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https://www.racingtv.com/news/road-to-cheltenham-protektorat-advances-gold-cup-case
Who’s the best favourite for the Cheltenham Festival, Protektorat advances his Cheltenham Gold Cup claims (I thought he’d won a big race in its own right at Haydock Park actually).
And the hilarious thing is these are the same media outlets who were horrified Nicky Henderson is so obsessed with the Cheltenham Festival that he withdrew Constitution Hill at Ascot.
You couldn’t make it up.
“As ye sow shall ye reap” – the racing media are equally culpable as a once great NH season devolves into four days in March.
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"Exactly
Spot on
100%Every time a horse wins on ITV we get greeted with a quote for Cheltenham
Either embrace it or shut up about it..😛
Blackbeard to conquer the World
Yep agree completely, you’ve written a couple of good posts recently about it in the Constitution Hill thread Ian, can only echo your sentiments that the media want it both ways, you can’t endlessly go on about the festival as though it’s the holy grail and then bemoan trainers who prioritise it.
Watched a couple of NH season previews on YouTube
Not sure they actually mentioned a race not at Cheltenham other than the king george
I think the modern media is getting a hard time here (not something I say often!). The obsession with Cheltenham has existed for decades. If you look back to things such as pre-season previews and post-race interviews from 30 years ago, the implications for Cheltenham were very prominent even then.
We definitely need to celebrate the big races throughout the season and treat them as events in their own right. But consider you are interviewing the connections of the Charlie Hall winner. After congratulating them and talking about the race, surely it is only right to move on to talk about future plans? The forward-looking nature of racing, and betting in particular, means that I would think a presenter was not doing their job properly if they didn’t speculate about the future.
Racing clearly has some ills to solve at present re small field sizes and trainers who seem reluctant to run their horses. But I don’t think the media will be changing any time soon, and I view it as being more of a mirror of the problems faced by the sport than the cause of them.
Simple answer is ban talk of Cheltenham till next year. I long for the days of tingle creeks being a huge day plus all the big Irish races. Let’s just enjoy each big race on its merits. Cheltenham is overhyped to the point that it will always be a let down due to unrealistic expectations. Plus trainers focusing on targets all year round as a there is no guarantee a horse will be fit or in form come march.
“you can’t endlessly go on about the festival as though it’s the holy grail and then bemoan trainers who prioritise it.”
As succinct and spot on a summary as you will read anywhere – 100% THIS^ from Ben.
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"Per say I don’t think Cheltenham is any more important now than it was in the past, it just that media (and social media in particular) is so more dominant and accesible in our everyday lives than it ever has been before.
We now have two dedicated racing channels showing every race at every meeting in the UK whereas in the past you would be limited to only so many racing days a year broadcast on terrestial tv (be it from BBC/BBC2/ITV/World of Sport/Channel 4 Racing) and generally you would get 3-4 (maybe 5) races televised from those meeting that were being televised and maybe the odd highlight clip of the end of a non televised midweek race that just happened to have one of the star names appearing.
There is so much more access to the participants of the sport to where trainers/jockeys/owners are asked their opinions sometimes even before the horses have come off the course and walked back to the winners enclosure, there are now regular programmes on RUK/Sky Sports Racing where trainers allow presenters into their stable to get updates on the horses and also regular racing debate programmes where they are guests and give their opinions on all things racing.
That type of thing would never have happened back in the day when we relied on the aforementioned terrestial tv channels only for our racing fix….it was really Channel 4 Racing with their fresh approach i.e. Morning Line show that started that trend of lifting the veil back.
It is now a case of us hearing so much more often about how important Cheltenham is (because of all these new media avenues that now gives us the greatest access to the sport that we have ever had) rather than Cheltenham being more important now than ever before.
Easy for me, interest in Cheltenham Festival starts 2 days before each race when the declarations are known. Simples!
…Until then there’s best part of 4 months worth of racing to look at.
