AT THE beginning of last year, Paul Roy became chairman of the newly-formed British Horseracing Authority and set out to establish a governing body for the sport that would speak with one voice. Given the factionalism that has fragmented racing for so many years, Roy was attempting what most would have considered impossible. Why not herd sheep at a crossroads?

He does have a sense of humour and though it is eight o’clock in the morning when we meet, it doesn’t t a k e l o n g t o s u r f a c e . I n h i s compressed telling of his life story, he was the son of an East End butcher who graduated to a shop on Epsom High Street and continued to cut up enough lamb chops to get his boy a good education.

Well, sort of. Roy went to Liverpool University, graduated in economics and majored in sport. He played hooker on the rugby team, worked on his love of racing and when he eventually found himself on the floor of the London Stock Exchange, big-time gambling didn’t faze him. He made his fortune in investment banking, was chief executive of Smith New Court, then head of Merrill Lynch Global Equities before taking over its Global Markets and Investment Banking Division.

We are talking about an investment banker with responsibility for 20,000 Merrill Lynch staffers and after working with the company until 2003, he co-founded NewSmith Capital Partners and since January 2007, he has been chairman of the BHA. Along the way, he learned to play golf, to love cricket all the more and became a useful angler. He tells a fishing story that isn’t just funny.

He had organised a trip to Scotland and invited a number of friends, one of whom was Nick Faldo, who also loves to fish. Faldo had two rods but on the first morning somehow managed to lose his floats and hooks.

Walking down to where Roy was on the bank, Faldo explained his predicament before asking for help. “Nick,” Roy said, “I’m the host, not the f****** gilly.”

It might have been the first time someone didn’t genuflect at the altar of the six-time major winner but as Roy tells it, you get a sense of what it was that made an able manager of money and men. He has come into racing administration at a tough time; attendances have fallen this year, there is too much rubbish racing, Panorama’s latest investigation into the sport is about to be broadcast, the Government wants to sell the Tote, bookmakers want to pay less for the right to lay bets and the sport’s security department was made to look foolish during the Kieren Fallon trial.

“I’m not good at many things,” says Roy, “but as an investment banker, one of the things I was quite good at was putting the right team together and making them work as a team. The two main groups in racing are the trainers, jockeys, owners and breeders and then the racecourse owners and I believe we now have all of these people on the same page, speaking with one voice.”

The government’s decision to sell the Tote is one with which he disagrees. “Racing has been very badly treated by this government. For whatever reason, the Tote has ended up in the hands of the government, it was nationalised and now they want to privatise it. The government has committed to giving racing half of the proceeds from the sale and we’re arguing over whether that is half of the gross proceeds, not the net proceeds, but I don’t think this is the right time to sell the Tote.

“Last year we submitted two bids on behalf of the industry; the original one was for £400m, then another for £350m. We felt they were strong bids but they were turned down on the basis they didn’t reflect market value. What is the market value now? I would imagine a lot less than was turned down last year. It is a sorry story, a mess, and now is not the time to sell.”

Roy believes legislation should be introduced by the government that guarantees racing a levy from bookmakers and he believes that betting exchanges are not paying nearly as much as they should. He has advocated for racing’s case to be taken to an independent tribunal. If the sale of the Tote and uncertainty over the level of income from the levy on bookmakers represents one set of problems, the recent announcement of an 8% fall in attendances is another.

“In part, the drop is a reflection of the increase in fixtures over the last number of years, especially the increase in the number of low grade meetings. One of the first things the new authority did was to look at the fixture list, consult with all the interested parties and redress the situation whereby we seemed to be expanding the list almost for the sake of expanding.

“So we have made a start and reduced the number of meetings on the flat by 27 fixtures. We don’t want to put on dross, where 500 people, three bookmakers and a lot of low quality horses turn up. British racing remains a very strong institution and we have to protect that.”

Though it is sometimes difficult to appreciate, Roy is correct when he says British racing remains relatively healthy. Despite the embarrassment t o t h e p o l i c e a n d t h e r a c i n g authorities of the Fallon trial, British racing deserves its reputation as one of the least corrupt in the world. It is also now reaping the benefits of having postrace drug-testing and laws that prohibit the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. American horseracing is now suffering the consequences of its indifference to the use of performance enhancing drugs.

Roy believes the sport can attract new followers. “Horseracing is three things; it is a sport, it is a social event a n d i t i s a b e t t i n g m e d i u m . Combining those three things gives you the opportunity to attract a wide audience. We have to demystify the sport, explain it better to people and we must all the time try to improve the quality of our race meetings.

“If we have to have Frankie Dettori smiling every day, or riding the winner of the Derby, to attract attention to the sport, then we’ve got a problem. There are plenty of personalities in racing but all of our stars must engage with the need to promote the sport. England’s rugby players do media training, but we are way off the pace in presenting our stories.”

Racing, surely, did not help itself by inviting the City of London police to investigate jockeys and precipitate a trial that made a laughing stock of the authorities? “We had a level of information that led us to believe there was potentially criminal activity and that this was something that should be looked at by the police. From that point, we took no part in the investigation, no part in the decision to charge people, no part in the presentation of the case.

“We get blamed for the choice of the prosecution’s expert witness, Ray Murrihy, when we didn’t have any input into his selection. The point at which the case fell down was the moment Murrihy said he wasn’t qualified to comment on British racing. We commissioned Dame Elizabeth Neville to make a report on the case and she described our integrity and licensing services as “a model for the effective investigation for corruption in sport”.

But this was the security department that offered a job to the leading police officer investigating the jockeys before the investigation was completed? “I agree that was wrong, but this is a judgment with the benefit of hindsight. It wasn’t intended to influence the course of the investigation and when it was seen in that light, the offer was withdrawn.”

Out of the investigation and trial has come new legislation that identifies precisely how licensed racing personnel must handle inside information. As an owner, Roy himself has to be wary. He is allowed to speak publicly about his horses and their chances of winning and in the spirit of openness, he offers the opinion that his two-year-old Waffle, trained by Jeremy Noseda at Newmarket, has a winning chance in Friday’s group two Richmond Stakes at Goodwood.