Around 80,000 people in Britain are employed in the horse racing industry. At least 1 million adults are estimated to have a bet on the horses in any given month of the year. And it is a very fair bet that on the morning of 13 November last year, no more than one in every 1,000 of them had even heard of Lord Allen of Kensington CBE, who was about to be unveiled as the new chair of the British Horseracing Authority, the ruling body of Britain’s second-biggest spectator sport.
Lord Allen had, after all, had very little recorded contact with the sport of kings over the course of either a glittering business career in broadcasting, his time as a Labour party insider under Ed Milliband’s leadership, or a dozen years in the House of Lords. But his lack of a racing background seemed less important than Lord Allen’s well-connected position in what had recently become the ruling political party, and his track record with events including London’s successful bid for the 2012 Olympics and, more recently, the Invictus Games. Beyond that, he could always learn on the job after assuming his new role on 1 June this year.
