KEEPING THE PAST ALIVE

One of the few advantages of becoming old is that you can go ahead and purchase a DVD box set without worrying whether, like the VHR format, they will become redundant, as you are most likely not going to be here to to fret over the dilemma, or if you are will probably not be in a sound enough state of mind to follow an episode of Columbo, Rising Damp, Van Der Valk, Fawlty Towers, Quincy,  Inspector Morse or Man About The House.

What will prove to be the last generation that had a worthwhile number of genuine racing fans contains many souls hoarding large collections of recorded racing on VHR. We taped hundreds of hours of footage, with all races of worth covered including interviews that have long been forgotten.

A Cheltenham Festival in the early 1980's when Julian Wilson was given a demonstration of a newly designed recall system intended to deal with false starts. It involved blinking lights and a siren. The facial expression on Wilson accompanied by a dry observation made it clear he was unimpressed. It was never introduced.

On to the following decade when replays of Ascot Gold Cups were being shown with Wilson doing a talk over narration, which he was not expecting, as when they moved to a renewal with the commentary from the day, you heard Wilson snap, " Listen, I don't want this bloody talkback ! ".

Many will find that if they have still clung on to their VHR collection they'll discover that they are full of mould and either past the point of no return, or too costly to be salvaged, with too few hours in the day to follow a You Tube tutorial and try and salvage yourself. The next step would be to find a discontinued VHR to DVD copier on the likes of e-bay, and edit properly, as you'll find some peculiarities such as an episode of Sons And Daughters in between the Welsh National and Challow Hurdle, or one of Prisoner Cell Block H separating the Imperial Cup from the Supreme Novices Hurdle. 

Most will be aware that there are saviours out there in the form of some You Tube contributors who have uploaded a wide, impressive collection of material, with Espmadrid a legend for many. Eddie Cr has also uploaded some terrific stuff.

Some of these have extended coverage and it was pleasing to see they have those memorable post race interviews from the 1983 Cheltenham Gold Cup. Jonathan Powell's with Graham Bradley is a cracker and makes you realise how futile these present day tacky immediate post race interviews with the jockey aboard really are.

Likewise, it's delightful to stumble upon a race that you have not seen since the day. Henbit's Chester Vase. Looked a bit of a clumsy boat to me but connections knew better and went to Epsom with him. And for the first time since the day of the race I've watched the full running of Ile de Bourbon's 1978 King George Queen Elizabeth Stakes, and the final few hurdles of Night Nurse's 1975 Irish Sweeps Hurdle. The last time I watched that was on the day of the race on Christmas Grandstand.

It cannot repeated enough that once you take the sport to heart, you will be punting on horses for a lifetime which is what is required on a wide scale for the sport to be able to continue to operate on its present scale.

A point worth raising about viewing old clips, and one in which racing holds an advantage over other sports, is that it takes only a matter of minutes to view even the long distance events. This means that you can watch the whole event unfold from start to finish.

Football, cricket and rugby fans cannot watch several full matches in one sitting. They'll search through the matches, watching abridged versions with many just showing the goals, wickets and boundaries, and tries.

The television companies must have vast archives of material. They should stuff copyright and allow open access. Let's face it, no one is going to be able to make a living flogging quality copy pirate tapes in their local pub of, for example, the 1986 Flat Season, no matter how vintage it was, so it should not be an issue.

Whether the BBC have retained all their reels is also an unknown. I believe the established television companies went about the task of digitilising their archive, but whether the beeb retained all of their originals may be doubtful as they washed their hands of the sport.

While it may be true that the healthy crowds who attended both days of the Cheltenham October meeting were genuine racing fans, the vast majority probably reside in the Cotswold catchment area that would have a larger percentage of racing enthusiasts per head of the region than most other areas.

Therefore to use this as a sign that all is well within the sport is misleading. In short, while they will likely contribute well to the sport through punting,  they make up a declining portion of the betting fraternity compared with the masses amongst the emerging generations who see betting as mostly about football, supported by the likes of cricket, tennis, rugby, golf, snooker, darts and the like.

We know ITV have an endless archive of racing going back many years, including the C4 era. We see bits of pieces of it, a few seconds here and there. If they really want to save the continuation of the sport at its present level then it would do no harm for them to make it accessible to all.

Repeating what they wish audiences to believe in the form of factual statements serves no useful purpose. For below the glossy exterior the sport has never been in a more precarious state than it is at this very moment.

