere use of animals by humans, and the urgent need to engage governments to retain their support for our industry.
That is not to say that it was all doom and gloom. Far from it. The conference opened with a stirring discussion of the potential benefits of 5G technology and closed with a session explaining why there is now real optimism that, after years of isolation, South African thoroughbreds will soon be able to travel freely to race and breed.
The 5G (fifth generation) standard for mobile internet connectivity is 1,000 times faster than its predecessor, can support 100 times the number of devices and enables full-length films to be downloaded in just two seconds. While the technology is already here, coverage is limited to date but is predicted to expand with searing rapidity over coming months. The implications of this are manifold for all of us. Indeed, it was said that the opportunities it presents will be like ‘a fire hose coming at you’. Potential benefits that speakers identified for all aspects of horse racing came thick and fast. These benefits include:
Real-time horse tracking, enabling punters watching a race to identify ‘their’ horse.
The ability to provide more immersive customer experiences—you will be able to ‘be’ the jockey of your choice and experience the race virtually from his or her perspective.
Hologram technology is already creating ways for music fans to experience gigs from around the world—why not horse racing as well?
Through the internet, the physical world is being ‘datafied’—great advances will flow from this in the shape of; e.g., the monitoring, through sensors, of such things as horses’ heart rates.
Facial recognition at racecourses will (privacy laws permitting) enable the racecourse to know its crowd much better.
Using heat-mapping and apps on racegoers’ mobiles, congestion control will be aided, and individual racegoers encouraged to go to tailored outlets.
The problem, of course, is that 5G’s benefits will be available for all sports and competing leisure and betting activities. In order to retain market share, racing will need to match others’ use of these new technologies. Each race is fast—it’s over in a matter of minutes. And understandably, while racing has some traits that work in its favour in the mobile age, in other respects, it is not well placed. Racing is fragmented, with no overarching governing body and many internal stakeholders bickering over intellectual property rights. For Greg Nichols, Chair of Racing Australia, “There’s an urgency in contemporising our sport”.
On illegal betting, the message for Europe from Tom Chignell, a member of the Asian Racing Federation’s Anti-Illegal Betting Task Force, and formerly of the British Horseracing Authority, was stark: illegal exchanges are already betting widely on European races. Pictures of those races are being sourced and made available through their websites. The potential for race-fixing is obvious.
Policing the regulated betting market and the identification of race-fixing are difficult enough. It becomes significantly more so in the illegal market, since operators are under no obligation to divulge suspicious betting activity and are unlikely anyway to know who their customers actually are.
BHA Chair Annamarie Phelps speaks on the ARC Welfare Panel
It was acknowledged that illegal betting, which is growing faster than legal betting, is already so big—so international that sport alone cannot tackle it. What is needed is multi-agency cooperation, which must include national governments. Indeed, the new Chair of the British Horseracing Authority, Annamarie Phelps, believed these efforts needed to be global to be effective: “if we start to close it down country by country, we’re just pushing people to another jurisdiction; if we act globally, we can push it out to other sports”, she argued.
The critical importance of horse welfare, and the general public’s attitude thereto, was underlined. Louis Romanet, Chair of the IFHA, said: “This is a turning point for our industry—much good has already been done, but there is more to do and dire consequences unless this happens.”
As an indicator of what has already been done, it is noticeable how, in recent years, a much higher proportion of the changes introduced to the IFHA’s International Agreement on Breeding, Racing and Wagering have been horse welfare focussed. For example, this year saw the banning of bloodletting and chemical castration practices—hot on the heels of last year’s outlawing of blistering and firing. Spurs have been banned this year, and it has become mandatory to use the padded whip not only in races but also during training.
For those outside the racing bubble, there would seem to be three core concerns: racing-related fatalities, use of the whip and aftercare. Much space was given over at the conference to the last of these, including a special session organised by the International Forum for the Aftercare of Racehorses, and in this area great strides have certainly been made in several countries. But presentations from Australia demonstrated just how necessary such efforts are. Work on a number of fronts in the interest of the welfare of thoroughbreds has vastly been ramped up in the wake of a number of body-blow welfare scandals, none more powerful than the sickening image of horses being violently maltreated in an abattoir. No longer will the public accept that racing’s responsibility ends when the horse leaves training. Even if it is many years and several changes of ownership after it retires from racing, if it should meet a gruesome end, the world will still point an accusatory finger at us. In the public’s eye, once a racehorse, always a racehorse. It was a fitting coincidence that, just as these presentations were being made in South Africa, across the world, Britain’s Horse Welfare Board was unveiling its major review of horse welfare—a key message that there must be whole-of-life scrutiny.
There is one very troubling aspect of all of this. Having been identified as necessary for racing’s very survival, any of these tasks—exploiting new technology, tackling illegal betting or establishing systems to trace thoroughbreds from cradle to grave—will be costly and resource-hungry to put into effect. The disparity in resources and influence of racing authorities is enormous. At one end of the spectrum, the size and national significance of the Hong Kong Jockey Club is hard to grasp: it employs over 20,000 people and last year paid €3.4bn in taxes and lottery and charitable contributions. In Victoria, and other Australian states, there is a racing minister. New Zealand has been able to boast such a post since 1990, and the current incumbent is also its deputy prime minister, no less.
At the other end, many racing authorities have but one track in their jurisdiction, exist through voluntary labour and are, unsurprisingly, not even on their government’s radar.
It would seem inevitable, without specific countermeasures, that the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ will only widen with the risk of smaller racing nations going under. It is surely desirable for our sport as a whole globally that racing exists and thrives in as many parts of the world as possible. Ensuring this is going to take much thought, will and effort.
STEWARDING FROM A REMOTE ‘BUNKER’
An oft-discussed topic in Europe over recent years is what might best be termed ‘remote stewarding’: where stewards officiate on distant race-meetings from a central location with the aid of audio and visual communications links. But it is outside our continent where you will find the pioneers of this concept. At Turffontein racecourse, Johannesburg, within the National Horseracing Authority of Southern Africa’s (NHRA’s) Headquarters, is a room from which ‘stipes’ have for some time now been linking with other racecourses across the country and sharing the stewarding duties.
South Africa has no volunteer stewards—all are salaried, stipendiary stewards and referred to universally as ‘stipes’.
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