PROPAGANDA AND LIES ON BOTH SIDES

The close up comments returned by the Racing Post on Cliffs of Moher in Tuesday's Melbourne Cup read, ' ...went wrong and pulled up after three and a half furlongs.' And as testament to the trading on eggshell times we live in, the full race report on their site shone no light as to the fate of the former Epsom Derby runner-up.

As recently as twenty years ago the headline would have been similar to, ' Britain conquers the Melbourne Cup'  with the sub heading 'Cliffs of Moher suffers fatal injury'. Not dramatic, just truthful responsible reporting, all proportionate.

On the day after Desert Orchid famously rallied through the mud to regain the lead off Yahoo in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, the same paper mentioned in the second paragraph that Ten Plus had been killed.

When Charter Party won the Cheltenham race, the following day's  Sporting Life, in reference to Forgive 'N Forget losing his life in the race, carried the headline, ' Forgets death mars big race.'  And the Racing Post cited the tragedy in its very first paragraph.

And further back to the day after the emotive 1977 Cheltenham Gold Cup, the Sporting Chronicle (in picture) carried support headings of ' Lanzarote destroyed, Summerville looks winner, breaks down.'

The term 'destroyed' is now something that is absent from the form book. Not sure why as words like 'euthanised' seem to conjure up images of greedy, beady-eyed relatives encouraging a nurse to increase the morphine dosage past threshold levels to the wilting patient with treasures galore to leave in the will.

It was not until after it surfaced all over the national press and social media in Australia that the Ballydoyle colt had broken his shoulder and been 'euthanised' , that the Racing Post carried a piece by Tom Kerr with the distorted headline of, ' Tragic Melbourne Cup deaths threaten one of the world's great races'.

The content of the article does not support the extremity in the headline. The gist of the piece is that due to pressure from extreme animal liberation groups more deaths in the race threaten to divide rather than unite a nation, without pointing out that it would be a massively unequal divide.

Mind you, the anti racing lobby in Australia do appear to carry more clout than they do here. On the face of it they have shut down racing over obstacles in all states bar Victoria and South Australia, though in reality this sphere of racing was never particularly big there anyway despite the wider Antipodes area providing us with some excellent fodder for the winter game such as Crisp, Grand Canyon, Seagram, Navigation and Lord Gyllene.

There is an unrelenting campaign by the Australian RSPCA and other animal welfare support groups to close this branch of the sport down in those two states. The Animals Australia website carries a log of all the animals killed in action with some dramatic language used, such as ' Injured his leg during a race and was killed after finishing in last place'.

But to even accommodate the suggestion that flat racing could begin to be dismantled in such a racing mad nation in which the sport has a far bigger economic impact than it does here is nothing but ridiculous.

The advent of social media has made available a means by whereby anyone has the opportunity to dabble in propaganda, sometimes with great effect. Like a one man band performing in the street with his backpack, pedal keyboards and other weird looking attached gadgets, a single individual possessing enough knowledge on his subject allied to cunning craft, can allay the impression that his gripe is more important than it really is.

On one of the Australian websites the comments section contained a couple of observations that the ill- fated animal was sweating up and therefore distressed prior to the race. They asked why the horse was allowed to take his chance in the circumstances.

Thankfully there were an equal number of contributors better educated on the subject, who explained that the two issues were separate and that the sweating was not a precursor to the injury. 

Still, the initial reaction of the Racing Post was to deflect from the incident. The close up comment has still not been updated. The only conclusion one can draw is that they believe they can fool the scanning eyes of animal lib group members who go through the returns totting up the casualties.

It's all very silly in the light of the real welfare issue of wastage that these groups tend not to focus on with any amount of clarity. All they would need to do is gather data on the number of foals born, how many make it to the sales or/and into training, then ask themselves what the hell has happened to the missing numbers? They are unlikely to be galloping happily around green meadows.

It's actually an issue that disturbs many genuine racing fans which is why it is highly annoying  that the racing media, albeit one with significantly less influence than ever before, will pander to the concerns of those whose intention it is to neuter the sport on the basis of the perceived cruelties that occur on the track while at the same time colluding in hiding the real welfare issue.

Those under the illusion that the masses out there spend even a minute of their days musing over the safety of racehorses have lost contact with normal everyday society. Anyone who works among large numbers of people will know that as well as these people not being interested in racehorse well-being matters, they are not interested in horse racing per se.

There will be a small handful who still bet on horses along with their main betting on other sports. Most of these will not have any interest in the nitty gritty of it all. They'll have a jockey or trainer they will follow.

There will be more who pay a visit to one of the racecourses that pull in the cult crowds but who will not bet on horses at all away from the racecourse and indeed have no enthusiasm for the sport, rather the day out, getting dressed up, becoming inebriated, and the carrying on into the evening away from the racecourse.

You could market a day at the 'races' for these racegoers without having to stage any horse racing or carrying out any euthanising. Done correctly, the theme day at the races with no horse racing but instead hosting less complicated events has all the hallmarks of being a resounding success.

image from authors scrapbook