Racing For Change – Some Ideas From Marcus Townend

[aaronizneez]

A few good points but some which are I think unworkable.

1. Less "trash" racing. Well it’s the old Supply & Demand argument again. As for bookie funded extra meetings would this be at the expense of sponsoring major races such as the Eclipse ?

2. To the casual observer horse racing is horse racing, one with obstacles one without. You run the race and you have a winner. I don’t think they will be bothered when a so called season starts and when it finishes quite frankly.

3. A major championship (UK Breeders Cup?) the last week in September, a week before the Arc meeting, elbowing out the Ascot QE11 meeting and a month before the original Breeders Cup ?

4. Flat racing is big business and whilst the rewards for retiring are greater than those for keeping in training then thats the way it is. AP makes the valid point with regard to stayers being popular among the flat horses as they are unconventional with regard to breeding purposes.

5. Big races on a Sunday I don’t have a problem with.

6. Entrance fees are too high I would agree but as has been mentioned on other threads it doesn’t stop the likes of Chester packing them in.

7. I’m with Equitrack on this one , nonsense. I thought the author was advocating less trash racing yet here he is encouraging a format that will attract the lower class of horse as I can’t see many group performers being risked twice in a day.

8. Ask yourself why jumpers sell themselves ? See point 4.

9. Would we need more meetings on Derby day to fill the gaps ? An FA Cup final has action for at leat 90 minutes. The Derby has action for nearly two minutes. If you had three meetings with 18 races over 12f you would still only have 36 minutes of action over a near three hour period. The reason other sports can move their fixtures about is because they have a period of sustained action to accommodate this. Two football matches back to back offer 3 hours of entertainment with just a 15 minute break in each game. Two race meetings back to back offer 5 or 6 hours of break with 2 minute interludes of action every 30 minutes. Just having the Derby meeting would give you about 10 minutes of action over a two and a half hour period. That isn’t Twenty Twenty, it isn’t even Test Match, its an opportunity for someone to go and do something else, like playing on the FOBTs. Isolating the Derby meeting might be preferable for those who already have a love of the sport but as for attracting a new audience I thinks it’s suicide.

10. A handicappers championship ? It might have legs. Would it offer championship races for different grades of handicapper or would it leave out the "trash" grades ?

I think the biggest mistake at the moment is that people are trying to compare racing with other higher profile sports. It can’t compete with them at their level it just doesn’t have the continuous action that most other sports have. Football, rugby, cricket, motor sport, golf, even snooker, tennis, darts and bowls go along at their various paces but over a lengthier period of time. Racing is different and should be marketed as such. It is a sport that revolves around betting. It is also a sport that is reluctant to give up information. There seems to be any amount of information with regards to football freely available on the net. Players fitness, number of corners,fouls,red cards,yellow cards,time of goals,substitute effectiveness, just about anything you want. Racing on the other hand seems just to want to give up enough albeit what is does give up to the uninitiated is somewhat complicated such as distance,ground,pedigree,trainer,jockey,course etc etc. Sectional timing is continually on the backburner, you sometimes don’t know the actual distance of the race until its over, in fact sometimes not at all and one thing which could help the racegoer ascertain a horse’s fitness, its weight, is deemed too expensive to implement much to the satisfaction of most trainers it seems. You could argue the owners pay the bills and surely they are entitled to know information you are not and that is a fair comment but it’s hardly the way forward to attract new racegoers to the sport. I’ve made the point on a previous thread but I’m going to make it again. Target specific outlets such as Pubs, clubs, even restaurants maybe offering complete packages at a reasonable rate or encourage Pubs/Restaurants to put on a complete package , ie Go racing and a meal at your local pub/restaurant for £30 say with the course offering half price admission to trips from the pub. Collaborate with other local sporting/leisure offerings, eg visit leicester races 5 times and get to watch a Leicester City match for free, or vice versa watch leicester 5 times and get access to a race meeting free. Instead of continually trying to compete against more popular activities try and use them to your advantage. Get the individual in through the gate once and hey you might have a convert, you might not but at least you’ve tried.

[graysonscolumn]

The trouble with jockeys as personalities is that they are too inconspicuous. It’s the human participants in most sports that make the sports popular. Maybe it’s time to think about popularising our jockeys more (rather than vilifying them)?

…

I wouldn’t wait for tv and the press to do something. I would buy advertising space to get jockeys in the public eye. I would get the tabloids to do features on the new personalities. I know it’s appealing to the lowest common denominator but try and find some good looking jockeys and do photoshoots designed to make racing look a bit more sexy.

Agree to a great extent with the telly comment. If you take the most recognisable faces of racing, such as Willie Carson, Frankie Dettori, Clare Balding and John McCririck out of the equation temporarily, how many telly appearances from other racing people in a non-sporting capacity can you remember there having been in recent times?

