A SPORT IN PIECES

In this unconventional moment in time the sport of horse racing resembles a wrecked jigsaw puzzle, with pieces scattered far and wide, some too damaged to slot back into place, others lost for good.

The least damaged parts will be those representing national hunt racing. This part of the sport had the good fortune of being able to stage its Olympics leaving the season ending, even if with the non staging of the two main supporting festivals, at least with many questions answered within the top echelons of equine talent.

It also proved a blessing that the Dublin Festival had quickly established an influential place in the calendar, meaning that with connections of some animals, the blow of losing opportunities at Aintree and Punchestown will have been sofened.

It would however be unrealistic to believe that this sphere of the sport will get away scot free for there will be victims, with some trainers going out of business and along with course closures. Sadly, the latter category may include some down to earth, beautifully simple venues that haven't lost their soul.

In the grand scheme of all things racing though, the winter game will have escaped the carnage that is being inflicted on the flat scene. And God only knows how events are going to pan out, particulalry in the Northern Hemisphere.

The classic programme is an essential element of the system and the breeding industry. It now would seem an increasing possibility that they are going to be squashed together in a short time frame, maybe all being run at Newmarket.

And if Royal Ascot is staged on time, behind closed doors, then we could witness the Irish 2,000 Guineas winner appearing in the St James Palace Stakes prior to running in the English. 2,000 Guineas . Or even the Derby winner appearing beforehand in the King Edward.The odd number of possibilities and back to front variations of the normal sequences are endless.

What people must now realise is that the whole racing machine cannot just stoke up its engine and return to normal rhythmic speed. Not a chance in hell of that happening.

Look at it this way, if the rumours are correct that four or five football clubs from the English Premier League, the richest and most powerful in the world, are close to going into administration, what does the future hold for the racecourses whose lifeblood are those summer weekend, heavy drinking masses of lads and ladettes, along with marquees hired by local businesses who have been making hay over the past few years.

The level of dependence on corporate input will vary greatly from course to course. Newmarket can survive without the invasion of the rowdy Friday evening  and Saturday hordes. York is the property of the local city council, thus while they have added extra weekend meetings to their programme over recent times to milk the cash cow of the cult attendees, these added dates are not a necessity to survival.

Whether Haydock Park can sit knowing its future is assured is an entirely different matter. Let no one be fooled that just because it makes up one of the fourteen venues under the Jockey Club Racecourse banner, that it is safe.

Up to very recently Kempton Park, belonging to the same group, had been deemed expendable with a business decision close to being finalised whereby the prime location would be sold for housing development, with the King George VI Chase being transferred to Sandown.

Haydock Park embraced the trash route when they unforgivably destroyed their famous steeplechase course, with those demanding drop fences and that characteristic run in from the last which was not far short of the length of the Grand National run in. This, all to make room for a second flat circuit, a move which the course management shamelessly conceded was to enable them to stage more summer flat fixtures to pull in the crowds that camp in the bars.

Well, they made their bed which they will now have to lie in. For starters, allowing the resumption of large, sporting crowds is almost certainly going to be the very final lockdown restriction that will be lifted. In other words, Haydock will not be staging a flat meeting with a regular attending audience in 2020.

And neither will Chester. They made an announcement last week that they will not be hosting their showcase May meeting in 2020, irrespective of whether a closed door staging would have been permitted.

The reason put forward was that it would not have been possible to effectively marshall social distancing around the outside of those walls that provide excellent free viewing as well as avoiding those customary, over enthusiastic security checks.

In reality though, one has to suspect that this once highly respected venue has backed itself into a corner by selling out to the corporate model, and that the real reason is they simply do not believe it would be worth their while playing to an empty arena.

Looking further ahead, both Haydock and Chester will feel an artic blast from an economic downturn which could be the worst in the past seventy five years. Those that have paid in advance for group bookings, some using corporate functions, are likely to be seeking refunds rather than a carry over to next year.

And what of 2021? Levy payments will be severely affected, sponsorship will have plummeted, and with a sharp rise in unemployment, along with many of the self employed who have managed to survive being forced to scale down, a day spent in the designer stubble, suavely attired, smug git paradises of Haydock Park and Chester, is a 'treat' that is going to be crossed off many lists.

