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I wouldn’t mind if they got rid of Tanya and her lap top, all mention of charity bets and kept the betting talk to the prices beforehand and read the SP’s out afterwards
Not a whole lot lately, Lost Soldier. I go through periods where I have loads of time for racing, to periods where I have very little, I’m in the latter at the moment. Plus I watch most of my racing on the excellent Dubai Racing Channel, which for some reason this year is showing a lot more RUK over C4, when they broadcast simultaneously.
Personally I dont mind the ads. The networks pay racing for a reason, the bookmakers pay the networks for a reason and the great game rumbles on. Would any terrestrial network pay for the pictures that keeps our sport in the mainstream, if they could only sell advertising to cream cracker manufacturers…
I wouldn’t have much time for Banks. Squeals like the game owes him living when he’s losing, sneers when he’s winning and in my own experience wouldn’t lay a banana to anyone with even ten percent of a clue. That said I enjoyed him the few times I saw him on the Morning Line. Anyone who can get up Lord Walsh’s nose is alright by me.
I find the grandstanding “favorite” call in commentary annoying too. Mark Johnson is another who specializes in it. Overall though I like Machin as a commentator.
I would like to ban bookmakers from offering prices for horses to win at the Cheltenham festival, does my head in after a horse wins an early season race and barely has it crossed the winning line and all the quotes come in for Cheltenham.
I’d like to see a ‘back to basics’ approach to horse racing coverage and do away with betting details, TV and Nick Luck altogether in one fell swoop.
Back in the 1840s, before the invention of the Electric Telegraph, racing results were communicated to off-course bookmakers by homing pigeons released from the track post-race. People like my great-great-grandfather would place a bet on one particular day but invariably not learn the result until the following day (unless the pigeon could quicken effortlessly towards the end of the trip).
The only exception to this set of circumstances was if my great-great-grandfather found himself on a direct route from racecourse to London, in which case he’d shoot down the pigeon and get the results a day early.
A completely OTT response, particularly from the Racing Post to just one person’s opinion of television coverage, even if that person is Mark Johnston. Bruce Millington obviously saw it as penalty kick without a goalie.
With over 200 horses under his care you would have to question how avid a viewer Johnston is of C4 racing as he always seems to be at the races. As he says he rarely analyses his horses performance on video afterwards, possibly through time constraints, would he really be watching C4 coverage intently every week and 5 times a week during Royal Ascot for over 4 hours a day?
There’s no doubt though that bookmakers are a cancer on the sport, nearly everything about racing is infected by them. Racing Post, ATR, RUK, C4 and even the BHA and to have their spokesmen frequently wheeled out for their opinion is tedious to say the least when they wont lay a bet.
Johnston’s support for Tommo is puzzling, has he never heard him commentating at the track? If he had he would have surely heard him repeatedly saying “Any more bets, any more bets” for several minutes prior to every race.
Some have said it’s good that Johnston has opened the debate but I think we all know that it will have absolutely no effect on what happens.
Back in the 1840s, before the invention of the Electric Telegraph, racing results were communicated to off-course bookmakers by homing pigeons released from the track post-race.
At The Races are still using this technology.
They had a racecard up for a French race last week which showed that there were three runners in the race in question. The field was bigger than that, and, unforgivably, the horse who won the race wasn’t one of the three they showed as running
Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.
steve, I’m not sure that ATR have got around to using pigeons yet due to technical problems of one kind or another.
I really wish they would, because the average Class 3 rated pigeon can travel at 50 mph over moderate distances. The stagecoach they currently use for carrying urgent news can do a mere 12 mph, plus they have to change horses every 20 miles.
Also lets trial a day at the races with no bookies and see how many people attend.
Probably a lot more than you think. Many people place their bets on their mobile phones these days; a day at the races is just an extended drinking session for some.
As for Johnston’s original point, clearly it isn’t going to happen. However, there ought to be less about betting in general in ITV’s coverage and more to attract youngsters to the sport, as was suggested on The Morning Line today. Racing is all about colour, excitement and pageantry- surely there’s enough to attract newcomers, of whatever age, without drawing them into the betting trap?
With regards to young people, they only have so much money and it goes on football and into machines. Saturday mornings in the bookies involve putting an acca on a load of 4/7 football teams and chucking a score into a roulette machine before whiling away the afternoon with Jeff Stelling and co. And that is exactly what is sold to them in most of the adverts. Good luck with convincing them to even switch the channel to ITV. Horses are what granddad watches and it’s probably fixed anyway.
Gladiateur, good luck with making a convincing sales pitch out of colour and pageantry to a demographic with an average attention span of under 10 seconds.
To the uninitiated of almost any generation, I suspect racing is viewed as an anachronism; a collection of horses who mostly look the same ridden by men who appear to be undernourished. The betting element gives racing a small chance of attracting a few who relish the challenge of money-making or committed form study. Remove the betting and I believe 99.9% would walk on by.
People like M Johnston hold views which ignore facts in favour of their long held prejudice. That was obvious from G Cunningham’s fine dissection of the trainer’s lofty spoutings this morning. Come the end, MJ, if anything, held to his opinions more staunchly than before GC opened his mouth. Johnston and his ilk (on any subject) would be no more malleable than the fiercest conspiracy theorist.
Cunningham is in the right here of course, but I think the credit belongs elsewhere. A brief look through GC’s Twitter will show you where he got his ‘inspiration’ from. Cunningham was just well-placed to be the mouthpiece on national TV.
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