The Britain-Australia Society Education Trust (BASET) has announced a new ground-breaking scheme, the BASET Thoroughbred Endeavour Award. This award has been created in partnership with Godolphin, The British Racing School (BRS) and Thoroughbred Industry Careers (TIC) and is designed to support those young people setting out in a career in the racing and breeding thoroughbred industries.

The inaugural BASET Thoroughbred Endeavour Award has, this month, been awarded to Grace McBeath who said: “I am really thankful for this amazing opportunity and I look forward to expanding my knowledge internationally. This is a huge change for a girl from the Aussie bush!”

The award offers participants the chance to travel between the UK and Australia in order to further develop new skills, practices and gain international experience. The exchange between the two countries will be for a period of six-months during the peak racing seasons of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

This year, the BRS will fund Grace’s six-month placement within racing yards, and she will spend time with Sir Mark Prescott’s Heath House Stables and Andrew Balding’s Kingsclere Park House Stables. Later this year, the reciprocal award will go to a UK-based young person who will in turn get the chance to spend six-months in Australia. This placement will be organised by Thoroughbred Industry Careers.

John May, BASET’s Chair of Trustees commented: “We are thrilled to have partnered with The British Racing School and Thoroughbred Industry Careers to create this incredible opportunity for our award winners, helping them to gain international experience working in racing. We hope this exciting initiative will mark the start of a long-term collaboration between our organisations to support deserving young people from Britain and Australia and strengthen the bilateral bond between the two countries.

“I would like to thank all the hard work done by Jim Paltridge on behalf of BASET and Diana Cooper of Godolphin, along with Andrew Brathwaite of BRS and Lindy Maurice from TIC in making this award happen.”

Diana Cooper, Strategic Advisor Charities for Godolphin, who facilitated the creation of the new industry award, added: “We thank the BASET for choosing to include Thoroughbred Racing in their growing list of Endeavour awards that help young Australians and British by encouraging cultural interaction and industry participation between the two countries.”