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Inaugurated, as the Mackeson Gold Cup, in 1960 and known by that name until 1995, the Paddy Power Gold Cup is, nowadays, a ‘Premier Handicap’ steeplechase run over two and a half miles on the slightly sharper Old Course at Cheltenham Racecourse. Worth £150,000 in guaranteed prize money, the Paddy Power Gold Cup is the feature race of the three-day November Meeting at Prestbury Park.

To readers of a certain age, Martin Pipe requires little or no introduction. However, for those unfamiliar with the name, Pipe revolutionised the art of training racehorses, winning the National Hunt Trainers’ Championship 15 times, including 10 consecutive titles between 1995/96 and 2004/05, before retiring, due to ill-health, at the end of the 2005/06.

Among his other achievements, two decades after his retirement, Pipe remains, by some margin, the most successful trainer in the history of the Paddy Power Gold Cup. All told, the erstwhile Master of Pond House saddled eight winners, starting with Beau Ranger, ridden by Mark Perrett, back in 1987.

Then followed Challenger Du Luc (1996), ridden by Richard Dunwoody. Cyfor Malta (1998), Lady Cricket (2000) and Shooting Light (2001), all of whom were ridden by Sir Anthony McCoy, and Cyfor Malta (2002) again, although he was ridden on the latter occasion by Barry Geraghty. Pipe completed his octet of winners with Celestial Gold (2004) and Our Vic (2005), both of whom were ridden by Timmy Murphy and, like Challenger Du Luc, Cyfor Malta and Lady Cricket, owned by the Johnson Family.

Since July 31, 2007, the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) has been responsible for the governance, administration and regulation of horse racing in Britain. From its new head office in Holborn, Central London, to which it relocated in April 2023, the BHA performs various functions, including, but not limited to, maintaining the integrity of the sport, by encouraging rules compliance, delivering a competitive, entralling product, by effective fixture list and race planning, handicapping and overseeing the health, well-being and development of participants, equine and human.

The BHA was formed by the merger of two existing bodies, the British Horseracing Board (BHB) and the Horseracing Regulatory Authority (HRA). Of course, before the BHB and the HRA, the Jockey Club, which was founded in London in 1750, but moved to the Jockey Club Rooms, in Newmarket – where it remains, first and foremost, a private members’ club – in 1752, was the official governing body for horse racing throughout the country. The Jockey Club established the Rules of Racing, which initially applied to races run on Newmarket Heath – which, nowadays, covers most of Newmarket Racecourse(s) – but were progressively implemented nationwide and internationally, such was their effiacy.

However, as a self-elected body, the Jockey Club was subject to criticism with regard to the impartiality and openness of its operation. So, on June 10, 1993, in an effort to introduce more accountability into horse racing, the Jockey Club ceded governance of the sport to the newly-established BHB. Insofar as its stated aims included the promotion of horse racing as a dog-eat-dot, but nonetheless engaging, sport, including for betting purposes, and optimum training, working and care standards for all concerned, the BHB was akin, in many ways to its eventual successor, the BHA. The Jockey Club did, however, retain its regulatory capacity, with regard to drawing up and applyng the Rules of Racing.

The BHB remained the governing body of horse racing in Britain until the formation of the BHA, but, in April 2006, the Jockey Club also shed its remaining responsibility for overseeing the sport, handling control to the newly-formed HRA. A division of the Jockey Club, rather than a fully independent body, the HRA was created, according to Chairman John Bridgeman, to ‘provide regulation demonstrably independent of the sport’s participants’. Bridgeman, one of three independent directors, also said that the HRA was ‘transitional arrangement while future funding and structures for the industry are debated and resolved.’ So it proved, because the HRA only existed, in its own right, until July 2007, when it merged with the BHB to form the ‘all singing, all dancing’ BHA.

Thus, after over two-and-a-half centuries, the Jockey Club ceased to have any involvement in the

governance, administration and regulation of horse racing in Britain, leaving what is now the largest commercial organisation of its kind in the country to focus on its business interests. Those interests include ownership of 15 racecourses, Cheltenham and Newmarket among them, the National Stud and a substantial property portfolio,via its estate management company, Jockey Club Estates. Of course, the Jockey Club is bound, by Royal Charter, to reinvest all of its profits back into British racing.

Of course, horse racing industry and therefore, by definition, the BHA, has faced numerous challenges in recent years, including declining attendances, lower prize money, compared with other jurisdictions, staff shortages, Covid-19 and last, but by no means least, the gambling white paper of April 2023, which included new obligations on online bookmakers to perform financial risks checks on punters deemed to be at risk of ‘unaffordable and harmful’ gambling.

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