No More Mr Nice Guy: Rod Street Waves Farewell 

Whether or not you liked the 'Bill and Ben' analogies of the Racing For Change days, or the removal of the Champion Stakes from Newmarket to Ascot, you cannot fail to like the man who played a part in some of these attempts to modernise and market racing: Rod Street. 

This QIPCO British Champions Day – the 14th since the significant shake-up to the autumnal racing programme in 2011 – will be Street's last as CEO of British Champions Series. He stepped down from his role as CEO of Great British Racing (GBR) at the end of April.

“Obviously with traditionalists and diehards, it wasn't the most popular decision,” he says of the creation of British Champions Day as the culmination of 35 Group 1 races throughout the season being brought together under the single Champions Series banner.

“But since it launched in 2011, the day has grown and by many has become accepted as a really important day's racing. It's certainly the last day of high-quality older horse Flat racing in the UK season. It comes after the Arc, so it's really the the European finale, and it has become embedded now.”

From Frankel to Frankie, Street has been there for every momentous renewal. 

“We were very fortunate in the first two years that Frankel came along when he did,” he acknowledges. “And that couldn't have launched the day more successfully. And since then we've had all sorts of milestones, fast-forwarding to Frankie Dettori's exit, which couldn't have been better, especially that he did it in the Champion Stakes on King of Steel.

“It's a £4 million race day, full of high-class group races and I think we've created a really nice platform in the autumn for such stories to be told.”

QIPCO was the key sponsor from the start and, though it remains the brand behind Champions Day, it will no longer sponsor the Champions Series from 2025. A new partner will be sought, along with a new person at the helm of the project.

To crib from Joni Mitchell, sometimes we don't know what we've got 'til it's gone and British racing will be without one of its most steadfast supporters when the dust settles after this weekend. Street has that rare ability to be not only relentlessly positive but also unfailingly nice. 

Being nice is an underrated quality, in life generally and perhaps especially in racing. If you can keep your head while all about you others are squabbling then you may just be able to see it out, and that it is what Street has done, splitting his time almost equally over the last 30 years between racecourse management and promoting the sport itself. But everyone has that 'time's up' moment, and he has decided that it is time to pursue his own mentoring business. Time perhaps to let someone else deal with those on the inside whose failure to put aside vested interests can place the sport into something of a tailspin. 

“I started with Uttoxeter Racecourse in 1994 as an assistant commercial manager,” Street says, casting his mind back to the days working for Sir Stanley Clarke, the owner of the 'bomb scare' Grand National winner Lord Gyllene who would become the head of the Northern Racing group.

“I'd come from a background in travel and entertainment and my immediate job before starting there was performing stand-up comedy. I was promoting music and comedy in the Midlands and, through the challenge of rarely being able to secure a warm-up act for gigs, I started doing the warm-up myself. It saved money. But I'd quite recently been married and I was never going to hit the heights as a comedian.”

The Comedy Club's loss then was racing's gain as Street turned his love of entertainment into working out what would keep the racegoers entertained, and ideally becoming repeat customers.

“Because I've come from an environment of promoting comedy or music or working in travel and tourism, the consumers have always been at the very forefront of my thinking,” he says. 

“The question you're always asking yourself, whether you're promoting a a race day or something in racing, is 'Why would someone be interested in this?' 

“Racing's got something for everyone and I think as a sport we're terribly down on ourselves. We love to talk about the latest crisis and we undoubtedly have challenges in generating new followers for the sport. There's so much competition and we know it's been a challenge since Covid with admissions, for example. But we're still, despite that, an incredibly popular choice for a a day out.”

During Street's tenure, GBR has been behind the National Racehorse Week initiative, which was the brainchild of trainer Richard Phillips and this year saw more than 80 racing yards and stud farms open their doors to the public across the nation. 

“The horse is at the centre of racing, and we should never drift away from that. We can put on any number of music events or themes to race days, but if the horse isn't central, we're losing our purpose,” Street says.

“National Racehorse Week has been a really big success. It has to be a good thing for people to make their own minds up about the sport, especially with the challenge we've got now with perceptions around equine welfare.

“The world is changing. All sports other than football are facing this challenge. Cricket and rugby, particularly, are also facing real challenges about relevance and new customers, so we're not alone. And racing isn't due anything that it hasn't worked or strived for, so we mustn't think that things should come to us any easier than they come to anyone else. We've got to fight for customers. But we have great assets, and I think that other sports would look at some of the assets we've got and be full of envy. We have more than our fair share of iconic moments – Grand Nationals or Cheltenham Festivals or Derbys or Royal Ascot. And we've got that heritage which other sports just don't have, that connection to royalty, which is really powerful.”

He's on a roll now, and it is hard not to wonder who will pick up this baton of enthusiasm in his wake.

“The other thing is that you can play at any level in racing if you want to. You can be an expert, you can come and be a paddock watcher, but you can engage on a very basic level too, and turn up and with your friends and have a flutter and enjoy the action. And it's fast and dramatic and colourful. I think we're much more accessible than we think we are.” 

One also wonders if that early experience in stand-up comedy, with its rowdy hecklers, gave Street a good preparation for delivering marketing strategies and new ideas to an often inward-looking in-crowd. 

“It did, really,” he admits. “When Racing For Change then GBR came around I think there were quite a few constituents that hadn't really acknowledged that I'd already been working in the sport for 14 years prior to that point. So I think some would say, 'Oh, look, there's that marketing man'.

“When 'marketing man' is used in racing it's invariably pejorative. But I think, over time, anyone who got to know me understood that I've been a lifelong fan and that I actually had a lot of racing experience. It was bumpy early doors when we were trying to do new things and talk about promoting the sport, and it was particularly bumpy around the Champions Series because it was such an emotive topic. That actually went away quite quickly but, yes, it certainly helped to have a thick skin, and when you've had things said to you on stage as a comedian, or even things thrown at you, it prepares you in going into certain racing boards and committees.

“And I think one of the things that helped me do my job is recognising that at the heart of it, there's passion. There's passion for the sport, there's passion for the horse, there's passion for the jockeys and passion for the participants, and National Racehorse Week is a really good example of everyone uniting around that passion.”

It is clear that there will be no looking back in anger from Street. It's not his style to carp at others from the sidelines and, after all, as he says, he's been a lifelong fan of the sport. 

“To have been close over the years to so many superstars, often in the paddock, because you work so closely in the sport and you're always there doing your job, you can forget what it's like to be a fan,” he says. “That's something I'm looking forward to next year – going racing for racing's sake.”

He adds, “I don't want to be that person that has something to say about the racing industry. Having served in it for 30 years, I know it's really tough to be in the thick of it, whether you're trying to promote the sport or whether you're trying to administer the sport or you're trying to do veterinary work or you're trying to work out the fixture list. Dealing with a multitude of stakeholders is challenging. It really is like herding cats.

“I'm still very aware of how hard it is to be trying to do that and trying to make progress, with any number of people making helpful comments about how you do your job. So I don't want to add to the challenge of whichever executives are running racing in the future by having an opinion on how well they're doing their job or not.”

He adds,  “I do always want to be a cheerleader for the sport, and I think I'm much better suited to that than being a racing Cassandra.”