LESS POPULAR THAN ARCHERY

Search across the sporting landscape and you will not be able to find a sport to match horse racing where such a high percentage of those who make up the live, attending audience are, by their own choosing, so distanced from the sport by are supposedly fans of.

We are often reminded that racing is the second most popular sport in the UK; a misleading claim based solely on attendance figures.

For the large summer weekend and evening crowds that shape these figures, come from the 'cult' courses that are filled by work, pub and family parties. They travel to the course in large groups, and many get dragged along, Chester, Haydock, or York, it matters not where they are going.

 It is clearly ludicrous to cite these souls as racing fans and to use their willingness to go along with the flow as a measure of racing's popularity. A more accurate gauge would be a survey asking people  if given the choice, which sport they would like to attend.

The sports that racing competes with are not ones where you just get dragged along to. Some will say that T20 cricket is a booze and chant fest while at the same time forgetting that the attendees have no option but to watch proceedings develop, during which they are invariably captured by the excitement as a match builds to its climax.

Contrast this to a work party at a Chester summer weekend meeting. They are just happy to congregate in the sun, eat and drink, bet if they wish but have the option of a good get together while ignoring the racing if they so choose.

With football and rugby; all come along to get behind their team and feel part of what is happening on the pitch. Golf, tennis, boxing and Grand Prix racing are very much for true fans to attend bar the smattering of VIP, or names and faces, such as when Liz Hurley was interviewed walking around the grid prior to a Monaco GP one year and revealed that she was looking forward to the 'take off '.

The T20-20 cricket comments could apply to the darts while I would guess that you would have to be a true fan of snooker to turn up and watch it live.

Thus, it follows that if choosing which sports they would wish to attend in order of preference, then racing would be some way down the list. If it was one particular sporting event, then only Royal Ascot, Cheltenham and Aintree would reach a certain level on the list, and only then as an occasion to mark off on the bucket list.

Another gauge of horse racing's true popularity, is to examine how much coverage it receives on Wikipedia. This is more a significant aspect than most will give it credit for. The Wiki community is an unselfish one where true enthusiasts of their favourite subject will assist its profile without wishing to have their name in lights.

Admittedly, there are always going to be clowns who will attempt to insert information that ranges from misleading to downright false, some of which has caught out slothful journalists too lazy to do their own research, but the self policing community works effectively and racing is not popular enough for these jesters to get involved.

It's interesting that on Wiki flat racing receives more coverage - even in the UK alone. There is not that many omissions of the good horses on the level over the past fifty years.

By contrast it is surprising the number of high class jumping horses missing. I got myself involved around eighteen months ago penning pages on some of the top class chasers and hurdlers from the 1970's and 1980's. It's an enjoyable exercises and in  the spirit of Wiki there is no room to take subjective stance. It must be factual and supported by documented evidence.

In the spirit of the community additions to pages are encouraged, but those that contribute to the horse racing pages do not rearrange your piece for the sake of it. But the work is not your own, it stands inviting to be developed. Happily, the racing enthusiasts in the community will add only if necessary, it's not a competition. We are all just pseudonyms who have no wish to have our names known but at the same time cannot be fail to be delighted at the number of hits the pages receive.

Try searching for a reasonably well known racehorse and the Wiki entry will be high up in the search engine result.

For sources, you invariably use a mixture of Timeform Annuals, Raceform Annuals, the now discontinued Raceform/ Chaseform Note Books, and other material - Pacemaker magazines from the 1970's and 1980's are gems. You will not find any from this period reproduced on the internet. The web is however useful for finding obituaries of those linked to the subject horse that you are writing about.

Once you get using the templates and learn how to link without over linking, you are away. My first contribution was the page on Silver Buck, my most recent Midnight Court. No one has vandalised my contributions yet. The only additional add on to a write up was someone quite correctly adding See You Then' s brief comeback from retirement.

Only those who do or have at some time in the past been smitten with a particular sport would wish to contribute to Wiki which is why it is humbling to see how far down the sport is on the number of Wiki  contributions - in fact it does not get into the top twenty five.

Football tops the list from Basketball, followed by American football,then cricket. Maybe, you could claim that the list is skewed with the population of the USA giving basketball and their main form of football such prominence, with the mega population of India giving cricket such a lofty position. However, there is no explanation to account for the likes of archery, lacrosse, badminton, volleyball, softball, handball, netball and field hockey making the list, unless these are all popular in China.

With the exception of the lamentable state of the two mile hurdling division we've come of the back of a pleasing 2018/19 jumping season. Maybe, we'll be similarly enticed by the fare on the level throughout the summer. But however the flat season unfolds, no benefit comes from putting the sport up on a higher pedestal than it deserves to stand on and the attendance figures alone, do not tell half the story.

In true popularity, horse racing per se is a sport some way down the list and some of the proposed dart throwing innovations that may be brought about in the immediate future will not reverse this fact. It would be a shame to spoil the fabric of what is already there.