When my nine-year-old daughter Sophia was diagnosed with autism in the first lockdown, my wife Rachelle said she’d love to make everything more accessible for people with autism. I thought horseracing could step up, but knew if I was going to get anything off the ground, I needed to go to the top.
I explained my vision to Annamarie Phelps, who was chair of the British Horseracing Authority (BHA), and she was on board straight away. I put together a steering group: me, Paul Swain of the Racecourse Association, Lucy Gurney at Racing Together, Ed Chamberlin and Rishi Persad from ITV Racing, Rose Grissell, the BHA’s head of diversity and inclusion, and Luke Howard, who does something similar for Arsenal FC.
We approached racecourses and had our first autism-friendly day…