Taunton 17th March , Clonmel 24th March
Those meetings will be familiar to racing fans, who will remember them as being the last days on which we were able to enjoy horse racing on British and Irish soil respectively.
That’s two long months without our staple diet of daily racing, and that dearth of activity has, of course, had a huge impact on the betting industry, not to mention on our great team of horse racing tipsters and the rest of the Tipstrr community.
Yes, racing has continued relatively uninterrupted, albeit behind closed doors, in Australia, the USA and the Far East, while France made its first tentative steps back to its new normality last week.
Those venues have kept some of our tipsters happy, but for many more these different markets either do not suit their betting models or their professional expertise, so they will be champing at the bit to resume their services.
Well, the promising news for everyone is that UK racing looks on track for a resumption - and soon.
The government recently announced that there would be no elite sport within these shores before June 1st, so the British Horseracing Authority have wasted no time in earmarking that very date for a potential return to action, with an eight-race card on the all-weather track at Newcastle.
If that plan comes to fruition, then it should pave the way for a return to a full UK racing schedule throughout June, with the following meetings already pencilled in for the first week.
- Mon June 1st Newcastle
- Tue June 2nd Newcastle and Kempton
- Wed June 3rd Kempton and Yarmouth
- Thu June 4th Newmarket and Newcastle
- Fri June 5th Newmarket and Lingfield
- Sat June 6th Newmarket, Lingfield and Newcastle
- Sun June 7th Newmarket, Lingfield and Haydock
If all goes to plan, Lingfield will host the Derby and Oaks trials as part of its Friday card, while on the same day Newmarket will include the Coronation Cup, the Brigadier Gerard Stakes and the Paradise Stakes, which have been rescheduled from the cancelled meetings at Epsom, Sandown and Ascot respectively. Newmarket’s own classics, the 2000 Guineas and 1000 Guineas should hopefully go ahead on the Saturday and Sunday, a month later than normal.
The Derby and the Oaks are also in line to take place a month later than usual (hopefully in early July), although they might also have to be run at Newmarket, as their traditional venue, Epsom Downs, is officially on public land and might therefore be difficult to stage safely behind closed doors.
Royal Ascot’s original mid-June spot on the racing calendar is still intact and could still take place as arranged if the preceding two weeks of June do not encounter any snags. Meanwhile, across the Irish sea, a June 8th meeting at Naas has been confirmed as the reboot date for racing in Ireland, with the Irish 1000 and 2000 Guineas scheduled for the following weekend.
This resumption will, of course, be subject to there being no resurgence of the coronavirus outbreak, and also to strict medical and social distancing guidelines, with some of the following likely to be in place.
- All races to be held behind closed doors
- All people to be temperature checked, if not swab-tested at point of entry
- All people present to wear masks at all times, apart from jockeys once mounted
- Separate changing and weighing facilities to help maintain social distancing for jockeys.
Other measures may well be set in place by the time racing resumes, but all will be worth it to have live action on British soil again, providing a huge boost for the British racing community, not to mention the betting industry.
In Australia, where racing has continued without interruption, betting activity on horse racing has actually increased, despite the fact that high street bookmakers have been closed. This has been caused by people’s willingness to open online betting accounts, coupled with the fact that, in the absence of other sports, horse racing has represented pretty much the only outlet for punters.
It will be interesting to see if betting in the UK follows that pattern in the first weeks of June.
One thing’s for sure, though - we can’t wait to find out!