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So why overcomplicate something just because it has always been done that way and there is a simpler way of doing things?
I don’t see what’s complicated about it.
It is also aesthetically unpleasant. I like to see 16/1 etc.
Repeat, it will not attract new punters.
I was a year old so no thoughts either way. However, the way things are going in this country I’m beginning to think regularly of something Alan Bennett said in one of his documentaries: if it’s not necessary to change, it’s necessary *not* to change…
All this simplification won’t attract new punters. Only winning and pleasure will. Winning at the horses is currently too difficult. Bookies need to have loss leaders but they are too greedy to give anything away. Retail do it, breweries do it; bookies are too greedy to. For all the waffle in the Racing Post about jumps a lot of it is a bl*ody bore and a p*sspoor betting medium to boot.
Whether we like it or not, people these days like to get a hit out of something quickly. Racing doesn’t do that. What’s thrilling about standing in a betting shop/ring feeling like a mug? They’d rather stick fifty up their nose. It’s the way things have gone.Worst track in Britain.
Painful to watch and an utter bore.
The slow death of racing will continue apace while this is what’s on offer.Ladbrokes diaries this year have football on the front – sign of the times…
Lots of good and valid opinions here, thanks.
I remained strangely unmoved by Kauto Star at Kempton. Sorry but there it is. Why? I think in my final analysis that was because it was closer to showjumping than racing.
As far as jumps go, I prefer the second division meetings, where there is more *sport* and better value, and they have been wiped out by the weather mostly.DIDN’T NONE OF YOU HAVE BEETHOVEN?
DIDN’T NONE OF YOU HAVE CHAMPAGNE STYLE YESTERDAY?
To be honest, he has annoyed me in the past, but I’ve got this thing now where I only back him at juicy prices. I know this approach will annoy the anoraks but what the heck? Yesterday I was in a Ladbrokes and the two commentators were sure that only the two short priced horses could win. I looked at Champagne Style, third in the betting and 10s and I thought, okey cokey.
The shop was full of the usual idiots trying to buy money on short prices. God bless those men – they keep the money circulating for everyone else! I had a good Friday wager. Up gets Champagne Style. Much gnashing of teeth in the shop.
Ryan, I thought, all is forgiven.
Today a little each-way on Beethoven, my favourite composer and **** me old Ry’s had it off again. Favourite-backers given the fat lips they so deserve. Will they ever learn?
I’m a bad loser and Ryan will nause me off again, but at the moment he’s on the good list.
Another one is the Heroine of the Turf, Hayley Turner. I loved her riding Edith’s Boy at Brighton on Thursday, beaten a short head, but that’s racing. But she went off like a rocket! Small but perfectly formed.Credit where credit’s due: I thought the beeb’s Arc coverage was bloody good! Clare Balding a great presenter and even her carrying Carson was an amusing double act. I liked the fact that they all got carried away with it.
Fast forward to this morning. 8.30 sports news slot on BBC Breakfast. Interminable football reports upfront, then motor racing and then a 5 second bit about Sea The Stars. Then the reporter said: ‘that horse is worth 100 million quid now’ and the female presenter, rather priggishly, said ‘oh, it’s mad isn’t it?’ And I thought: love, when are you going to observe that the salaries of the morons, thugs and rapists of premier league football teams are ‘mad’?
It made my day. It was one of those rare moments when all the cliches of sports journalism – glorious, a one-off, a superstar etc – were real for once and happening before our very eyes. In a way, Sea the Stars should have been called Fame and Glory.
BB
Bobby ‘I’m down to earth, me’ Wharton wrote:
May I suggest ro BB that a more focused,speak as you find appraisal of BBC racing ironically more like the speak as you find appraisals of your woe is us view of who runs the BBC would have got us further in getting somewhere in discussing why racing is drifting off the channel.
You are John Prescott and I claim my five bob!
Bobbeh Wharton’s reply: ‘I think you will find that I am very sensible and have never suggestificated at any point that that when I suggestificated or implied that you might hold views that were opposite to liberal I wasn’t actually but actually I was but never admit anything and never apologise neither because as was laid out to me at Brownsop Labour Club many years ago by Len Blackhelmet you never admit wrong just keep going and never take lip off a southern jesseh speficatingly one who thinks he knows owt about horses dogs or pigeons for what it is worth am I am interested in lots of things like that and liberal politics but if you say black I will say white because I’m contrary see like that are you understandificating me?’
