Irish trainer Ken Condon has welcomed the imminent return of racing and says everyone has to accept the new restrictions put in place.
Racing in the UK is hopefully set to be back on June 1 while Irish racing is set to resume a week later, and Condon is pleased the sport appears to have found a way of overcoming the significant problems caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Reduced field sizes, restrictions on how many courses can stage meetings and big prize money cuts are just some of the changes the whole racing industry is going to have to get to grips with, while there will be no spectators allowed to comply with strict social distancing guidelines.
Curragh trainer Condon, who won the Irish 2,000 Guineas with Romanised two years ago, says everyone is working hard to ensure the sport can return in a safe environment and the planned changes are understandable.
He said: “We’re just glad to get racing back, it’s a huge contributor to the economy and it supports a lot of jobs. Racing is the shop window and if we don’t have racing then all of these other things suffer.
“It can go ahead in a safe manner and everybody is looking forward to getting it back. People are starved of sport, you can’t be there but you can be part of it and it might be an opportunity for racing to widen its audience.”
He added in the Irish Independent: “It’ll take away from the atmosphere but all the stakeholders are just happy that their horses will get to run and it’ll be a small sacrifice not to be there in person for the short term but to have horses back racing is what everyone wants.”
