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Someone from a group called “Animal Rising” was on Good Morning Britain speaking about how they want to stop the Grand National. Their plans were discovered by the “Mail On Sunday” and published last week.
It is very unsatisfactory that GMB did not have someone from racing on the programme to counter the rubbish she was talking. Richard Madeley and Ranvir Singh clearly know nothing about racing.
It is disappointing to see ITV – the broadcaster of the Grand National – give air time to such unbalanced coverage. I recognise GMB is a separate programme with a different editorial team but I cannot believe the ITV Racing team are particularly happy its own network broadcast that interview.
Some of the comments below the twitter message are unhinged. I suppose those attitudes have always been there but they have the potential to reach more people nowadays and could be very damaging.
A lot of these people are seriously unhinged which is what makes them so dangerous. It’s a bit surprising that ITV allows its news outlet to undermine what is likely to be a very lucrative and popular event for the channel but I suppose it’s all about generating discussion for GMB and it will definitely do that, albeit much of it ill-informed if not downright crazed. Meanwhile BBC online covered what should be a positive (if quirky) Grand National story written by what I guess is someone edging to the side of the antis. Largely copied from Wikipedia with the “most popular and best-loved winner” referred to as “it” throughout
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-65251072TRF posters who’ve read some of my posts in The Lounge’s political threads over last 12 months will know my views on ITV and its political bias.
Their morning progs, produced mainly by the same guy, are full of anti-tradition topics.
Their London centric metro slants will likely see horse racing as fair game, despite the ITV racing position.GMB itself is forever promoting dreadful, shouty guests who havent a clue how to debate; many subjects over the last couple of years see 2 opposing guests just shout over each other, ignorant of the unwritten ‘rules’ of debate.
To add balance, British horseracing is awful at ensuring it’s PR remains on the ‘Front Foot’ – in fact, how many times in the last 10 years has British horseracing ensured it’s on the ‘Front Foot’ in the eyes of the general public?
Answers on the smallest postcard to that last Q.
They’ve just had one of these characters on Nigel Farage’s show on GB News going on about galloping horses to death and saying it was a myth that there would be no need for the horses if racing was outlawed – he was chatting about the prospect of going for walks and watching the horses run around fields. Lacked any sort of effective spokesman’s assertivenes in his personality so I doubt that even the most naive would take any notice of him.
Hard for British Horseracing to get on the ‘front foot’ when said foot spends most of its time either being in the mouth or getting shot
They know they can maximise publicity around events such as the National while ignoring some of the real animal welfare issues in the world.
Public opinion swaying against racing is IMO the biggest risk to the industry by some margin and the woman countering the voice of the activist was extremely poor. Racing needs to organise itself against this threat in a much more effective way than it has done to date.
David
A new twitter account called StandUp4Racing has been started by a few racing media folk. This is their clarion call:
“Racing & breeding professionals: in response to anti racing posts on social media this week,let’s all invite those people to our yards and studs to see for themselves the reality behind high standard of care for racehorses both during careers and afterwards #StandUpForRacing”
This defence appears to be pretty much the only one racing uses – ‘we love our horses and they are treated like royalty.’ It’s about the worst possible argument you can make because implicit in it is ‘we know they’re at risk of death when competing, but fair play to us, we compensate for that with sun lamps, swimming pools, blah, blah, blah.’ The other favoured approach seems to be to demonise and vilify ‘the antis’. Both approaches would be binned by any decent PR professional in favour of an honest exposition of the ups and downs of the sport and the risks involved in owning any animal.
All that this group will achieve is making more people – who don’t care much one way or the other at the moment – aware of the risks involved for thoroughbreds.
This crops up every year, will be forgotten by the general public by Monday after the GN until next year, the only ones that kick up a stink a bit longer are those that didn’t back the winner from their 20 selections whilst sat eating a bacon, sausage and black pudding sandwich.
Racing was wetting the bed from the Eliot sat on the dead horse saga but that was forgotten by the time the public had sat down and watched Eastenders.Charles Darwin to conquer the World
A lot of those real nutjob people and quite probably a fair number of the true antis (not that they would admit to it) along with the national newspapers are no doubt all hoping for a fatality or two in the National to help focus the spotlight further upon the so called cruelty of the sport.
