racecourse attendances & to be savage or not to be.

​Ascot should be proud of their achievements last week. Yes, the weather played a strong hand in the near 5% rise in overall attendance, yet people do not decide on the day whether to attend Royal Ascot. Apparently, it can take a woman as long, if not longer, to plan their outfit as it took John Gosden to get his runners cherry ripe for the week. 
What I do not believe is that the sport should take a deep intake of breath and think all will be a bed of roses from now on in light of the increase in attendance at Royal Ascot, the most unique race-meeting in Europe, if not the world. In the same way as Aintree cannot be considered the equal of say Leicester or Hereford, the success of Royal Ascot is very unlikely to filter down to Redcar, Ripon or Salisbury, with those courses, for example, achieving a similar increase in attendance for every meeting from now until the close of play in late October.
Attendances at Epsom have sunk so low when compared to the good old days that it should be like picking low-hanging fruit for Jim Allen to boost attendance next season. The Cheltenham Festival, too, could easily see an upswing in attendance next season if they lowered the cost of entry and persuaded local hoteliers to stop ripping-off racegoers in need of a bed for the night.
The smaller racecourses that regularly achieve above average attendance and thus are the racecourses for other to learn from are Cartmel and Market Rasen, two country courses that outperform much larger metropolitan racecourses through simply knowing what their supporters expect of them. Newbury may not have directly learned the golden rule from either Cartmel or Market Rasen but it is now taking the same route to success by concentrating their publicity and marketing on the local population and then making race-days more than about the racing. What Ascot achieved last week was for people to enjoy the event even though perhaps a small majority did not watch a single race.
When horse racing first started, away from the match races at Newmarket, the racing was only one aspect of a local festival and that is where racecourses should be looking for an increase in attendances. Create a market place around the racing, have Punch and Judy stalls, ferret racing, a carnival, shopping malls for the members of the family not yet interested in horse racing, welcoming guides.
Royal Ascot is not the template for success for lesser racecourses but it is a good starting place for reinventing the horse racing brand.
Oh, and less race-meetings will ensure competitive racing as the real racing fan should not be overlooked. He or she is the foundation of the sport and we must build upon their shoulders, not take them for granted.

In the ‘Another View’ section of the Racing Post today, Denis Harney is critical of racing pundits for not being more savage in their appraisals of what they might consider blunders by jockeys. Of course, why wouldn’t he as everyone else feels a need to do so, he mentions the ride Kieran Shoemark gave Field of Gold in the 2,000 Guineas. No one mentions Mikhail Barzalona’s ride on Shadow of Light, hitting the front too early on a horse most people thought was a sprinter not a miler. He gets off scot-free while months down the line Shoemark is belittled for being beaten a nose, which suggests he delayed his run by one or two strides.
Jockeys, like you or me in our more sheltered lives, make mistakes from time to time. Do you not think Ryan Moore would like another go on Reaching High, a horse that finished out of the money yet still on the bridle? No, pundits should say it as they see it and racing does not need the equivalent of a Roy Keane. We should all remember that he was regularly sent-off during his days as a footballer and was far from many peoples’ favourite player. Jockeys, like all sports people, get enough abuse from the ignorant few on social media as it is, there is no need for professional journalists and t.v. presenters to weigh in, even if they are better informed. Ruby Walsh gets his punditry in the bulls eye, critical when required, though always with the insight of the true professional, and occasionally ending his thoughts with ‘well, that is my take on it’.