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A SPORT RUNNING ON EMPTY

Racing fans above a certain age who had their seasonal clocks programmed before the introduction here of AW racing religiously adhere to the principle that the summer months are for flat racing, and the winter period for the less glamorous but more earthly discipline. 

They will now be in the middle of changeover mode. It's that time again to digest all the trainer talks, even if they are more likely to serve as appetite whetters as opposed to sources of profit. This is also the time when you can rest assured an announcement will come that one of your favourites will be out for the season - this time around Topofthegame. By God let us hope Santini stays in one piece !

Call it a mode of mind, or a custom, it is undoubtedly a process that all traditional racing fans ride with every October. We may even try a new angle to compiling shortlists of horses to follow, whether it be getting obsessive over an under the radar yard, or the progeny of certain stallions.

Whatever the merits of these angles, or how the season unfolds, those of us still able to conjure up a buzz, even one with the batteries fading, will be betting regularly through the winter and thus contributing to the game.

What a warming thought it is that the late Presenting's progeny will be with us for a few more years yet, that Fleminsfirth is still active, as one of the morbid areas of the game is watching the final crop of a popular stallion grow older then fade away, whether it be a Vulgan, Deep Run, Strong Gale or Gunner B.

We are probably the last generation containing a meaningful number of genuinely engaged racing fans. There will not be another wave of racing enthusiasts to follow.

Those in any doubt of this this should have been watching the SKY coverage of Chepstow last weekend. The Saturday was marketed to attract racegoers from the Universities in the nearby catchment areas.

We are told they turned out in their thousands. At first instance that sounds quote impressive until you learn that they spent the day in a giant beer tent getting smashed.

Luke Harvey went among them for a chat and it was blatantly clear that they'd have been lured in if the main fare had been rally car racing, motorbike racing, or even just a stage with various musical acts without any form of racing.

Put yourselves in the mind of a TV viewer, who has never visited a racecourse but has a fondness for the horse as an animal. So, they are watching the Chepstow coverage. It quickly dawns on them that the gist of the message the SKY racing team are supporting, is that you come along, get bladdered all day and join in with the inane chants.

I think it would put many off paying a visit to their local course. And those that defend the agenda of courses targeting the fun day out crowds should ask themselves whether it has any prospect of resulting in long term sustainable benefit.

There are a couple of questions that should of been put to some of these students which would have exposed how ridiculous it is to assume that a meaningful number of them would become long term disciples of the sport.

Firstly, are they aware that there is a high class meeting at Ascot the following Saturday ? As the answer will be no, they can then be asked that as they now know there is, would they be watching it on TV and having a bet, or would they instead be concentrating and betting on football.

It's not hard to predict with certainty the category of answers that would be received. And on a wider scale, the fact that they are not racing fans of any sort and won't be betting regularly on horse racing, is the crux of why pot holes and abandoned chassis are ahead on racing's highway.

And it's all very well ITV racing proclaimng what a fantastic future lies ahead for the sport while focussing in on school visits to the racecourse, and Sheikh Mohammed paying a visit to a classroom to discuss the sport.

They were kids from a Newmarket school for christ's sake, of course many would have an interest in the sport, but they are hardly an accurate portrayal of youth interest in things equine.

It is an inescapable reality that if the noughties born and beyond generations do not contain sufficient numbers that will bet on horse racing, then the sport as we know it will fold.

They will be have been brought up by a father, who if a betting man, will almost certainly concentrate in the main on football. There will be no racing newspapers in the house and with wall to wall live sport coverage during the weekend, the racing will pass by unnoticed.

The omens are not good. Many of a certain age will be happy at the thought that they'll have passed away to spare them witnessing the collapse of a fabric of life that only up to a couple of decades back, you would have been sure that it would continue for hundreds more years.

Craziest of all is the idea that the sport can save itself by adapting to a fast changing society. Any proposed radical changes will only hasten the end. It would be like patients being prescribed heart tablets for the rest of their lives to manage and control their illness, then washing them down the sink to adopt a New Age diet.

Best not to get upset. Instead, just let out a hearty chuckle the next time someone from the TV media proclaims the future of the sport is in safe hands.

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THERE IS NO FRANKEL GENERATION

As the Longchamp meeting drew ever closer with the tempo of the anticipation increasing by the day for those still engaged with the sport, there was an item of news in the Racing Post that would have escaped unnoticed by those focussed only on the Arc, but one that should serve very much as a reminder to those who believe the future of the sport is a bright one.

News that the Yorkshire Racing Club was putting up the shutters may not have particularly seemed the most damning communication. Why should anyone care when it was a time to be positive and lap up the energy surge emanating from prospect of Enable earning a unique place in history, Even the industry paper itself left it at that without a follow up to the story.