My interest now is in the lower echelons of the sport, mostly class 4, 5 and 6 handicaps in both codes, although I do prefer the flat.
Meetings like Royal Ascot and Cheltenham are much too difficult, betting wise, for this “bear of little brain”.
I do usually have a look at the Derby trials to see if I can spot a suitable bet. I used to have a few Ante Post bets but not any more.
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I've walked and I crawled on six crooked highwaysGood post LD73, agree with all that.
We are incredibly fortunate with how much more available and accessible racing is nowadays due to the expanded media. But the downside of being exposed to so much media is that there is much more guff and waffle out there as well as the good stuff.
Aren’t we all in some way responsible for this though?
I have close to zero interest in the flat season. Allowances can surely be made for the fact it’s 2am and I’m on a night shift but I couldn’t tell you the winner of the Derby this year. Or even the Leger which is my hometown track. So maybe my own bias shines through but during the flat season I don’t think we get the traffic on the site we do the jumps?
I certainly don’t recall seeing a sub forum for Royal Ascot that’s started almost immediately after the end of the previous years event.
Look at the Cheltenham one for 2023. It’s packed with threads and opinions already.
Christ, Monkfish was being quoted for the 22 GC even before he ran in the 21 RSA if I remember right!
It probably has become all consuming to the detriment of everything else but it’s not solely down to the media or owners and trainers giving their sole focus to it for what feels 360 days of the year.
“Aren’t we all in some way responsible for this though?”
Well, no, not so IMO as punters and racing fans come at it from different perspectives.
Some prefer the Flat, some prefer the Jumps, some are focussed on what’s happening today, others are always looking to future big events.
We see this at TRF – some perpetually hang out in the forum’s ante-post areas (Big Race Discussion and Cheltenham 2023), others are more occasional visitors to those areas and others not at all.
Marlingford reckons there has always been a Festival obsession.
I disagree.
For sure, Josh Gifford would claim he had a future Cheltenham Gold Cup horse on his hands every time he won a 2m novice hurdle, but there were only ante post markets on the Cheltenham Gold Cup, the Champion Hurdle and the Triumph Hurdle back then and the big Saturday races I mentioned earlier in the thread were the Crown Jewels of the season with Cheltenham a nice to have at the end of it if your horse held its form into the spring.
I’ve watched this Cheltenham obsession evolve from my remote vantage point on the periphery of racing and I’ve watched the changing nature of how the racing media collectively covers racing since I left it in 2001.
And yes I do blame the media for much of it – I don’t think it reflects racing, I think it tries to set racing’s agenda.
It’s also trying to turn racing into football or boxing – gone is “last year’s winner” as it’s all about “defending crowns” (What crown? There is no crown) and “defending titles” (What title? Ditto) nowadays.
And it’s coverage of NH is totally different from how it covers the Flat.
The pillars of the Flat season – from the Lincoln meeting to the November Handicap, with the Classics, the big Festivals etc along the way – are subject to a respectful ongoing narrative (to use the modern term).
But the disrespect for the structure of the NH season is palpable – those former Saturday Crown Jewels are but Cheltenham trials in their eyes nowadays, the perpetual question is: “could this be a Cheltenham horse?”
It really wasn’t like this back in the 70s and 80s when Cheltenham was, for sure, a big three-day meeting, but ultimately knew its place.
And all of this, plus the two articles I referred to lays bare the utter hypocrisy of broadcast/journalists sermonising about what happened at Ascot on Saturday only to resume the cringeworthy Cheltenham obsession in virtually the very next breath.
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"I don’t think ‘racing forums’ are totally innocent in the matter of the “Cheltenham obsession”.
Maybe we should have a TRF swear jar?
Anyone who mentions the C word before the 1st March has to put in a fiver; we can then all go out on a beano when the festival actually starts.
Go in the Cheltenham 2023 discussion folder with that jar and, at a fiver a pop, you’ll raise enough cash to pay off the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement.
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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