HAVING A REALISTIC PERSPECTIVE

The BBC now have a curious but distant relationship with horse racing. They completely washed their hands of it, look for the negatives first when reporting stories related to the sport on its websites, but curiously are happy to give it a reasonable spot of publicity on SPOTY.

Maybe this was helped last year by the fact that the award winner from the sport was a lady, which would have ticked the corporations diversity boxes. Whatever, come this December last weekend will be relived on the established awards show, not for a horse race that took place, but for the achievements of an Englishman in Kitzbuhel.

The first thoughts that come to mind when this famous skiing location is mentioned, concern a singer by the name of Hansi Hinterseer ( in picture) who is Kitzbuhel through and through and even represented the Austrian national team at the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck. 

Every time you turn on the telly in that country, Hansi is never far away and must be the most recognisable character in the nation, never seeming to age, his flowing long hair defying nature, while having some famous buds, such as Franz Beckenbauer, plus a nephew, Lukas Hinterseer, who has played first team football for Hamburg and is now with Hannover.

But now, this picturesque location will be linked first and foremost with Dave Ryding, who in winning the Kitzbuhel Slalom became the first ever British winner of a skiing event at World Cup level. From someone who learnt his trade on dry slopes, this is a story that will run and run and will rightly put a certain horse race from last weekend in its place.

That's not to say that the Clarence House wasn't a cracker, but to talk it up as though it was the race of all time would be daft -  for specialist two miles the Moscow Flyer v Well Chief v Azertyuiop  renewal of the Tingle Creek will go down in history as the superior. And for proper duels in the two mile chasing ranks, well, you'll never see a more stimulating one than the Bobsline v Noddy's Ryde clash in the 1984 Arkle, the rematch we sadly never got to see for the Greystoke animal was fatally injured at Exeter that Autumn.

Still, the race at least lived up to its billing with both of the lead players bringing their top game to the table - something that often fails to happen, and the rematch in the Champion Chase is already and rightly being plugged as the feature of this year's Festival. And this time they will battle for the most coveted prize in two mile steeplechasing, arguably the most exciting division of National Hunt racing.

It's something that can be looked forward too without needing to place it outside of its context by pretending that there is some national importance attached to it, which in the case of the achievements of Dave Ryding, there very much is.

It really is a futile exercise to pretend that horse racing is thriving and holding the same significance in the national psyche as it did forty, fifty, sixty years ago. How common it once was to have a photo of a horse or two adorn the walls of a public house. The Schweppes calendars were a common sight on the walls behind a bar. Wonderful items that began to go downhill when they changed from the posed portraits taken in the yard, jockey up with colours, to a calendar full of all action, over arty photographs.

The only race action photograph that consistently got in would be the Schweppes Hurdle itself, while both Night Nurse, Monksfield and Red Rum also had inclusions from races. You'd also get the odd home gallop image - both Wollow and The Minstrel were photographed in home gallops. But the overriding trend was to have the animals with race jockey in silks, taken in the yard.Most of the animals who made the calendar deserved their place though the company can be forgiven for including the Michael Stoute trained early season juvenile speedball Schweppeshire Lad in the late 1970's.

And though it may seem hard to believe now, there were collectible cigarette cards portraying top class horses and famous jockeys - most were absolutely delightful and though the status of the smoker and cigarettes have declined, you would be gobsmacked now if a bubbly gum maker, or cereal producer, introduced a series of collectables connected to horse racing - the footy cards are still very much as alive and as popular as ever but sadly the horse racing equivalents are something from the long past.

Wills, Players and Ogdens, brands from an age back but testimony to the respect and popularity of a sport when it was in the truly major category, when the jam was spread wider in both the National Hunt and Flat spheres with a higher number of trainers housing hopefuls for the top races, coming from numerically manageable strings.

The whole sport now has a colder, more mechanical feel to it and has seen its best days. In fact it has a most uncertain future in a society where some really weird notions can quickly become the mainstream norm. Magnifying its importance is unhelpful and serves no purpose. And as the whole show will soon be forced to downsize, probably best just best to make the most of what is left.

image by Robert K CC BY - SA 2.5

This was the opening track on a solid throughout album. Was also released on single and would of been prominent in the charts in Cheltenham week 1973, when Comedy of Errors won his first Champion Hurdle, and The Dikler took the Gold Cup.