why our sport is one-of-a-kind.

​I suspect the ways people become interested or fascinated with horse racing are as many as the differing aspects of the sport itself. I was plonked down in front of a black and white television one Saturday in April while my parents went up the road to buy me a birthday present. I have no recollection of what that present turned-out to be but the opening sequence of B.B.C.’s Grandstand, with the four barrels of the camera showing four images of a library shot of a race from Ascot, burns bright in my memory some sixty-years later.
What caught the imagination of an introverted city boy, someone with no experience of horses, with no close relative ever being involved with horses or horse racing, is not easy to fathom. It was a black and white television, so I cannot say it was the vibrant colours. I also had no appreciation of the intricacies and nuance of the sport. On that particular Saturday, I had no knowledge of the jockeys, the horses or even Peter O’Sullevan, who I am sure was the B.B.C.’s commentator. I cannot remember a single name from that day, horse or jockey, yet it was an unplanned event that changed the course of my life. Of course, as the only horse-racing lover in my village, so to speak, it did put me down as some kind of odd-ball or Energumene. Yes, this sport also teaches people foreign languages.
In those days, days of school and beyond, the two divisions of the sport were of equal fascination to me and my party piece, if you like, was naming the previous fifty Epsom Derby and Grand National winners. I could recite them in order yet, as now and all my life, if you asked me if I could name the winner in 1938 or 1957, I would struggle. These days I have to think pretty hard to name the winner two-years-ago.
What marks out horse racing from all other sports, I believe, even from other equestrian sports, is all the varying aspects of the sport that all come together to make one diverse and nuanced entertainment.
How large a boardroom table would you need to accommodate a single representative of every aspect of the sport? A flat jockey, a jumps jockey, a point-to-point rider, a trainer, flat and jumps, an owner, jumps, flat and point-to-point, a groom, a blacksmith, a vet, a bookmaker, boards, betting shop, on-line, spread-betting, punter, small-time betting shop devotee and professional gambler, clerk of the course, groundsman, starter, racecourse commentator, television presenter and pundit, breeder, small time and commercial, flat and jumps, journalist, and the list goes on.
Anyone can come to this sport through breeding, betting, hunting/point-to-pointing, from living in close proximity to a racecourse or stables, through a works or celebratory event at a racecourse either on a race-day or non-race-day. I came to the sport through the medium of television, and aren’t we fortunate that for over sixty-years we have had the sort of publicity many other sports can only dream about?
Someone can bet on our sport or not. To some it is a form medium, with hours spent with their nose in the form pages of the Racing Post, whilst others rely on instinct and what the eye and experience can tell them. This a sport when the ‘expert’ can lose heavily, while someone with no knowledge of the sport, who has never visited a racecourse before, can win quite big with only a token gamble. I’ve been there, someone betting a fiver on the nose on a 100/1 shot on the basis of its ‘nice name’, ‘my dad’s middle name was Henry’ or ‘he looked at me. I have to bet on him’. We advise against backing a no-hoper, a horse with an alphabet before its name in the race-card. We are affronted that our better understanding of the sport will be ignored. Yet … But that’s the beautiful uncertainty of the sport, isn’t it? Very few of us backed Mon Mome or Norton’s Coin, yet do we regret their winning? A moment, in retrospect, to cherish, moments that will live long in the memory.
I wish I could have the confidence that the people who run the sport were aware that horse racing is all-encompassing, that we are not a sport of the elite but a working-class sport merely underpinned by the fabulously and just ordinarily wealthy. They, the B.H.A. and the racecourses, seem dead-set on the foolish policy of stabilising the sport’s decline by building from the top of the pyramid, rather setting in place firm and long-lasting foundations, doubling or trebling prize-money levels at the basement, rather than doubling or trebling prize-money at the sport’s summit. An Epsom Derby worth £½-million would attract the same horses as an Epsom Derby worth twice or three-times that amount.
There seems a multitude of ways to improve the sport’s finances yet no one is moved to set anyone of them in motion, whilst all the while ignoring the most difficult concept, though the one that would draw-in the greatest reward.
Although there is somewhat a lack of ethnicity when it comes to spectators and the participants at the coal-face of the sport, jockeys and trainers, for instance, the openings are there and the sport is trying to open doors for the Asian community or indeed people from any walk of life. And gender equality is, perhaps at last, thriving, with females to fore in every aspect of the sport.
I do worry that after my life on this Earth whether there is a future for the sport, whether there will be another Bristol eight-year-old who will be enchanted by the thrill and spectacle of the sport through the rabbit-hole wonder of television. I fear that the sport’s long-term future will be what it was in its infancy – wealthy men, though with women alongside them, betting on whose horse is faster over an unrailed distance of ground on a heath somewhere.