It's taken an alignment of negative developments for this to happen but when paying audiences are absent from football, cricket and rugby stadiums, income provided from bookmaker sponsorship deals become a higher source of dependence. In some cases it could be the difference between survival and calling in the administrators, which means that the momentum towards increased gambling regulation, along with further restrictions on bookmaker advertising, must be inducing nightmares across the sporting arena.
It has been common knowledge for a while now that racecourses actively pursue the younger crowds who will fill the bars and spend to their hearts content, while at the same time not bothering to venture outside to watch a live race, many not even having the inclination to look up at one of the screens inside to watch a race as they probably will not even had a wager or have lost interest after an early leg went down in a communal placepot.
Whenever things return to something near normal then expect the racecourses to double their efforts to welcome these emerging generations with open arms - they have no other option, particularly with the increasing heed paid to the wishes of the gambling lobbies and a niggling worry that punters could from next year be means tested when their level of wagering in a month passes a level that would not cover a night out at a concert.
This means that long term racing fans must also now come around to accept that if they really wish for the sport to the continue at its present level, they have to bite their tongue and be thankful that all these characters with not the slightest endearment towards the sport, fill out the cult fixtures and play their role in keeping the show on the road.
But then again, those of us who are convinced that the sport has seen its heyday and has been on the decline for years may not care whether it survives or not; we won't be around to see it and it is perhaps preferable for the sport to perish and fade rather than be inherited by arrogant peoples full of wokeness who will only finish the sport off anyway - unfortunately, jump racing's future is limited and if this sounds a bit too dramatic just consider that the Waterloo Cup, once the biggest sporting event in the country and still popular in the 1970's when the Sporting Life employed John McCririck as their hare coursing correspondent, was not just stopped, it seems to have been obliterated from history.
The winter game, already neutered by giving concessions instead of facing up to to those who have an intention to end the sport, will relatively soon have disappeared into oblivion also, after which 'they' will begin to dismantle flat racing. If we accept this is what lies in store for the future, then racing fans who still have a tinge of affection for the game can be consoled by the fact that they can spend the rest of their days looking back at the history of the sport and even swatting up on certain periods from the past.
The demand for memorabilia has to be one of the most accurate methods of measuring not only the popularity of individual beings, a series of programmes, a make of machinery including cars and motorbikes, but whole sports in general. Racing is very much included - particularly when you consider how misleading racecourse attendance levels are in guaging true engagement with the sport.
This is an area that can be pleasurable for lifelong fans - it can also be a grim reminder that the tradional fans have, through age, fallen terminally ill, gone mad, or passed away because the announcement that Timeform will publish no more of it's treasured annuals has not resulted in any anticipated surge in the prices of old copies on the second hand market.
In fact, most of those that I've acquired are in such good condition for their age that the owners have clearly treasured them and that there is a good chance they are being dispersed with due to the owner passing away and, as will be common now, the genuine interest and love for the sport has not been shared by the next generation of the family.
The prose used in the older annuals is far more absorbing than later additions - in a sense classical. In Racehorse of 1959, the essay on Prix du Jockey Club winner Herbager, covers the inbreeding in his pedigree and widens into the theme of inbreeding in general, even referring to the Old Testament.
The essay states that Herbager's dam "..is the product of a breeding system, which at times aroused violent antagonism, part of which stems from the social taboos and religious prohibitions that have been erected around it in the human field." It then goes on to refer to the present ( ie 1959) as a supposedly enlightened age!......If only they could have looked into the crystal ball and watched how rapidly all things racing along with society in general would change in the following six decades - though for racing itself, the sudden changes for the worse would not begin until a further thirty years had passed by.
I have also acquired the further Richard Stone Reeves book I was after, Classic Lines, to add to Decade of Champions, and though it's an area where a degree of trust is required I've not been able to resist a framed photo of Nijinsky signed by Lester for eighty quid from a highly reputable company with a high monetary turnover and who only gather signatures from official, open signing sessions which are photographed with the signee photographed signing one of the numbered series with the company's certificate of authenticity on display.
Furthermore, common sense tells you that following a scam in the United States, those running a successful, lucrative business in this field would not go lax or take liberties as one whiff of scandal or a journalistic investigation would blow the business apart - even if they are totally innocent.
Every so often I search around the memorabilia sites for signed Kate Jackson photos - the original Sabrina Duncan - but am unable to find one that won't forever just leave that trickle of doubt. For now Nijinsky and Lester can take centre stage.I have race cards that I got the likes of Eddery, Carson and Starkey to sign as a kid, but Nijinsky and Lester, is there a more sought after combination for signed photo in the sport that you could ever wish for?
Ormonde and Fred Archer - how could that be authenticated? Arkle and Pat Taafe, perhaps. You can't have Dessie as if you ask a group of racing fans which pilot you would associate the great horse with I'd bet that it would be pretty equal between Dunwoody, Brown and Simon Sherwood. Same with Rummy, Fletcher or Stack? And apart from Dessie and Dunwoody, the other aforementioned examples contain an inbalance in the standing of the horse and rider. Kauto and Ruby enter the reckoning but that era is much, much too recent to draw in any nostalgic warmth over just yet.
Whatever, I would be fairly sure that a large section of old racing enthusiasts who retain a level of sanity and who are unable to completely banish the most in depth, fascinating sport in history from their systems are developing similar, reminiscent traits. This is what things have now come to.
image in public domain
This taken from an album recorded in the week preceding that of Arkle's final Gold Cup..
No comments:
Post a Comment