Lowest prize-money since 2002: the stats that lay bare huge hit taken by racing

That was indeed the year that was – and here are the numbers to prove it.

The BHA's release of industry statistics for 2020 shows the striking extent to which the coronavirus walloped British racing.

Not surprisingly, some of the data makes for extremely grim reading, particularly in relation to prize-money and attendances. However, if the messages behind the figures covering those two metrics are as we would have expected, it is possible to extrapolate from the available material that in some ways, with a glass that is very much half-full rather than half-empty, the year was perhaps not quite as appalling as we might have believed.