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Dark Ivy’s fall still chills me to this day Gamble. As you probably know, poor Brown Trix met the same fate as Dark Ivy at Becher’s two years later. In this instance though, the idiot jockey deserved much of the blame.
Although I miss the romance of old Grand Nationals, the changes needed to be made.
Red Rum is the same whenever he makes an appearance. He carries on like a two-year-old.”
You mean dead-heating in a 5 furlong seller at Liverpool.
You've got to accentuate the positive.
Eliminate the negative.
Latch on to the affirmative.
Don't mess with mister in between.In the Thursby Selling Plate, I believe, Neil?
Paul Cook riding?
I am "The Horse Racing Punter" on Facebook
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"The horse he dead heated with shared the same paddock as him when they were yearlings. They followed each other into the sales ring and fetched exactly the same price.
The horse he dead heated with shared the same paddock as him when they were yearlings. They followed each other into the sales ring and fetched exactly the same price.
The other horse was a filly named CURLICUE was sold at BALLSBRIDGE SALES, DUBLIN and both went on to dead heat against each other at Aintree. Ginger McCain was at the sales but 300 guineas was twice as much as he could afford back then.
Red Rum ran at Aintree seven times, winning four and placed second in his other three, five of them Grand Nationals.
You've got to accentuate the positive.
Eliminate the negative.
Latch on to the affirmative.
Don't mess with mister in between.THE PAST MATTERS MORE
But isn’t this what the internet guaranteed a torrent of uncontrollable raw change…
I do wonder if the late timing of the race and subject to protest delays might impair the horses’ vision particularly on days with poor light.I think the horses would prefer to run at an earlier time and the powers that be might consider looking at that.
‘Why do people think that the world revolves around what they personally want, only? That only things they like should exist? F me, the entitlement of people these days that only their view should be heard is ridiculous.
If I don’t like something, then I don’t engage in it, and I engage on something I do like. I am uninterested in motorsports or Star Wars or one-day cricket or the music of Ed Sheeran. But hey, if someone likes motorsports or those other things, they can go and enjoy it, it’s their call. I don’t ring up a radio station to tell a DJ not to play Ed Sheeran song, I just turn it off.’
I have been away and missed much of the furore, which as many predicted here has already died down.
There are far too many excellent points raised in this thread to revisit but I cannot agree more with the quote from QF above.
The right to peaceful protest is an absolutely non-negotiable foundation of any country which wishes to call itself a democracy. The actions seen at the National and the snooker are however not peaceful. You will gain little, if any, sympathy for your cause by ruining or attempting to ruin a day/evening out that people have been looking forward to and spent hard earned money on. I’m sure they earned many plaudits inside their echo chamber but most of the rest of us in the real world are disgusted.
If they wish to protest then they are free to organise a peaceful one outside Parliament where those who make the laws of the land are based. If people wish to support them then they are free to turn up and do so. If people wish to ignore it then they are also free to do so.
Yes we are a self selecting sample and support for racing here is by nature about 100% but many of the arguments I see here are far more eloquent and informed than just about anything seen against racing elsewhere. I would be interested to hear from anyone on the other side if they are reading this and wish to sign up.
If these people do wish to continue disrupting sporting events may I suggest a rugby international or Tyson Fury fight next?
It’s very dangerous to assume that anti-racing groups are the same individuals as climate change protesters. Obviously there is some overlap and plenty who rock up for any protest, regardless of cause. Many tactics are the same (we can thank social media for this). The reason televised sport has become a target for climate change protesters is that the media never reports peaceful protests, regardless of size or topic. I think targeting sport is an error that will erode support, particularly sports popular with working class people, like the Grand National and snooker) but they are getting publicity they can only have dreamed of so I doubt it will stop. I suspect the idea of having a “martyr” lamped by Tyson Fury or a rugby player is more of a lure than many might imagine (though I doubt it would happen and certainly wouldn’t fancy it myself!). Agree that Parliament should be the focus of protest. A friend who sometimes accompanies me to the races was recently dragged from a sit-down protest in Whitehall by police. Sadly sport is an easy target. I am sure most climate change activists would rather be disrupting (for example) Shell’s AGM. Worth questioning why international sporting event are easier targets.
Away from the MSM, Monday’s episode of The News Agents podcast (Maitlis, Sopel) is worth a listen. Entitled tellingly ‘Is horse racing becoming the next bullfighting?’ (which gets to the heart of the social licence issue) it gives air time to ‘both sides’ – on the one hand, EC and, on the other, a representative of AR, Claudia Penna-Rojas. The presenters spend rather more time with Claudia than with Ed, largely because they struggle to get her to articulate clearly what AR’s position actually is. What is illuminating about this discussion (beyond the very obvious youthful idealism) is that AR protests are motivated by 1) a desire to stimulate a wider national conversation about how people live with all animal species (not just TBs) and 2) are part of a wider critique of systems of animal-based food production, and its connections to the climate emergency. Their desired future is one of rewilding and plant-based food systems.
