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The American style bugle blowing at York was dreadful & very tacky. What a shame York was always one of the best courses. It was so English & charming why try & make it like Kentucky, keep the naff bugle blowing in the USA.
Is this something we are going to hear more? Is it advocated by Racing for Change, like the huge yellow American style number cloths?It’s a great feature in the States, where it is done properly. First, they use a live player in hunting pink, not a blasted loudspeaker. Second, the call is made as the horses go out onto the track, as a warning to bystanders that they need to watch their backs. Using it the moment they begin to enter the stalls demotes the call to the status it has in computerised virtual racing.
As Messrs. Luck and Cunningham pointed out repeatedly, this intrusive racket was a cheap and tacky imitation of somebody else’s perfectly good tradition. No sense, no taste – and no imagination.
Another ‘faceless’ bookmaker sponsored (desecrated?) card at York today
Take and agree with your points about the blanket and derivative ‘Sky’ advertsing at this meeting, but it is at least one that hasn’t been desecrated – in a historical sense – as this two-dayer has no history having been introduced in 2005, and due to the tremendous success (allegedly) of the inaugural post-racing concert (Queen tribute band) has been marketed as York’s music-weekend-with-racing-tagged-on ever since.
The York Stakes sounds as though it dates from Dick Turpin’s day, but that too is a newish race
27,000 attended the Madness concert after racing on Friday, most of whom were there for the races. Chicken or egg? Dunno
A record 42,000 there on Saturday which would seem enough to silence the likes of me who thought the introduction of this meeting in opposition to the KG meeting at Ascot was daft
What the overworked form student and betting shop habituee make of the two ‘ascots’ racing on the same day is another matter. Mind you they’ve gone head-to-head on an October Saturday for eons
Think that American racing should quickly copyright their tradition, it isn’t part of ours & I don’t know what York is playing at.
I believe whats happening at the moment within racing is a series of decisions made at times in desperation.
Really whats needed is some planned and deliberate thought into whats right about the sport and whats wrong and then seizing the chances to promote the good and either improve, reduce or destroy the bad.
Opportunities are being missed (as highlighted by others a good example being lack of coverage of Harbinger v WorkForce in main press) and in my opinion focus within RFC and other organisations is on the wrong areas or at best a scattered approach trying anything to dig themselves out.
Any good business works on the basis money will come if you get the basics right. Racing is at the moment trying anything to stay afloat it seems when in my opinion if they focused on the good and really built upon and used that as their foundation the sport would really flourish.
You are right about this & the horses are what will engage the public. When I was growing up in the 1970s Nijinsky, Mill Reef & Brigadier Gerard were household names, regularly making headlines in the broadsheets & red tops (did we have tabloids then?. Nijinsky’s image was used in car advertising campaigns & there was a prime time TV documentary about Mill Reef.
Somehow RFC must engage the average person & this is not through bugle blowing & American influenced stuff, it just doesn’t fit into our culture. We should celebrate our history of racing. After all we invented it & developed the thoroughbred not the Yanks. They should play on this & keep the races named after historical figures etc. A TV series about racing might help.
We have had some outstanding horses in the last 10 years: Sea the Stars, Kauto Star, Denman etc. Why do my work colleagues only know Red Rum & Shergar?
Making racing more tacky & having tribute & washed up bands will not help in the long term. Remember Show Jumping? That was really popular but it became commercial & tacky & vanished from our screens & awareness.
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