Provisional resumption plan to be released

The Resumption of Racing group will release a provisional programme for the first seven days after racing restarts in Britain and has invited racecourses to express an interest in staging fixtures when the sport is granted government approval.

An update released on Thursday stated: “To help trainers plan, during the next week we will be developing a provisional programme for the first seven days of racing following resumption – whatever the resumption date.

“We’ll then publish the rest of the provisional programme up until the end of June. This will be as close as possible to the original programme for the period, which means we will be looking to stage roughly the same number of races by type, class and distance.

“Ahead of this, we will issue a fixture cancellation notice for all fixtures that were originally scheduled to take place during May and June. This simply reflects the fact that we will be publishing a new provisional programme and does not seek to pre-empt or pre-judge any government decisions around lockdown or resumption.”

The resumption group, made up of representatives from the BHA, the Horsemen’s Group, the Racecourse Association and the Levy Board (HBLB), warned the new programme will offer lower prize-money.

“In normal circumstances, racecourses provide approximately half of prize-money, but with betting shops, which drive media rights income, closed and no crowds, their contributions will be significantly impacted,” it said.

“Every effort will be made to keep prize money as high as possible, but reductions below recent levels are inevitable.”