Yesterday was give racing a wide berth day. Those dipping in and out of the ITV coverage did not need to loiter on the channel for too long to confirm that the whole hullabaloo that is the Shergar Cup is a nonsense created by marketing men in collaboration with broadcasters and the modernisation nuisances.
What would someone belonging to the large majority who are indifferent to the sport make of the Rishi Pershad interview with Corey Brown (pictured) where the jockey was asked how the Shergar Cup compares with the great days around the racing world? The rider was composed and polite and played along with the gist intended.
Your indifferent viewer could have been left with the belief that this gimmicky race day can be put aside the grand showcase occasions such as the Cheltenham Festival, Grand National day and Epsom Derby day. At least Fran Berry half gave the game away during his interview when mentioning it was a 'once a year novelty'. And with all due respect to the Swedish rider Per-Anders Graberg, from what he normally experiences it probably was a fairly big occasion for him.
Racing fans with a feel for the sport, a love of its customs and traditions, plus a belief that a programme where change is, well at least up to recent times, done after much consideration which leaves a big race programme similar to that of fifty, seventy-five and even one hundred years ago, is a strength and something to boast of; these fans will cringe at the thought of the Shergar Cup and its stupid team concept.
Come to think of it, is the Shergar Cup complicating or simplifying the sport? It would be interesting to know how those that support the competition view it. For most who applaud these dreadful new innovations are modernists who also believe in binning in-house speak for a language understood by all.
Problem is the absurdity that is the Shergar Cup actually complicates matters. Once they get their heads around the scoring and familiarise themselves with the teams, the soul's who endear themselves to it, and God forbid there isn't many of them, will then have to re-adjust and learn about the sport in its normal format which those who invented the competition considered was not dynamic enough to pull them in in the first place. I heard it mentioned that ' the girls took 22 pts from the first race', but had no wish to get to grips with the points distribution, so foreign it is to what makes the sport pleasurable.
During Glorious Goodwood ITV Racing did a piece on Charles Gordon-Lennox, who is the present Duke of Richmond, involving Ed Chamberlain visiting him at Goodwood House and asking for his thoughts on racing matters. Gordon-Lennox though ITV were providing an excellent service for the sport and he was happy, that like him, Chamberlain and the broadcasters supported a dumbing down of how the sport is presented to keep tabs on the other sports.
Truth is this, Gordon-Lennox may be business savvy and know how to utilise his estate and how to project the image of Goodwood racecourse whereby it pulls in fresh investment and corporate sponsorship, but it is an unchallengeable, agreed fact, that racing cannot fully function without its central lifeblood of money from punters. He will be clueless on how to attract a new generation of punters to the sport.
What is curious about this wish of many that the sport should be made less complicated to keep up with other sports is that all of the other major sports have been broadcasted with an extra, intricate depth, and have thrived as result.
For example, in the 1970's, 1980's, and the 1990's too, did you ever hear kids when talking about football mentioning ' assists '? You knew of the partnerships where a goalscorer would have a regular supplier who would be credited for his role, but no figures were available. Similarly, did you ever hear Grand Prix fanatics discussing 'third sector lap times' which they do so now to the hundredth of the second?
Today's all angle miss nothing coverage owes some gratitude to Kerry Packers World Series initiative. Controversial at the time, we saw the introduction of gizmos we now take for granted. Screen graphics that were way ahead of their time for the era, floodlights, intrusive microphones.
Remember, this was a time when you'd watch a John Player Sunday League match and the camera would only be situated at one end, so you'd watch an over with the batsman's back to the screen and the bowler delivering towards the screen, then vice verse for the following over.
Like Cricket, Tennis is awash with Gizmo's measuring speeds and pinpointing exactly where a ball has landed. Every possible worthwhile stat is collated as a match progresses. And Grand Prix racing, from those days when during routine pit stops the crew appeared to be giving the car a lengthy MOT, to the present where a split second lost could cost a position or even the race.
In contrast, we have those watchable laid back parts where Ted Kravitz will wander through the Village past the team vans and walk over and randomly chat to any 'face' that he spots. Matt Chapman has done this on ATR, marching around the paddock pre-race. One of the few new ideas that come across OK.
The jockey cams have been an excellent innovation over the past few years, offering an insight which we could previously only imagine. Far more useful than that period during the final years of BBC's coverage of racing when they had the likes of Peter Scudamore or Norman Williamson tracking the field in the back of a car and giving a brief, mumbly jumbly report as how the race was developing. They were funny those.
The modernists realise that the other major sports have moved on and thrived. But it certainly has nothing to do with the false belief that they have dumbed down, quite the opposite in fact. Indeed, the appeal of racing would be enriched by the sport treading the same path.
Why not a workshop on how to compile speed figures and the pitfalls of assessing the going allowance. Or handicapping in general. Or a stallion statistics focus. These things will make the viewers realise that there is a fascinating depth to the sport. Regrettably, the focus is shifting in the wrong direction and partially because of this, the sports share of the betting pie is continuing to dwindle.
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