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THE END OF THE RACING DAILY

Dwindling, heartfelt interest in horse racing allied to the across the board decline in hardcopy newspaper sales followed by LBO closures from the FOBT ruling, was always going to prove to be an insurmountable force for the printed version of the Racing Post to withstand. 

Covid -19  has only gone and speeded up what was inevitable. It must be now be in grave doubt whether the publcation will go to press ever again - particularly when you take into consideration that it had even been acknowledged from within that at some measurable time in the future a switch to a fully digital format was on the cards.

You cannot sugarcoat the fact the publication has been going downhill for some time. Admittedly, the database is excellent and the layout of the online form book is far more comfortable and easy on the eye than the ATR version. It is also a dream for those who like to lose themselves delving deep into pedigrees.

However, it is a sign of the times that the recently replaced editor Bruce Millington is first and foremost a football fan who had worked in the greyhound industry, and who confesses to not being truly gripped by horse racing until little over a decade back.

One must suppose that this mirrors the recognition that horse racing has had to concede a portion of its share of the betting pie to sports betting, with the emerging generations more inclined to bet on football.

The acceptance of this trend could be seen in the short life of the Post's last rival, The Sportsman that sadly lasted for a period of only six months during 2006.

Millington's long tenure was subject to heavy criticism on free speech forums for failing to address bookmaker related concerns, including refusals to stand decent bets at advertised prices, closing down of accounts, and not least a refusal  by the paper to criticise those cancerous FOBT machines.

The latter issue was never more apparent when there was a feature following Alastair Down into a high street betting office where the widely recognised journalist appeared to be giving these trashy machines the seal of approval.

There was also that fall out between Millington and Paul Haigh, after the Stockport based writer, arguably the most talented the paper had in its thirty four year spell in print, refused to abide by in house rules in which free reign writing was shackled by the bookmaking industries influence, linked to the lifeblood revenue the paper was receiving from advertising.

Haigh's departure was followed by an airing the dirty washing slanging match between the pair on social media, the tone of which indicated that the end of their association was terminal.

In recent times the editorship has been taken over by the young Scotsman Tom Kerr, a racing fan, but one who represents the modernist agenda as is evident in his views on welfare issues and a belief that the sport must continue to modernise.

The database and bloodstock desk apart, the paper has been turning a bit weird. They even have a Scottish comedian writing a weekly piece. Not to mention some 'kids' writing who may just be old enough to remember Cue Card. One was writing for the paper when on a 'work experience' placement, something indicating how tight the available budget must have been.

Thing is, those who were still purchasing the newspaper would be over a certain age and many would be of a kind who would want to be able to nerdily discuss how far The Dealer would have gone if he'd not suffered a setback after his Embassy Premier Chase Final success; would Golden Cygnet really have been the second coming, would J O Tobin have won the Guineas if his owner hadn't moved him to the States on Noel Murless's retirement, and whether Noddy's Ryde would have gained revenge on Bobsline in their planned Cheltenham re-match.

Fact is, social media along with its racing forums renders most modern racing journalism dead save one or two bold, out of the clique free minds from the indies. And while the Betfair Forum has been blighted lately by a couple of private spats involving characters who may genuinely have mental health issues, there are some gems of threads that appear every now and then. One of the long standing contributors was Brigadier Gerard's stable lad. There is still a glimmer of hope this forum may return to its former glory days.

Then there is the slower moving but less vulnerable to idiot sabotage, The Racing Forum, containing some excellent posters. It is baffling why there have not been more full tme defectors from the other forum.

In addition to the Racing Post, one must be concerned whether the future of the once esteemed Timeform organisation is under threat. Warning bells were sounded when the Halifax operation was purchased by Betfair, who are now owned by Paddy Power - or Flutter Entertainment plc to be precise.

The crush in the level of incomings through the plague follows on from the FOBT decision, so during the inevitable inward examination of the areas in which costs may be saved, the future of this once independent and treasured part of the sport must surely come under the microscope.

And on the heels of the loss of the sport's remaining daily UK publication, that would be a potential bombshell. It really would.

image from Seattle Municipal Archives  CCA

A SURPRISE AMONGST THE CASUALTIES ?

