It's not been the best start to a summer for horse racing. There just seems to be a prevailing feeling of resignation that the sport is taking stock, that it simply just has to make the best of what it has left. Many long term racing fans are moving the food about on their plates, trying to conjure up an appetite.
Those timeline pictures of the Epsom Downs on Derby day made depressing visuals. Looking like melted polar ice caps.They would not have been unduly worrying if they had been taken with a fifty year gap, but this was a mere decade.
In the mid 1970's the event was still spoken of as the biggest sporting gathering in the world. Some observed then that the crowd on the Downs was not what it has been in decades past. That it had fallen from one million to half a million. Still mighty though and far from the scattered about pockets the pictures show now.
Back in the mid 1970's the race was such an important fabric of British sport that both the BBC and ITV showed it live, that is two channels from the three available. You were able to switch back and forth. The first advert in the aftermath of Empery's triumph was a fast motion montage of a kitchen knife chopping through cucumbers, tomatoes, radishes and the like, accompanied by catchy symphonizer music. Was for some sort of salad cream. The event was so big that you remember such daft things.
You had the choice between the incomparable Juiian Wilson fronting a team that included John Hanmer, Jimmy Lindley, with the voice of racing commentating against a John Rickman led team that contained a boyish faced Brough Scott, John Oaksey, Ken Tyrell, with Raleigh Gilbert commentating.
We were an age away from microphones being stuck in winning jockey's faces. We were allowed to watch on as connections of the trimphant horse savoured their moment without pointless intrusion.
ITV did have a regular member of the team in the first half of the 1970's who would interpret to the viewer the type of exchange that he considered would be going on between the winning jockey and trainer in the aftermath of a race.
For example, if Joe Mercer was taking the saddle off a winning mount and talking to Dick Hern, we would be told that " Joe will be saying, he did it well boss, the Major will be asking, how much did he have left, plenty more to come boss, how further will he get, another two furlongs, could improve for it too. " Probably a good job social media did not exist then but even so the comebacks could have been no harsher than what is directed at the present TV teams and their modus operandis.
It wasn't just that the Derby was better staged in its traditional Wednesday slot. As has been rightly bemoaned by many now everything is all too top heavy towards the dizzy sporting maze of Saturday.
Good grief, even the Hilary Needler is now away from its midweek evening slot. In 1976 the race was won by the Ted Carr trained Bruce Raymond ridden 14/1 shot Feudal Wytch. Pat Eddery had travelled up and was on the beaten odds on favourite Be Satisfied for his boss Peter Walwyn, the pair winning the following three year old maiden with Forgotten Dreams.
Feudal Wytch was sired by Tribal Chief who would go on and be responsible for the following year's 1,000 Guineas winner Mrs McCardy. Coincidentally, over at Phoenix Park the same evening a filly called Cloonlara made a winning racecourse debut. Cloonlara was one of the most hyped up horses of the decade, not least because Vincent O'Brien considered her to be the best filly he had ever been involved with. She had an aversion to the stalls but got to Newmarket the following May and started favourite for the fillies classic, finishing fourth.
This is what is one of the biggest fascinations of the sport. A normal midweek day unveiling the start of a tale that goes into folklore. It can still happen now, but the concept of a normal midweek day has altered enormously with most of the quality aspects being pillaged and moved to the Saturday.
You will still see the odd early chapter of a story of a future equine star beginning on a Tuesday at Yarmouth or Nottingham, but they will happen with less frequency as things are all squashed into a Saturday where there is no room to anticipate, then digest it all.
We are told that the modern racing fan seeks more additional entertainment added on to the racing. It's a lie. It acts an excuse to cash in on the concert days. What they mean to say but won't say it
direct is that they want general members of the public to come to their premises for a booze up and concert without feeling that the racing is getting in the way.
When you hear this spin you hope so much that it will all come back to haunt them. Someone soon will realise that there are thousands who will gather in the same setting and stay for hours with money to spend, without having no interest in the so called focal point of the venue - that's if, as the racing authorities will have us believe, the racing is the focal point on a concert day.
A rival attraction will then be set up for them to pilfer the audience. It happens in the United States where racetracks are located near main rivers. Riverboats with onboard casino's rig up nearby to tempt in those on the way to the races.
Here, there would not have to be an attraction with gambling facilities. Just the concert supported by a food and beer festival, best dressed prizes, karaoke, a few past it celebs handing out awards. Make no mistake, to these modern racegoers who are not over smitten with racing, such a rival event would result in a change of plan.
Thank heavens that Royal Ascot comes along next week. The sport needs a pick up and this week with regular World Cup Cricket matches, plus the US Open being stage at the showcase venue Pebble Beach, we have a summer where racing rarely can have had such little attention.
image in public domain
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