My own sense is that the racing bubble needs to appreciate this contextualisation: yes AR have a problem with racing, but they are not just anti-racing, and it would be wrong to cast them exclusively in this light. Rather, like much militant activism, their tactic was to use a headline day in racing, when most of the nation and beyond was tuned in, to shine a light on their concerns. That’s a long tradition in militant activism – the 1913 Derby was another instance when racing hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons, this time for the suffragette cause. For AR, this tactic was mighty successful. As well as leading to a large amount of MSM coverage, it also precipitated the full range of comment from those inside the racing bubble – exposing once again all our ambivalences about the GN itself.
The wider questions for racing raised by AR’s core concerns, I think, are less to do with the GN, or even the continued (or not) social legitimacy of racing, and rather more to do with the shape of a bloodstock-racing industry going forwards. At the heart of this is the swathes of agricultural land currently given over to grass cultivation specifically for rearing TBs, the over-production of TBs, and the welfare issues this in turn generates (cue Panorama). Whichever way one looks at this, it’s not a situation compatible with the climate emergency. Yet where do we see any recognition of these challenges by the industry or its regulators, let alone interventions that begin to address them?
Thanks. I haven’t heard that podcast but I’ll try to find it. Someone I know that I’ve been on political marches with is saying that peaceful protest doesn’t work and is now totally in favour of the tactics employed by AR and Extinction Rebellion which saddens me as I was quite proud of the fact that our marches were peaceful ( we didn’t even drop any litter). I don’t think AR’s long term plans came across very well on Saturday. A lot of the people I know that have signed the ban the National petition are just of a ‘racing people are happy for horses to die’ mindset. They don’t look to wider issues. It’s true that our relationship with animals needs to be reappraised, though.
Re the “just ignore it if you don’t like it” approach, I can see why the protestors don’t feel this is a valid option.
If you dislike Ed Sheeran, you can turn the radio off when he comes on. Ed’s feelings might be a bit hurt, but there is no other societal harm. But if you ignore the Grand National, there is still potentially harm to horses. Even though I think it is misguided, I can understand why some protestors would feel they have a moral duty to disrupt the race. Similar is true with the environmental campaigners.
This is not to justify their actions, but some of these people believe they are saving the world, which permits pretty much any behaviour because morality is supposedly on their side. As with many aspects of modern life, getting such people to consider alternative views or more nuanced arguments is a huge challenge.
It’s a fair point Marlingford and you’re absolutely right to try to put yourself in their mindset. One thing I would say is that at least targeting the National makes some form of sense as they are targeting the very event that they want stopped. The snooker one was just ridiculous, I have no idea what the game has to do with the oil industry. I realise publicity is one of their goals but presumably, so is converting people to their cause. Ruining unrelated events will certainly achieve one but the other probably less so.
The trouble is, where does it end? Somebody somewhere will object to just about any activity you can think of. I wonder if these activists would be alright with me smashing up vegan restaurants or bursting in to one and throwing orange powder all over everyone’s dinner if I decided I had some objection to the vegan food industry?
I love the film Misery
Any problem with that ?
If you you have I’ll get my learned mate Dominic Ràab
to unleash his wholesome venom on you whilst tautologically quoting the code.
Never trust a man that works weekends !
Look the National is coming of age. It is having to defend itself. I can assure you it will fare a hundred times better than Bernard Manning’s racist admissions and laughably inadequate defences on Mrs Merton. As the philosopher Bentham would stoically say – the most joy to the maximum people – and this axiom might even defend bull fighting if it’s done without degradation, and has some utilitarian purpose that pleases the populace.Annie Lennox possibly has the last word on this subject, post her screaming ruck with Dave Stewart, that created the art of SWEET DREAMS.Abused and abused by but who ultimately wins…?
I THINK THE MEDIA GET TO ULTIMATELY DECIDE THE WINNER BUT IN TURN THEY ARE HUGELY INFLUENCED BY THEIR READERSHIP
BUT MORE AND MORE THE INTERNET DECIDES AND THIS ULTIMATELY MAY BE THE Ultimate but fake DEMOCRACY. Clones and babies of clones!!!
If people want it enough the race will survive…Annie informs us there is definite hope the National may well outlive us all. Clones and AI imitators go **** yourself.I do rather like Annie Lennox, but she’s not Toyah!
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I've walked and I crawled on six crooked highways“Some of these people believe they are saving the world”.
Those sort of people have always been an absolute menace. People who have moral certainty they are right and do not have any doubt can behave very badly.
Trying to point out the huge harm their beliefs would cause if they were put into practice does not even register in the minds of these fanatics.
“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”
T.S Eliot.
‘Trying to point out the huge harm their beliefs would cause if they were put into practice does not even register in the minds of these fanatics.’
Absolutely, perhaps instead of ridiculous stunts, they could sit down and explain what the world looks like if we all ditched the horse racing or oil industries tomorrow. Sell the idea to me.
There is a certain arrogance that they are the enlightened ones and the rest of us are simply ignorant (we’ve seen this a lot recently). Anyone who claims to be speaking on behalf of a large group of people almost invariably isn’t.
“I think I speak for everyone when I say….”
Said no one who wasn’t a complete **** ever.
I am "The Horse Racing Punter" on Facebook
https://mobile.twitter.com/Ian_Davies_
https://www.facebook.com/ThePointtoPointNHandFlatracingpunter/
It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"
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