Many of us are convinced that the football led boom in general sports betting has inflicted untold long term damage on horse racing, depriving the levy of monies as the emerging generations would rather bet on wall to wall football, and even during the summer would, on arriving home from work, much prefer to get stuck into the Sussex v Kent twenty-20 televised game rather than the Windsor card on ATR.

Alas, what should have been the opportunity for this theory to be proven has now been lost when the decision was made to abandon the bold intention to carry on racing behind closed doors in circumstances where the only alternative betting opportunities would have been Greyhounds, some Stateside racing, Australian racing during sleeping hours, not forgetting those trashy numbers games.

Mind you, the comparison would not have been quite that straightforward for we have reached the stage that we cannot speak of younger generations being' weaned off ' betting on horses, for they have started their punting on football and other sports from the very beginning.

It is doubtful whether the light can just be flicked on whereby they go into racing mode, just moving over into another sport at a whim and, if racing had gone ahead behind closed doors, no objective thinking person would have  gone into a state of shock if those dreadful numbers games took more of their punting cash.

Martin Cruddace, C.E. of the Arena Racing Company raised a few eyebrows last weekend when sharing his thoughts on the prospect of racing behind closed doors. He explained that at the Arena venues , a typical year will start with most of the revenue coming from the levy and media rights payments until they get to the height of summer, when revenue from attending crowds will take centre stage. Then, as the autumn months come along, the levy and media rights payments will again takeover as the chief earner.

Cruddace, who was a guest on ATR's Racing Debate, was doubtful whether it would be viable for Arena to put on meetings behind closed doors and expressed hope that if these fixtures were held, the bookmaking fraternity would increase payments for a period during which other live sports have ceased. In short, the impression he left was that he had no relish to go down the racing without spectators pathway.

One facet of  the sport that was not touched upon is that most of the fixtures at Arena tracks are mediocre, many extremely so. If Cheltenham had been staged behind closed doors then the amounts generated through off course betting would not have suffered greatly. Neither would that of Aintree's Grand National meeting if, as some hoped, it had gone ahead without an attending audience.

Quality racing will always attract greater turnover. It may seem to be stating the obvious but you will hear many making generalisations about the players in America treating the horses as numbers as opposed to living entities.

This is total nonsense. You only need to look at a card with a Grade One race included to note that the main race or races, with equine names that will be familiar, will generate the biggest pools. This explains why those dull cards that are the bread and butter of the Arena courses are not the greatest levy generators.

It is a solemn consideration to wonder whether the affects of this plague that is holding up the country will change the whole look of the racing landscape. Many of us who want the fixture list radically downsized with the emphasis on quality could be pleasantly surprised once the dust has settled and life starts to resemble normality again.

The downdside of course is that numerous people who have spent a lifetime working within the sport, including breeders and licensed trainers, will be out of a job and/or out of business.

Racecourses will also be forced to shut. That is not just a possibility it is a certainty. We all must have courses that we would delight in seeing them get their comeuppance. Most of us who remember Chester in the 1970's and 1980's, are no doubt appalled to see how it has sold its soul to the corporate model.

Tented villages lining the inside of the home straight, bars and drink stands with presumptious names, audiences not interested a jot in the sport of horse racing who pay the inflated prices to be a wanna be yuppie for the day.  And not to forget the brusque course staff who pick their targets carefully, with tales of racegoers even being ludicrously asked why they are carrying binoculars.

As a harsh, unrelenting recession is now unavoidable, the majority of the businesses that use Chester race days for functions will, at the very least, have to cut their cloth accordingly. The whole business model of the course may have to go back to basics and cater for those who have long washed their hands of the place and who find a visit to the historic venue more of an ordeal than a privilege.

Lack of sponsors money, a massive drop in money from the levy, and a plumet in the numbers willing to pay overpriced entry fees along with inflated prices for food and drink - they search you at the gate and don't even allow you to take in a small, homemade ham cob.

Well, once they have lost the air headed suited and booted with huge self egos to flirt with, they may regret all the flat capped Billy's and Harry's and Frank's they have upset and who don't have plans to return anytime soon, if ever.

