The grooms strike has cost South Africa racing an untold amount of money and reputation. The aftermath of the strikes and threats by trainers to cut their strings has gone viral worldwide.

Some would say that the chickens have finally come home to roost whilst others may argue that it's an opportunistic way of forcing wage demands and other conditions.

The bottom line is that South African Horseracing had this this type of issue coming for a long time. The blinkered approach to this industry has now led to an outburst from the largest and poorest of the employment group in the industry, the grooms. Sadly it's taken threats and weapon weilding personal to get the message across, by no means a way to negotiate, however on the other hand it looks like a situation that may have been boiling over for a long time.

The horseracing and breeding industry has simply not transformed sufficiently to allow for a sustainable future for all race groups, even worse is when anyone who voices or has voiced this has been ostracized and called a racist. It isn't furtile ground for gaining equality. All told it's a very difficult industry to break into, work or make business in as one of the outsiders or if one is on the wrong side of the colour line.

With the grooms strike the international attention on horseracing has left horseracing's reputation in dire straits on the back of the continuing much publicized Markus Jooste Scandal and the recent spat between a well known journalist/publication and the listed entity Phumelela.

This grooms strike episode is sandwiched in between this. The chickens are sadly coming home to roost for a beleaguered industry still very much captured by a few with limited or no real transformation at most levels of the food chain.