Jockey Club hit by more criticism

RACING: British horseracing has come in for criticism from officials of UK Sport in a report released by the drug-testing body.

Chief executive Richard Callicott revealed that despite writing to the Jockey Club two months ago, he has so far received no response to his attempts to set up a meeting to discuss a number of issues.

"We don't see eye to eye with them," said Callicott.

"We want to have discussions around the table but we seem to be having trouble getting them to sit down with us."

The Jockey Club's John Maxse admitted that relations between the two bodies had been strained in recent months but said progress had been made on certain fronts.

"The position is that we were unhappy with how the quarterly results in October were handled when we felt ourselves, along with other sporting authorities, were not briefed on what details UK Sport were going to make public," he said.

"We raised our concerns and I'm pleased to say our concerns on that have been addressed - the two most recent quarterly briefings have been much more acceptable to us and we are grateful for their help.

"We remain in correspondence with UK Sport on a couple of other issues."

Ever since the Club introduced testing, it has been carried out by UK Sport, and that remains the case.

But unlike other sports which need the International Olympic Committee accreditation UK Sport holds for their testing procedures, racing does not.

"It is fair to say that our aims when testing riders do differ slightly from the testing of athletes or weight-lifters for example," Maxse said.