And if large sporting crowd bans are extended into the summer and autumn, which seems very likely, as does the continuation of racing being on hold in the UK after May 1st, then surely we cannot safely rule out the possibility that this trumped up out of proportion venue will go to the dogs.

image Pixabay license

SHOCKWAVES SENT THROUGH THE SPORT

It may be still be the posh daily read for the bearded, duffle coated, fashion Trotskyists calling for revolution, most of whom are not doing too bad for themselves in a free, capitalist society, with their regular holidays to exotic far away continents, nice homes and cars, who would risk being taken away and tortured in the communist 'utopias' they sing the praises of, but it cannot be denied that The Guardian newspaper is prepared to rock the boat of officialdom, even having been the cause of concern for the security services.

While I am sure that a few inside the confines of the publication do not approve of gambling or horse racing, there can be little doubt they can boast of having the arguably the boldest writer in the business in Greg Wood.

It was not unexpected that Wood would be the first journalist from 'within' the sport to break ranks and provide an unrestrained opinion on the Fact Finding Judgement released this week from the family court case involving Sheikh Mohammed, UK flat racing's largest investor over the past four decades.

The bizarre and quite disturbing events that the court believed on the balance of probabilities had occured will now be familiar to everyone who follows the mainstream news.

From a racing viewpoint, it is no surprise that those who have a platform to air views on racing politics chose in the main to either be non-committal, or to not even touch on the subject.

In ' Luck On Sunday'  it was agreed by all those present that the Sheikh and his family had been a positive influence on the sport in the UK, and that in some way or another, everyone working within the sport had benefited from his involvement. Richard Hoiles doubted whether the BHA  would subject the Sheikh to the ' fit and proper person's test' , adding that the question was whether the member of the Dubai Royal family would now decide on his own accord to move his large scale interests out of the country.

Wood went further in his piece in The Guardian, touching on an area that seems to be taboo for those reporting from within the industry ; namely, the case of the name now never discussed, Mahmood al- Zarooni.

When al- Zarooni received his seven year ban for steriod use, the official conclusion was that he was acting in his own capacity. This finding was, in Wood's words, ' ..without any meaningful investigation of the concerted doping operation at Godolphin's Moulton Paddocks stable in Newmarket.'

The reliance racing has on Sheikh Mohammed's financial input into the sport is put into perspective by Wood when he writes that, 'no individual is bigger than racing itself - so they say, but Sheikh Mohammed comes mighty close.'

Those tuning into Attheraces for Sunday morning's ' Racing Debate' may have been hoping for at least a small amount of time to be segmented for the topic to be  discussed.  The programme is after all billed as being,' hard- hitting, honest, critical, opinionated.'

Not a single whisper was uttered on the subject. No doubt the producers would point out that as we are on the the eve of the Cheltenham Festival, then it was apt for the show to concentrate solely on the meeting but one has to doubt whether the court's findings would have been alluded to in even the quieter times in the fixture list.

Returning to 'Luck on Sunday', during which the potential logistical difficulty of moving a whole, large scale operation out of the country was raised. In truth, it is probably not the mamouth task it would appear to be. The horses in training could be dispersed to trainers already on the payroll in Ireland and France, with the stallions also transfered to their studs abroad.

Their two Newmarket based in house trainers could be moved to newly purchased bases abroad, even though teething problems could initially surface from the trainers reading and adapting to home gallops they were not familiar with.

And what of the other Maktoum family members ? Hamdan has his own modus operandi,  keeping the number of animals to a relatively limited number, with loyalty shown to the trainers on his payroll.

At points of time in the past, the likes of the once mighty Peter Walwyn, Robert Armstrong, Harry Thompson Jones, Ben Hanbury, and Clive Benstead would have to have called it a day earlier than they eventually did, without the support of Hamdan.

The potential catastrophic consequence of the whole extended family cutting ties with the sport in the UK, is separate to the issue of how the sport would have fared if they had never entered the fray all those years ago.

We often wish for the days when the jam was spread wider, with all those select owner/ breeder operations who were the patrons that formed the backbone of the big flat yards in the 1970's. The Sobel and related Weinstock families, Lord Howard de Walden, Dick Hollingsworth, Louis Freedman, Arthur Budgett, Paul Mellon and Jim Joel.

Apart from the Budgetts', all of the above named standing dishes of British flat racing were still strong when the Maktoums really started to expand their racing empire in the early 1980's. The 1982 Epsom Derby made one realise they had arrived at the top level.

