Not to denigrate the dangers, injuries and deaths that have taken their toll on jockeys down the years, but trying a ludicrous team concept in horse racing in the belief that randomly put together racing teams can create the same awe of that inspired in Grand Prix racing is doomed to fail.
Seb Vettel may look a cool dude in one of those tried across most sports, folding the arms lark, but it doesn't create the same affect when it's Luke Morris doing the deed. Similar when in mid race when they might zone in on the two Ferrari's of Berger and Alboreto. Somehow, noting where Team eToro Racing's runners are after two furlongs does not work so unsuited is racing for this concept.
It made uncomfortable viewing. So called 'Team Managers' and trainers grouped together, wearing baseball caps - it could indeed have been a garage scene from a Grand Prix, or on the touch line in American Football. And all the time the proceedings being hyped up by the presenters.
Let's get this straight. It will not work long term. In fact it will be a total failure, gradually petering out. At first there will be some tampering, then the ratmatazz will go down a notch, and finally the whole show will disappear. No doubt at some cost too with plenty of no marks receiving large remunerations with the forces behind its creation getting away scot free. No one will be standing up and claiming responsibility. That's a certainty.
Anyone pointing to the longevity of the pretty awful Shergar Cup then using that to further an assertion that this latest gimmick will establish itself is forgetting that the Ascot competition was partly copied from those international jockey's events that began in the 1970's - we tolerated them back then as it was a chance to see the the likes of Cordero, McCarron, the mighty Shoemaker and the already acclimitising Cauthen in a different environment.
Bill Shoemaker mesmerised viewers with one or two of his rides, shushing those who had scoffed at him after the 1978 Derby when he allowed Hawaiian Sound to drift away from the rail down the camber, letting Starkey come through on the rails on Shirley Heights to steal the race.
Still, it was a one off. And the later installed Shergar Cup, if anything, gives genuine racing fans the chance to spend a Saturday resting the mind and putting all thoughts of the sport out of their minds.
This team league event is something much more deeply structured and laughably takes itself seriously, something that the aforementioned event cannot be accused of. Those with their fingers in the promotion pie and who are earning money from voicing pretend positives will be hoping it thrives and survives, an outcome that thankfully there is little chance of happening.
I lasted for two races then took to my box sets in watching two episodes of the The Protectors, with the likes of Ralph Bates, Angela Douglas and Joanne Lumley making appearances. Then I viewed one of my favourite episodes of The Persuaders. The one with Joan Collins in. Was meant to be Rome but was filmed in Nice. Collins commented later that Moore and Curtis nearly came to blows several times during filming - the perpetrator mostly the rough and ready, short fused Curtis, in contrast to Moore, the self controlled,suave son of a high ranking military man.
What's this got to do with racing? Nothing at all directly but it's much more preferable to the embarrassment that was being staged at Newcastle. If racing is going to go down this route, a carefully selected bottle of red allied to viewing 1970's box sets will be a happy replacement.
What makes it all the more galling is that this week has been forty five years to the exact week that we had that most enjoyable Glorious Goodwood during that long, seemingly never ending drought of 1976. It was staged on ground described mainly as ' Good to Firm', thus watering must have been permitted - something that the climate change obsessed society would never have permitted to happen now, though back in that time there was generally more concern about the possibility of an ice age backed up by certain scientists. If such an intense drought had happened now, it's unlikely we'd be racing on turf at the moment.
That 1976 Glorius Goodwood was Noel Murless's last as a trainer and he took the Richmond Stakes with his final truly top class animal J O Tobin, who at the end of the season was transferred Stateside by his American owner where he was campaigned with great success in a golden period for the sport over there.
Another memory of that meeting is when J O Tobin's Goodwood partner Piggott was aboard the almost white General Ironside in the Gordon Stakes, finishing third in an exciting finish behind Smuggler and Oats. We were told at the time how Henry Cecil thought General Ironside would progress into a genuinely top class stayer. He never quite made it. Had plenty of representatives in his second career as a jumping stallion too where he admittedly proved himself a fairish sire.
Other lasting memories of that meeting being Wollow in the Sussex, the admirable Peter Robinson trained stayer Mr Bigmore claiming the Goodwood Cup and the stayer's handicap won by Sea Anchor in the Dick Hollingsworth colours.
That was also the very week that the incredulous Lasse Viren came back to form at the Montreal Olympics and repeated his Munich feat of winning firstly the 10,000 meters, then the 5,000 metres a few days later. One can't help but think that apart from the golfers and that dodgy weightlifter, there will be little to remember from this present disaster of an Olympics.
Of Goodwood this week - well in the modern European racing world where the jam is in fewer jars than ever before there was a reasonably pleasing spread of results. With the Sussex Stakes we had a likeable if below par winner for the race in Alcohol Free, the same applying to the Goodwood Cup winner, but all taking an interest could not have failed to be wowed by Baeed, who is looking the real deal and there is nothing like a new star who promises to top the ranks emerging from nowhere in the middle of the season.
But even without rose tinted spectacles, it's clear the sport was in a better place during that drought year than it is now. Even with the inflation, whispers of threats of communism on the horizon, with an exodus of potential investors, the future of the sport was not under the same level of threat as it is now. It sold itself in traditional form and Gimmicks were not required.
image Deviant Art
From an album released late in 1972, would have been in thousands of households as Glorious Goodwood 1976 was being staged. Maturing racing fans may find this album amongst their parents vinyl collection.
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