The BHA really should be taking advantage of all the resources available to them within the industry be it trainers (remember how Gosden talked after Rewilding’s fatal breakdown in the King George), equine vetinary experts/owners etc to put out accross all forms of media/social media detailed information dispelling the myths and outright lies about a horse’s life in racing and what it entails…..rather than waiting to be reactionary to a worse case scenario of a high profile incident in the great race.
A question that I have always wanted to put to these so called anti horseracing groups is, if they suceeded in their ultimate goal of getting horseracing banned permanently, just exactly what do they think will happen to the (as per the BHA as of 2022) some 14,000 horses that are residing in Britain that are in active training for both professional and hobby sports?
LD73, one constant I’ve found in this debate is this assertion of myths and outright lies from the antis – can you give me some examples of these?
What people don’t realise is that a lot of these animal rights groups don’t actually want animals to exist at all: they think that having animals as pets is wrong. I used to chat about racing at work but there came a time when my love of racing just became a guilty secret.Thankfully my boss, at least, was a racing fan!
“Can you give me some examples of these?”
She said there is a fatality in British racing every other day. I would be fairly sure that is inaccurate. But it went unchallenged by Madeley and Singh.
The myths and outright lies comment was more a case of their general assumption that horse racing is cruel and that they are forced to race against their will and get beaten with the whip for the entertainment of the racegoer…….I wonder just how many have actually been on a stable tour to get a behind the scenes look at what really goes on.
As part of the Frankel tour (also included a behind the scenes look at Newmarket’s Rowley Mile racecourse) I did through Discover Newmarket, part of the day also included a tour around Ed Dunlop’s yard (we were surprisingly pretty much free to wander around ourselves) but we did have a group gathering with one of the more senior stable people who gave us an overview of what goes on and showed us a horse exercising on a treadmill (along with the benefits of doing so…warming up or down both pre and post morning gallops) and we even stopped off to see Red Cadeaux enjoying his spa treatment session in a rather expensive looking unit and I was able to ask if the plan was to again aim for a tilt at the Melborne Cup later that year (it was but so sadly it would result in him losing his life following a breakdown mid race).
You could clearly tell that no expense was spared with the treatment of the horses and odd ones were pointed out on our tour that had particular traits/habits (one was a known biter of anything that came within range and we were told to give him a wide berth…..which we certainly did when he obliged us by showing us his teeth as the warning was given) and I even had an encounter with a rather skittish 3 yr old that was being walked back past us to its box and was amusingly told by the groom that he was a ‘right boy-o’ to deal with as he was wary of every little thing under the sun and would literally be spooked by his own shadow.
Also got time to pet dual Doncaster Cup winner Times Up who was in his last year of racing and was looking out over the younger horses in that part of the yard which included an unraced greyish/roan coloured 3yr old horse by the name of Opposition who took quite a liking to my jacket…..I rather suspect he was hoping I had some mints or a carrot or two hiding away somewhere…….he also seem partial to a scratch on a spot just behind his right ear
I have been a racehorse fan since a kid and like to think I have acquired quite a bit of knowledge about it but that 30-45 mins spent in Dunlop’s yard really was eye opening as to exactly how the horses are looked after and the detail that goes into it on a daily basis……I would highly encourage anyone who hasn’t experienced it to book a tour if they can.
Nowadays I have a love-hate relationship with the National.
On the one hand, I still adore it. It’s what got me interested in racing, and it retains some of its old magic even though it has changed so much.
But on the other hand it puts our sport in the public spotlight, and invites all kinds of ill-informed comment. I find the build up to the National excruciating nowadays, and it seems to get worse by the year. The media takes an increasingly lazy approach where the animal welfare story dominates almost entirely, partly as it is the easiest one to use. Racing’s leadership continues to struggle to put across an alternative point of view, and it needs to be much more proactive and coordinated.
Obviously equine welfare is a hugely important topic and the sport should do all it can to minimise the risks. The risks can’t be airbrushed away, but the sport needs to do a much better job at showing what it is doing to reduce them and, even more importantly, that the huge majority of people involved in it care about the horses deeply.
“The risks can’t be airbrushed away, but the sport needs to do a much better job at showing what it is doing to reduce them.”
There was quite a good film shown on the big screens around Aintree today before racing, explaining what has been done in an attempt to improve safety and about the veterinary care on the course.
Maybe it was preaching to the converted to an extent but there will have been some people there today having their first ever day at the races or who only go racing once or twice a year.
I thought it was a good effort and would like to see the BHA make it available to a wider audience.
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