Pinza spluttered:
I’m scared: not by the BBC, but by the (true) fact that the Bettingboys of this world can be influenced by such rabble-rousing, poisonous tosh.
The BBC reporting its own report is ‘poisonous tosh’ is it?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6763205.stm
You must be careful of rhetoric, Pinza. Anyone can do the ‘LOOK AT ME, I’M A GENEROUS HEARTED LIBERAL AND YOU’RE JUST A NAZI’. Rik in The Young Ones did it every week. Facts are what counts. And the Dail Mail story was based on the FACT of the executive inquiry and its leaked report which the BBC ITSELF reported above. I repeat, is this poisonous tosh?
Without the FACT of the report there would have been no news story in the Mail, therefore it was perfectly acceptable to call the story a statement of fact.
Incidentally, knee-jerk refusal to believe stories in the tabloid newspapers is usually a sign of snobbery, not intellectual vigour.Bob Wharton, you’re not making any sense, just rambling and denying what you’ve suggested in previous posts. Life’s too short to bother with a serial contrarian like you.
BB
Your pseudo intellectual rant is just an opportunity for you to air your prejudices and biases which disturbingly IMO are probably polar opposite ones to the ones you accuse the BBC of.
There is nothing intellectual about it, pseudo or otherwise. It is a statement of fact:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-411846/We-biased-admit-stars-BBC-News.html
(Note what Andrew Marr, a Labour supporter and BBC stalwart, has to say)
You, on the other hand, decide to conclude I am a racist because I point out the BBC’s obvious and oft-stated preoccupation with progressive and left-wing ideas such as multiculturalism, positive discrimination. To do that makes you appear rather a pseud. As for the others, the BBC’s own management declared itself biased to the liberal left some time ago:
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?article_id=56228
Racing was never going to fare well under this ‘liberal cultural bias’; pointing this obvious fact out does not make me racist or pseudo-intellectual.
Sorry Bettingboy I know they’ve got problems but I’m not recognising these insurmountable ones…………are you sure you’re watching the same channel as me? You can’t mean this surely?
Dear Wharton,
put down your pigeon clock and make a study the people who RUN the BBC. Not the people who are ON it. The people who RUN it.
Then we can have a conversation.
BB
The BBC is dominated by young urban liberals and its senior management by older, Primrose Hill liberals who are products of 1970s Marxoid university educations and years of Guardian reading and dinner parties in Islington. Racing, to them, is the antithesis of all they purport to believe. They see it as something the Queen, her mother and aristos like. They also like to strike postures about animal rights and because they are ignorant they will see racing as being ‘cruel’ and ‘exploitative’.
Add to that the fact that, unlike in years gone by, no senior management has a personal interest in racing and lo and behold you have a slo-mo death for racing on the BBC.
They forget that the sport has a large following among all races and classes. Because the BBC is completely obsessed with multiculturalism racing is also – YAWN – far too ‘hideously white’ for them.
So, let’s tot it up: in their eyes it’s too white, too rich and cruel to animals.
Of course, this is a disastrously wrong view, but you won’t ever persuade Holland Park liberals out of that. They probably think, in a nannyish, new Labour way, that betting is a vice that needs to be stopped (while drug legalisation is always being endorsed through biased news reporting).
However, THERE IS A WAY TO STOP THE ROT FOR BBC RACING.
It is simple: find black, Asian, gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender jockeys (preferably female) who are loud about it and damn good riders and the BBC will be back broadcasting racing a couple of times a week. I’d make a wager on it.Odd that a man who has gone into business with a multi-millionaire to train Group 1 winners calls that an ‘expensive mistake’.
…oh I get it – you think I made up the Sea The Stars was drugged conversation. Nope, there really are punters this stupid in betting shops. That’s why the other two were losing their rag with him.
Odd thing is, when punters like that watch some Class 6 bollocks from Wolverhampton and a 33/1 shot wins all sweaty, they never suspect anything like that.
I’ll see thee.
