Dubai: Radical changes are urgently needed to protect the heritage of British horse racing, says Rachel Hood, the new head of the Racehorse Owners Association (ROA) in Britain.

Making her inaugural speech as President at the ROA's annual general meeting in London yesterday, Hood called for an overhaul of the annual fixture list and the creation of a tier system to help the sport to flourish.

Expressing concern with the massive drop in funding of prize-money from the Levy she told an audience comprising ROA members and racing industry leaders: "We must take matters into our own hands in dealing with problems that are getting worse by the day."

"Our situation demands immediate and radical solutions. It demands that the so-called fixture criteria — which has coincided with a catastrophic decline in the Levy — is discontinued," she said.

"It demands we devise a fixture list that is based primarily on the best the sport has to offer, that the Levy is spent almost entirely on sustaining these fixtures and that fixtures which cater for very moderate horses should be financed by the betting industry."

According to Hood's proposal, ‘Premier' and ‘Middle' tier fixtures would have to conform with the prize-money tariffs of the Horsemen's Group, as well as with race planning requirements.

Contracts

There would be contractual agreements between the racecourses, which would bid for fixtures, and the horsemen who represent the owners, trainers, jockeys, stable staff and thoroughbred breeders.

"For ‘Third' tier fixtures," she said, "racecourses would be able to maximise their attendances by putting on fixtures on any days and times of their choice.

There would be no restrictions on programming and race type and no prize-money stipulations. Unfettered market forces would prevail within the ‘Third' tier.

"Such a system would not only protect the unique heritage of British racing, it would enhance it. It would preserve the basic structure of the fixture list and allow important punctuation points — the festival meetings — within the racing year to be built upon. It would create a perfect climate for the QIPCO-sponsored British Champions Series to flourish."

Fixtures

While acknowledging that the number of programmed fixtures had increased by 25 per cent over the last ten years, Hood, a lawyer by profession who is married to top trainer John Gosden, noted that the Levy's budgeted contribution to prize-money was now lower.

Owners were being short-changed because new media rights being paid by bookmakers to racecourses were not matching the decline in the Levy and racecourses were not obliged to pay a proportion of their new income into prize-money.

Earlier, the former ROA President Paul Dixon hailed the success of the Horsemen's Group and its prize-money tariffs.

"The Horsemen's tariff has been one of the best innovations within the industry for a long time. Since its introduction, the tariff has been responsible for adding nearly £7 million (Dh41.5 million) to prize-money," he said.