Flying Start Alumni Conference Begins

Michael Smith, Darley Flying Start 1st Year Trainee

Thursday marked another Darley Flying Start milestone with the beginning of its two-day inaugural Alumni Conference at the Moller Centre in Cambridge, UK. With 130 graduates spread across the world to date, Darley Flying Start brought its network of graduates together again, giving them a two-day continuing education opportunity. Over 40 graduates from Europe and America are attending this conference, titled Masterclass: Reputation and Brand, which is taking a progressive approach by looking outside the Thoroughbred industry box to other world-class organizations in order to enhance the personal development of its graduates and, through them, the fortunes of the greater racing industry.

While education has always been one of the defining hallmarks of Darley Flying Start, a portion of the conference is also dedicated to promoting and facilitating leadership by harnessing the collective brainpower of alumni to discuss and address the global horse racing brand.

In the first section of day one, attendees looked to entrepreneur Philip Turner of the Chestnut Group; Barbara Clancy, legal counsel of World Rugby; and Chairman of Irish Sports Council Kieran Mulvey on how to build their own brands and manage crises in today's dynamic and fast-changing world. One of the topics covered in depth by the speakers was the challenges relating to brand that today's up-and-coming generation are going to face as they move through their careers in an increasingly connected and shrinking world. To paraphrase the emcee of the day Jocelyn Targett, one can spend a lifetime building a reputation and brand, but in today's world, all of that can be lost in 140 characters. As such, one of the key aspects that Phillip Turner highlighted was understanding the currency of individual or company brand.

Essentially, the question was “what is it that customers or clients truly find valuable when a service or product fails to meet expectations?” Another challenge discussed in relation to Kieran Mulvey and Barbara Clancy's experience of working in the professional sports industry was the importance of reputation on an industry-wide scale and how other international sports and their governing bodies are facing tremendous scrutiny and investigation worldwide because of their tarnished reputations. The consensus among alumni was that it is this generation's responsibility to maintain and collectively lift even higher the Thoroughbred industry brand and reputation through both business and personal interactions.

Following the lively panel discussion, the conference moved into its second phase where Darley Flying Start Manager Clodagh Kavanagh presented the alumni with a case study entitled Global Horseracing: What's Our Brand? and opened up the floor to discussion. Attendees then broke up into small groups to brainstorm the topic before reconvening and presenting their collective findings to the group. One of the comments that was consistent in the various group discussions was that racing, regardless of how it is branded on a global or national level, must maintain a reputation of integrity in both business practices and horse care.