Sheikh Mohammed owned the second favourite, the John Dunlop trained Jalmood. The colt disappointed but the Hamdan owned Touching Wood finished runner up to the impressive Golden Fleece and would go on to win the St Leger.

Did the aforementioned owner/breeders have relatives ready to step into their shoes who considered that the emergence of the Maktoums had changed the landscape for the worse, or were there no willing and able family members keen enough to take over at the helm?

We shall never know. But if they did decide to cut ties with the UK, how would it impact on national hunt racing, a sphere in which Sheikh Mohammed had a small but successful dabble with approximately thirty years ago, but who had sold on some stallions who have made a tremendous impact in the winter game, such as Fleminsfirth and Old Vic.

Those who ply their trade exclusively in the winter game may not feel much of a negative after current. However, they are unlikely to have cause for opening a bottle of red and partaking in ebullient singsong.

  image reproduced under CCO

AN EVASIVE REPORT

Formula One is a sport of narrow engineering precision. When a mechanical malfunction suddenly arises, the root of the problem can invariably be traced back to the exact culpable bolt, wire or valve, sometimes involving an input of human error in a climate were honesty is essential.

It's near to rocket science from which it has benefited greatly. In the fascinating book 'Dr Space', about the life of Wernher von Braun, it is revealed that the rocket pioneer made it of high priority to promote a culture of honesty in the pursuit of perfection.

The book's author Bob Ward writes of an incident in 1953 when a Redstone missile, being tested at Cape Canaveral, suddenly failed in mid flight. Test after test followed on the area in which it was believed the fault existed but no answers were found.

Then, one of the test engineers came to von Braun's office to say that during the preparation for the launch he had touched a contact which produced a spark. As the procedural checks he then carried out produced no faults, he did not think the incident was significant but thought it should now be mentioned just in case there was a link to the malfunction

This information resulted in a further analysis being conducted which revealed the cause of the missile failure. Von Braun then sent the engineer a bottle of champagne so that the message cascaded to his team that total trust and honesty is essential in missile development.

With horse racing administration, the hope of a culture of honesty and trust with the aim to benefit the greater cause is something that can only be dreamed of. For it doesn't know its Aft Unit from its Jet Vanes, something that is apparent reading between the lines in the Horse Welfare Board's five year welfare strategy titled  'A life well- lived '.

The one hundred and thirty page report which can be downloaded from the BHA website contains a section with the heading ' Growth and maintenance of trust.'  It states that ' To achieve trust, particularly with outside audiences, we must also consider issues of perception '.

A concerning aspect of this section of the report is that it soon becomes apparent that it advocates that in order to change some negative perceptions, compromises may be required which would result in long established traditions being challenged.

This leads on to section 11.1, ' The future of the whip'  which is yet more time spent on what should be the non issue of an area that it is needlessly discussed live on air every couple of weeks.

The whole underlining mood of the report is of apology and appeasement to factions whose ultimate aim is to wipe out the sport and who are patient enough to do it by a process of small steps that chip away until, they hope, that the whole structure will be dismantled.

In the section on safety, there is a timeline diagram, highlighting improvements made from the 1960's to the present day. Some we must be thankful for, such as replacing the concrete posts and wooden rails during the 1970's, and the banning of jump racing on hard ground in the 1990's, while the disguised abolishment of the race that was the Grand National, will not have been similarly welcomed by traditionalists - in fact, the report has some of the 'modifications' missing from the timeline.

To many, the most anticipated section of the report relates to responsibilities of the racehorse owner in relation to aftercare along with the tracking for life of all horses bred for racing.

Section 9.4 of the report, ' Understanding responsibilities ', speaks of the owner being put on an 'education scheme' so they will understand that they are, ' ultimately accountable for the horse, particularly when its racing career is over, and to ensure they are equipped to exercise that duty of care. '

You cannot help but conjure up an image of pot bellied, snappily dressed wide boy, who was on a good run through making some dodgy property developing deals but is now suddenly having to cut back on excesses after high risk investments came up tails and placed him deeply in the red.

Is such a character going to give two hoots about aftercare for the horse he splashed out on that can't run fast enough to keep itself warm ?  Of course not, and owners with similar profiles are aplenty within the sport. These are the ones trainers are forever chasing for unpaid bills and are often cited as part of the reason why they end up calling it a day and handing in their licence.

