British Horseracing’s launches Community Strategy

One year on from the creation of the British Horseracing Authority, Racing Together has been launched, showing their commitment to highlight and build on the sport’s contribution to communities across the country.

Racing Together aims to capture, reflect and build upon Racing’s contribution to communities across the country. The launch highlights just some of the projects and initiatives that already take place up and down the country, ranging from education schemes with schoolchildren to long-standing charity racedays, and a ground breaking scheme in Newmarket.

• The Lambourn Open Day, run by the Lambourn Trainers Association each Good Friday;
• Racing to School, a programme operated by the British Horseracing Education and Standards Trust that has seen 50,000 children exposed to Racing since 2001;
• Playing for Success, a wide-ranging Department for Education and Skills initiative in which the National Stud plus Cheltenham, Newmarket and Wolverhampton racecourses are involved;
• The Newmarket Racing Partnership, in which many organisations, led by Racing Welfare, have combined to develop community support projects and provide addiction support, including a testimony from a former drug addict;
• Saints and Sinners and Cash for Kids in Scotland and Newcastle Racecourse’s extremely successful fund-raising racedays.

The next few months will see the Authority carry out the first audit of the sport’s community impact, with a full report produced in 2009. The initiative has been pulled together by the Authority’s Welfare and Training Group, chaired by Morag Gray, and which includes the lead organisations within Racing.

British Horseracing Authority Chief Executive, Nic Coward, said “Horseracing makes a huge contribution to modern British life. There are individuals and organisations within the sport that make a massive impact on the communities in which they live and work, and as a whole Racing has unique reach across the whole country, from the biggest cities to the smallest rural villages.

“We want more people to know about this work and to make as much of this as possible. In the next year we will get a full picture of just how much goes on.”

Minister for Sport Gerry Sutcliffe MP said: “I welcome the work of the British Horseracing Authority in launching Racing Together – the sport’s proposal for a community strategy. As a governing body, the Authority has a key role to play in co-ordinating and promoting work that Racing undertakes with its stakeholders. Racing Together illustrates the many benefits sport can bring in the fields of education, social inclusion, health and citizenship. I look forward to seeing the development of the full strategy and hearing of the plans racing has to build on this good work.”

To download a PDF version of the Racing Together guide, please click here

For further information please contact the British Horseracing Head of External Affairs, Will Lambe on 020 7152 0028.