“When Kevin announced in the summer that he was stepping down I was always going to apply for the job whether I was still at the BHA or not,” he said.
“I regard it very much as a career progression. I have a huge respect for jockeys and the demanding job they do. I am looking forward to fighting their corner for them.
"A lot is made of the factional interests within the sport and though my primary responsibility will be representing the members, we will not be entirely myopic, we have to consider the good of the industry as a whole.”
Ironically, Struthers was on the whip review group and put his name to the whip review that led to new rules being introduced in October.
They remain a work in a progress and elevated the jockeys’ chief executive to one of racing’s highest profile jobs overnight. That is something he would have had to square with the jockeys during his interview.
Regarding the ongoing saga, which he considers the jockeys’ most pressing issue, he said: “I haven’t tried to distance myself from the whip review.
"If you go back to what was written at the time most people thought they’d work, but it proved different in practice.
"But if people who worked for the BHA weren’t ever allowed to work for the other side of the table, people would leave it and never work again.”
In a statement the PJA’s joint-presidents, Steve Drowne and A P McCoy, said: “Although disappointed to lose the services of Kevin Darley, the PJA is very pleased to have been able to appoint someone of the high calibre of Paul Struthers, who possesses a broad and excellent experience of racing gained over years of working in the industry.”
Struthers, whose wife Kate is currently on maternity leave from her job as marketing manager at Newbury racecourse, starts the job in mid-February, but will start spending time at the PJA offices in Newbury and speaking and listening to jockeys in a handover period while Darley is still in the job.
