RACING RESUMPTION SCHEDULE

Published : 25th May 2020

The BHA's chief regulatory officer, Brant Dunshea, publicly expressed what appeared to be total confidence that racing will be allowed to resume on Monday June 1, and suggested the government has recognised its unique circumstances compared to other sports.

I performed my usual cross-check on Betfair, and noted that the odds for racing to resume on June 1st stand at 1.21. For Royal Ascot to go ahead, it's even lower at 1.15.

With this in mind, it may well be time to assume, for practical purposes at least, that racing will indeed go ahead on June 1st. It's also been confirmed that racing in Ireland will resume on June 8th.

Here is the re-start timeline for June, as published recently by the Racing Post:

While racing will remain behind closed doors for the foreseeable future, we're still in for an action packed month including The Guineas & Coronation Cup at Newmarket, Royal Ascot from the 16th - 20th June, and The Irish Guineas & Derby at Curragh. We also have the The Epsom Oaks & Derby to look forward to, in early July.

The above schedule isn't set in stone just yet, but as Dunshea stated recently:

"We cannot control the government's decision-making but we've been working continuously to make sure we're in a strong position. We're very excited and positive we'll be ready to go from June 1. All the way through this process the government has recognised racing is different to other sports. The sport takes place in an outdoor environment and poses a lower level of risk to close-contact sports such as football and rugby."

If the government does not release its latest guidance early this week, the BHA still plans to take advanced entries from Tuesday and maintain 72-hour declarations to help with its planning.