Section 9.5 of the report ' Funding of aftercare', provides  lightweight suggestions but no solution. In fact, in it the HWB concedes, ' we lack specific expertise in this area', which hardly gives encouragement that things will improve. It suggests that responsibility is in the hands of the whole industry and that an expert funding review should be conducted. This basically means they haven't a clue what to do.

Section 9.6  ' Euthanasia' , talks of the potential for greater scrutiny of the use of euthanasia in the      ' breeding, pre-training, sales and aftercare sectors'. It mentions the introduction of a 'clear decision process or decision tree, that is adopted and clearly communicated by the whole industry. '

It's hard to see how this will alter anything. Just a case of ' car is a write off, give me x amount for scrap and we'll both sign here', though our vehicle may be a fit, healthy and manageable young horse whose crime is not being able to run fast enough.

Regrettably, the whole gist of the report, presented with lots of bold highlighting and the use of in vogue buzzwords and phrases, is that it has been selectively crafted.

It's all well and good displaying charts that show that racecourse fatalaties are low in percentage terms, but when they do not give the figures of how many of the four thousand odd horses that leave training in Great Britain alone each year are unaccounted for, then it shows the project is one to stall time while they work out what to do over the next few years.

If for some reason the financial bubble fails to burst and the numbers of horses in training are maintained, then they'll have to work on another document to explain why so many 'tracked' horses that have left training end up being euthanized. Hardly a true culture of trust and honesty.is it ?

Image Apollo 11  - in the public domain

A WORRYING SATURDAY FOR THE MAKEOVER MERCHANTS

With a reduced Premiership football schedule allied to no other eye catching sporting events being broadcast, one would expect that more casual viewers would have tuned into ITV racing last Saturday than would be the norm for the third weekend in dreary February.

The viewing numbers would have been comparably low with past decades but there would still have been enough following proceedings to make you realise that racing 'got away with it'  in times when incidents are easily amplified out of proportion by social media.

Just imagine if prospects for racing at Haydock Park had been so remote that they had called the meeting off on Friday. Without doubt, Lingfield would have been called upon to be the saving grace, providing a theme of its own with the return of Kachy, arguably the most popular All Weather horse in the thirty one year history of this arm of the sport in the UK.

Such a broadcast would have been presented as a star double billing, the highest rated chaser in training Cyrname attempting to put his disappointing King George run behind him, and the best AW horse, Kachy, having his prep for his swansong race.

Even those who rightly believe that where welfare issues are concerned racing yields too much to outside interference instead of standing its ground, cannot deny what a public relations calamity it would have been if both of these animals had not returned safely back home.

As things transpired, ITV racing did not have to turn to Lingfield to make up their schedule, leaving the casual viewer oblivious to the fate of Kachy. Rightly or wrongly, the ITV team made no reference to the tragedy knowing that racing fans would of been aware of what happened, while it served no positive purpose bringing the news to the passing viewer.

Fortunately, these viewers would have shared everyones relief as Cyrname appeared from behind the screens minutes after the solemn expression carried by Harry Cobden appear to foretell of news far gloomier. It may not have endeared them to the sport but at least would have shown the high degree of affection these unique creatures are held in by those closest to them.

On the subject of Kachy, even those of us who believe the introduction of AW racing in this country has done little to attract new fans to the sport but has done plenty to interfere with the assumed priority of the winter jumping programme, became quite fond of this animal.

His run in an up to standard Diamond Jubilee at Royal Ascot last summer reminded everyone that he  could mix it in with the best on the turf and it would have been fascinating to see how connections would have marketed him as a stallion in the sense that he could have attracted a new niche of breeder with the focus on AW  racing - that of course would have been dependant on the sport itself not imploding through lack of funding.

One area in which last weekend was a reminder of, was that hostilities still exist towards the image of strung out animals finishing exhausted in testing ground. Those over a certain age will probably struggle to remember criticism on a similar level as to what you read now, either from journalists or posters on racing forums.

The first time I can remember the media having a dig at what has been forever a traditional sight in National Hunt racing was in the late 1990's when a couple of writers confessed that they much more preferred watching an AW race to a tiring slog over the sticks with the runners appearing to finish in slow motion.

