THE Racing Academy and Centre of Education [RACE] in Kildare town served the thoroughbred industry well for 50 years, producing jockeys, stable staff and acting as a training centre for other licence holders, but it has been on life support since 2023, following a safety review.

Now, with the backing of Horse Racing Ireland’s Equuip department, Irish Injured Jockeys and industry-wide support, RACE is about to be reborn as the National Equine Campus [NEC].

The vision was unveiled to more than 140 industry stakeholders at RACE this week. The gathering brought together a distinguished list of guests, including Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon, MEP and former champion amateur rider Nina Carberry, along with a number of TDs, senators and councillors.

The NEC represents the formal merger of RACE, often referred to misleadingly as ‘the jockey school’, and Equuip, which currently holds responsibility for education, training and human welfare across the racing sector. Add to the mix the ambition and resources of Irish Injured Jockeys and the result is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape how Irish racing attracts and develops its workforce.

The centrepiece presentation of the afternoon was delivered by HRI director Carol Nolan, who explained the background to the project.

“We’ve been operating in a reduced capacity since 2023 in order to be able to reinvent and reinvigorate the model here,” she told the assembled guests, adding that the current moment represented “a perfect storm” - enormous opportunity on one hand, and very high stakes on the other.

Nolan acknowledged that the pause in full operations since 2023 had prompted understandable anxiety from within the industry. Questions about what was happening on the Kildare campus had been circulating for some time.

She said that the period had been used productively. A comprehensive research programme had been undertaken, with teams engaging with stakeholders across Ireland and internationally, gathering intelligence on what the industry needed and what best practice looked like elsewhere. The findings of that research, she confirmed, would be published later in the summer. “The industry is telling us staffing is a major issue,” Nolan said, referencing the data. “The people working in the industry are telling us that they want more opportunities to develop, they want more training, they want to enhance their careers, they want to progress.”

Most, she noted, had no desire to leave the sector. Their ambition was to build a real career within it, not to walk away from something they cared deeply about.

The NEC tagline - ‘Fuelling Passion, Unlocking Progress’ - was not chosen lightly. While the campus will actively work to attract new entrants to the industry, including through school outreach and community engagement, and will also provide world-class high-performance training for licensed jockeys, the primary focus is on the people already working in racing who feel, as Nolan put it, that they have “a job but not a career”.

There are seven core objectives underpinning the campus plan, and Nolan was emphatic that everything the NEC does must have a clear connection to at least one of them. “If it doesn’t, we won’t be doing it,” she said.

Phase one of the capital development programme is already well advanced. It includes a state-of-the-art high-performance rehabilitation centre, being developed in partnership with Irish Injured Jockeys - a collaboration that Nolan described as fortuitous in its timing, with both organisations’ plans aligning naturally.

The first phase also encompasses a significant upgrade to education and training facilities and, critically, a residential component. The question of whether on-site accommodation was still relevant in a modern context had been debated, but the evidence was clear.

“The residential side of this campus is crucial,” Nolan said. “In order for it to be nationally accessible and for the programmes to work, there has to be a residential component.”

Phase two, which is set to go into planning by late summer, will build further on these foundations, with a planned hub at Tipperary Racecourse broadening the national reach of the campus’s offering.

The NEC’s community dimension is also a priority. As Nolan noted, most people living in the town adjacent to the campus would be unaware of its existence, let alone its significance. Changing that - making the campus an open, welcoming and visible presence - is part of the vision.

Those present on Monday afternoon - drawn from training yards, breeding operations, welfare organisations, racing industry and educational bodies, local government and the political sphere - were encouraged to feed back their views through an interactive table-based session.

Minister Heydon set the political context in his address, framing the NEC as part of a broader commitment to the welfare and development of the 30,000 people employed across the Irish racing and breeding industry. “It’s our people that make us that unique selling point,” he said, “and the day we take that for granted, we can forget about the whole thing.”

For those who have watched RACE navigate a difficult recent chapter, the presentation offered genuine grounds for optimism.

It must be hoped that the evident industry goodwill towards the project will be matched by political and financial clout. Further information on the National Equine Campus project is available at www.equuip.ie/national-equine-campus.

JOHNNY Murtagh has been described as the poster boy for RACE and the champion jockey turned trainer has been to the fore in recent years calling for an overhaul of the training centre.

Murtagh’s passion for the project was clear during a panel discussion at last Monday’s industry stakeholder day. Seated alongside MEP Nina Carberry, breeder and entrepreneur Annemarie O’Brien and Michael Higgins of Irish Injured Jockeys [IIJ], Murtagh spoke of arriving at RACE as a teenager with little knowledge of horses or racing and no connections in the sport.

He described how he was quickly trained to ride thoroughbreds at RACE, before being apprenticed to John Oxx. The rest is history.

Now he desperately wants to see the new National Equine Campus become both a centre of global excellence in jockey training and, equally importantly, a place where every young person who passes through its gates is genuinely cared for.

“This should be the place to be,” he said, “that if you’re an apprentice jockey, you don’t want to miss a talk that’s being given in the evening.”

For parents entrusting their children to the Campus, he insisted that the assurance of safety and support was essential. “That means when parents are dropping them off at the gate, they know they are safe. That’s what it has to be as well.”

He emphasised that the NEC must not be a dead end. “If you’re not going to be a jockey, you have a pathway out,” he said, arguing that the campus should serve both those destined for the top of the sport and those who would build careers in the broader industry. He pointed to his own need as a trainer for skilled staff, all of whom could begin their journey at the NEC.

Nina Carberry stressed the importance of communicating the NEC’s offer to parents and career guidance teachers, arguing that too many young people with the right aptitude simply didn’t know such a path existed. “I think schools all need to be told about a place like this,” she said.

She also pointed to significant funding opportunities at European level, noting that she was actively exploring whether the horse interest group in the European Parliament could lever resources for reskilling and upskilling in the industry.

Michael Higgins spoke about the IIJ’s role in the campus’s first phase, and about their ambition to provide a service that goes far beyond injury treatment. There is a desire to make the NEC a social centre for jockeys - future, current and retired.

Annemarie O’Brien, meanwhile, pointed to an opportunity she felt the NEC could capitalise on. With artificial intelligence threatening widespread job displacement across many sectors, she argued that the racing and breeding industry - inherently human - was well positioned to absorb talent and create sustainable employment.

She also called on the NEC to engage directly with trainers and breeders, learning from their experience of bringing on young people and ensuring that courses were genuinely fit for purpose.