I was once at a racing dinner in York where a distinguished clergyman in attendance was invited to say grace. ‘I won’t, if you don’t mind,’ he told our hosts. ‘I would rather not draw the Almighty’s attention to my presence here.’ There is a slight whiff of rascality about the racing scene which deters some from participation, although even that can have its plus side. When one trainer friend found himself, through no fault of his own, involved in a scandal story, I asked him if it was affecting the number of owners sending him horses. If anything, he told me, it was putting his numbers up. ‘Some people want to demonstrate their faith in my integrity. Others rather hope that there is something a bit dodgy about me.’
What got me thinking about racing’s image was a depressing report revealing that the numbers going racing have declined for the fourth year in a row with the average attendance per meeting dropping from 4,256 to 3,898. Of course those meetings include wet Tuesdays at all-weather tracks which make little pretence of being crowd-pleasing events but are staged merely to keep the betting-shop tills ticking over. But with politicians increasingly sensing a PR benefit in bashing the gambling industry on which racing depends, and the more extreme animal-welfare activists winning ever more media attention, racing is under threat.
The threats can be seen off not least because racing remains the most instantly sociable sport of all. Your companion or client doesn’t have to keep quiet for 90 minutes while a game is played: instead it is ‘How did yours do in the last? What do you fancy for the next?’ Racing is about physical prowess, speed and spectacle.
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