I was racking my brains over that this morning and could only come up with this fairly limited (and slightly bizarre) shortlist;

– Richard Dunwoody on

Strictly

(now),

– Mattie Batchelor guesting on Dale Winton’s

Hole in the Wall

gameshow (last year),

– one episode of

The Weakest Link

which featured some / mostly racing types, and was eventually won by trainer Clarissa Caroe (early 2000s),

– Derek Thompson getting a Gotcha! on

Noel’s House Party

(mid-90s),

– John Penney and one other (possibly Graham Goode) guesting as timekeepers on one episode of kids’ music / quiz show

Razzmatazz

(1984-ish),

– Bob Champion falling foul of the "Take A Chance" gungetanks (along with Olympic three-day eventer Tiny Clapham) in the last series of

Crackerjack

(1984).

There have almost certainly been more than these over the last 25 years, but possibly not many. Evidence enough, perhaps, that decades’ worth of racing waiting for the world of mainstream telly to come to it to up the exposure of its protagonists isn’t really working.

Jeremy
(graysonscolumn)

Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.

[Tuffers]

Veeeery nice.
Can’t see bra and panties doing much for Aiden Coleman though.

I’m not sure we’ve quite got the same quality of material to work with, admittedly.

This is the best the UK girls could manage:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ne … e74768.ece

Either they are trying (and failing) to look sultry or their hearts just weren’t in it.

[Drone]

Other than 4f sprints, little original thought from Mr Townend as it’s all been more-or-less postulated and debated here on TRF at one time or another; and rather more interesting the debates were.

The distinction between research and plagiarism is grey, so a big well done! for forwarding the ideas of the assembled brains on here to a wider audience.

[bettingboy]

All they have to do is make it easier to win.

[Maxilon 5]

Good post Drone, btw. I echo your comments and earlier comments I made on the quality of British racing journalism.

Here’s a bit of Saturday morning innovation for you all.

On Wednesday June 6th 2012. lets all get together.

Let’s have a day off. A bank holiday, a celebration day. Not because of the outcome of some ancient struggle for the working man, but because we’re having a horse race.

Let’s all go to the races to see the the greatest race in the world – the seedcorn race, the primary influence for the classic race infrastructure everywhere else in the world.

Let’s have a day off to see The Derby.
Not the Epsom Derby, but

The

Derby.

Admit we were wrong to move a national institution and say sorry; (I’m a forgiving character). As penance, make the culprits lobby every single MP in the country to move the End of May Bank Holiday seven days forward to the first Wednesday in June and call it

The Derby Day Bank Holiday

.

For those outside London, open as many racecourses as feasibly possible and charge a fiver to get in (for core costs). Supply cheap beer and a big barbecue. Champagne for the toffs and Pimms for the ladies. Make it a Ladies Day and stick a band on after the meet. Use actors to re-stage the coin toss between Derby and Bunbury to add historical context.

Encourage every trainer in the land to prepare a horse for the Derby Day events. If they can do it for the Shergar Cup, they can do it for this. Even confirmed cold weather twighoppers like Paul Nicholls and Henry Daly would supply a summer jumps horse, I’m sure.

Market the day a year in advance and promote it unmercifully with regional newspaper ads, TV slots and the use of paid ambassadors on chatshows like Allen Carr and The One Show – James Nesbit and Jeremy Kyle for example – racing nutcases both. Link with Camelot and market Cav’s brilliant scratchcard idea to provide a simple betting medium for the complete novice and the party animals. Split the proceeds fifty fifty.

Let’s push the boat out and establish a Jungian connection, a holding hands round the Wicker Man moment, a Great British connected consciousness. A belated 1707 party. Football isn’t appropriate for obvious reasons, but we could do it for something neutral like a horse race.

People of all ages used to love the Derby as much as the National. Yes they did, Twigmen. Let’s make them fall in love again and remember, in my experience, people in this country will do virtually

anything

for a day off and a party.

Subtitle: The Day The Country Goes Racing.

And at 4.20, we gather in front of the big screens in celebration of the thoroughbred racehorse. And feel the joy.

[clivexx]

Whilst most of the suggestions are laudable they will make very little difference

Punters are turing their backs on flat racing because it has a poor image. they could live with this whilst it was the only game in town but now it isnt. Whether it is fair or not, it is seen as a sport that treats the public with a bit of snobbish contempt and is riddled with jockeys who are either bent or/and think its ever so clever to hang around with two bob gangsters

Perception is everything… and this weeks events will not help matters will they?

But on the positive side, the music nights will at least get punters through the door and there is every chance that some will become more curious about the sport. However, it is entirely wrong for Newbury to attach that onto a card of some quality

The other (intractable) difficulty racing has attarcting a new audience is its very complexity. its probably true that the daily avalanch of cards doesnt help, but the whole business of handicpapping, form ratings and so on, is not easy for many to get a grasp of in these time poor days. No answer to that one

Lastly forget making Jockeyeys into personalities. They are horrible little dwarfs. leave it at atht

[Author]

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