AFTER a short spell of racing behind closed doors, French racing went into hibernation on March 17th.

Officially, racing will still return on the initially proposed date of April 16th but, with the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases around the nation recently topping 50,000, at an average of more than 4,000 new cases per day over the last week, such a rapid resumption appears highly unlikely.

All training centres remain open (though trainers based at their own private facilities are excluded from travelling to them) and the vast majority of the workforce has continued to carry out its tasks efficiently while adhering to the new two-metre social distancing regulations and closure of communal indoor gathering areas.

Most are relieved to have the opportunity to get out of the house and maintain a degree of normality during this period of national lockdown, when every citizen must fill out and take with them a form outlining their reason for travel every time that they leave their front door.

A few have chosen to implement a long-standing national employment law regulation which allows employees to go into ‘partial unemployment’.

Provided your application is accepted, the government will then, for a significant period, pay 80% of your salary up to a ceiling of 35 hours per week, even though you choose not to work.

France Galop has reacted swiftly to the shut down and measures have been put in place to alleviate the possibility of racing professionals filing for bankruptcy.

Access fees for using the facilities at Chantilly, Deauville and Maisons-Laffitte, as well as all the regional training centres have been suspended until at least May 1st, while trainers renting boxes from France Galop have been granted a rent moratorium up until the time that racing returns.

One-off payment

France Galop has also liquidated its €540,000 Trainers Emergency Fund and intends to use the proceeds to make a one-off payment to every single person with an active trainer’s licence and at least one horse currently registered as ‘in training’.

If this hand-out were to go ahead straight away, each trainer would receive the sum of €1,417. But France Galop has asked those trainers in a less precarious financial situation to pass up their share so that other more deserving colleagues can benefit further from the fund.

Should 10% of trainers turn down their chance of a payout, the amount given to other members of the profession will top €1,500. The final amount will be calculated and paid by April 6th.

Lack of revenue

On March 19th, Edouard de Rothschild, President of France Galop, wrote a letter to all racing professionals admitting that, with the closure of the country’s 13,500 PMU betting outlets, ‘racing has entered a period defined by a near-total lack of revenue’.

The letter announced that consultations with the heads of trainers’ associations were being put in place prior to the establishment of a Hardship Fund to help the most vulnerable trainers. This would be financed through fines paid in the past to France Galop by licenced individuals for non-adherence to its regulations.

De Rothschild also revealed that all investment projects and non-vital France Galop expenditure had been halted. The majority of staff, both at France Galop’s headquarters and at racecourses, had cut back their working hours, with priority given to the maintenance of the racing and training surfaces.

In the short term, the industry should be able to ride out the coronavirus storm virtually intact. Just like everywhere else in the world, it will be when the shutdown extends into months that the situation will become more severe and livelihoods will be at stake.

The situation in France is complicated by the superb level of remuneration even for the lowest class of race. This means that some quite large trainers have a business model whereby they own at least a share in the vast majority of their horses and primarily make things pay not via training fees but through prize money, premiums and travel allowances, their charges participating in low-level claimers and handicaps.

These trainers are most at risk as, without racing taking place, their day-to-day income is negligible.