The cold truth however is that it would not be far fetched to construe the announcement as yet more evidence that beneath the rosy facade of these big showcase events, the foundations beneath the sport are decaying. And in the times of global warming panic, it would be quite tickling to go the whole hog and to show graphics of racing's percentage of the betting pie shrinking, just as they show these time lapsed photos of the ice caps.

Racing Clubs began to grow during the 1970's before taking off to a different stratosphere during the 1980's. Wherever you lived it was likely that there would be one within a short travelling distance, if not on your doorstep.

The daily and Thursday racing publications made room for racing club news briefs, detailing events being held, which guests from within the industry would be appearing, not to mention membership offers for club visits to yards, racecourses, sometimes even stud farms.

It was a vibrant scene that seemed sure to last indefinitely.  Alas, the scene is now retracting and it should not surprise those of us who are adamant that long and lasting damage to the sport resulted from the trend beginning in the 1990's for sport betting to soak up the the largest percentage of the new betting generations.

People accuse you of being dramatic when you state that the ageing racing enthusiasts follow the normal course of becoming ill, infirm and dying with no one to replace them; but listen to some of the comments made from the Yorkshire Racing Club secretary David Beardsall, himself seventy eight years of age.

Beardsall spoke of the younger generations not being attracted to the game, as they come solely for an all day bar and concert. He recounted that the club had hundreds of members at one time but that it had sunk to a level where at one recent meeting only a dozen turned out.

Most solemn of all was the mention that many were pensioners who were passing away with time. As they passed on no one has replaced them. It brings home the fact that these pensioners would have been thirty and forty somethings during the 1970's and early 1980 's when racing had a higher public profile than now, and when gambling was predominantly about horse racing.

Back then Yorkshire had a vibrant National Hunt scene. Jockeys, trainers and horses that were household names were based in the county. A midweek Wetherby or Donny card would have Cheltenham and Aintree prospects turning up.

Enthusiastic racegoers gathering in the racecourse bar long before the opener.  A pint of best bitter, accompanied  by Players No 6, speculating whether Crump had a National horse in the yard. They would talk of Lorimer, Sniffer Clarke, Chris Old, Harvey Smith, Tony Currie, and of course Geoffrey.

And as it was the days of three channel TV, many would have watched the same programmes the previous evening, so they would laugh together recounting the gems Rigsby came out with, or perhaps it was something Molly Sugden had said, Sally Thomsett and Paula Wilcox having the last laugh on Richard O'Sullivan, or that weird Steve Priest guy from The Sweet , who they saw on Top Of The Pops sporting make up.

They, like most of us, could not have envisaged a time when the generations aged under 35, (this continuing to rise with the passing of time), link having a bet with football more than horses. And when the numbers filling the racecourses would consist of many who mix drink with cocaine or amphetamines.

When they visit York , some of these will be amongst those who eagerly join in the chanting of stuff like, "we are Leeds ," and maybe the same ones who could be heard singing Lanfranco Dettori's praises to that tune from the The White Stripes used as Michael Van Gerwin's walk on song, and played at halftime at many Bundesliga matches.

Sadly, the prospect of this trend reversing is a remote one. It has come too far. Hollow racing fans. Try speaking to them.

I was speaking to a vague acquaitance who has been betting socially on horses for a few years, in his forties, but had never heard of Nijinsky. Of course, what does it matter if they are using some of their betting funds for horses meaning they are making a contribution. Well, if they had a passion for the sport then surey a larger proportion of their betting bank would be played on the sport.

There was a time when the great animals would pull large numbers of new fans into the sport. lndeed, there was certainly a time when a fully tested, admirably consistent, tough as nails and from the top drawer quality wise, mare like Enable would have put petrol in the tank of the racing fanbases.

Unfortunately, this is not something that can now be guaranteed. It's seven years since the highest rated racehorse in living memory last raced. At the time Prince Khalid Abdullah's racing manager Teddy Grimthorpe was championing the effect Frankel ( in picture) would have on the sport, enthusing that a whole new generation of racing enthusiasts would would emerge.

Those twelve at the time would now be nineteen, those sixteen now twenty three, those nineteen now twenty six. Where are they all then ?

Truth is, that if  we accept the reasonable assumption that the winter game draws in more new fans, and that the vintage era we had ten years back when Kauto Star and Denman stood at the top of the tree has not added mileage and refuelled the fanbase, then we'll be waiting in vain for a Frankel generation of fans to appear.

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