Many stupidly make comparisons with the Battle of the Somme, which is not furthering the point they are trying to make. Records show that the most dangerous surface for jumpers to run on is firm ground. Horses travelling quicker, putting the shock absorbing tendons under strain on landing, with the falls more likely to result in a life ending injury.

One of the most unedifying spectacles came at the beginning of the old jumping seasons, which more often than not use to clash with the Saturday of Glorious Goodwood.

Cards littered with three and four runner fields run on going sometimes described as' hard ', horses commonly finishing lame, nothing to like at all. They eventually prohibited racing on such surfaces and not before time.

Whenever a Cheltenham Festival has a fatality total that raises concerns outside of the normal hostile bodies to the sport, the word 'soft' tends not to play a part in the going description.

It's ironic that the drainage installed forty years ago was an end product from the shortened, thirteen race 1975 Festival, which was staged in conditions so testing that it was questioned whether the final two days should have gone ahead after the Tuesday was abandoned.

They took the bails off after Ten Up won the Gold Cup on part waterlogged terrain but history tells us that there was not a single fatality at the meeting. Neither was there any losses from that comic strip Grand National won by Red Maurauder.

The old fashioned mud loving slogger, once part and parcel of the winter months, will soon be finding itself redundant if the image freaks have their way. And this will be part of a continuing, blinkered sanitation process, that will ultimately lead to the death of National Hunt racing as we know it.

image cc attribution Simone Bisotti

RACING SITS ON CRUMBLING FOUNDATIONS

The news that the average racecourse attendances for 2019 had again dropped when compared to the previous year should not have been unexpected. What the plain figures fail to translate is the true extent of the fall off in real engagement with the sport.

This is because the numbers are propped up by the theme meetings, summer Saturdays, and in vogue festivals. A truer barometer would have been to compare non -themed, weekday meetings only. I fear that comparing these attendances down the years would make grim reading.

These are the category of meetings attended in the main by racegoers who have horse racing as their number one sport. When they return home, the large majority of their punting will be on things equine as opposed to the plethora of other sports that your long session on the booze, summer Saturday attendees will speculate in rather than scanning the Sunday card at Ponty or the Monday evening one at Windsor.

If we accept that the figures would raise more alarm if those returned from the non- cult days were examined in isolation, then the situation becomes even gloomier when we ask why this is so.

The harsh truth must be repeated again and again, which is the percentage of horse racing fans amongst the generations under thirty five years of age, is massively lower than the generations before and that there is not enough of them to replace the genuine fans of the past as they become ill, infirm, and pass away.

And with a shortfall in funding due to racing's share of the betting pie decreasing, the sport will have no option other than to downsize.

In my area of employment, I have for many years been in a daily e-mail exchange of opinions with a colleague over sport, politics and 1970's television. I am dismayed by the fact that horse racing has changed for the worse. He holds similar sentiments over his first love, football.

He still retains his season ticket at a world famous club that has experienced a resurgence of fortune in recent years. He has been a regular at the games for forty five years, has lived three miles away from the stadium for his entire life, but feels his club is now just a franchise like Burger King and McDonalds.

He has attended less than half a dozen matches this season, even missing a showcase fixture with a famous club from a rival city for the first time since the 1970's, and will either sell his ticket at face value to people in work, or sell it back to the club at a loss.

When the latter happens he cites it as evidence that no locals are interested in the club anymore due to it being hijacked by the assortment of fictional characters he uses to state his case. Josh from Solihull, Jeremy from Cirencester, Cecil from Woking, Farquaar from Harrow, Seamus from Sligo, Fritz from Bonn, Jan from Oslo, Jason from Chicago and Ming from Singapore.

On the now rare occasions he attends, he sits quietly in his speck on the halfway line hoping his team get beat. He dearly hopes their fortunes will take a steep downturn, they get relegated, and that what he terms as the 'modern fanbase' evaporates, returning the club to the locals to re-build from scratch. He cringes when he hears what he refers to as 'numpties' singing continental sounding songs, and is dismayed that Sky portray football as not existing before the advent of the Premiership, with their presenters towing the line as they ' know what side their bread is buttered on.'

I told him that that such an eventuality would be most unlikely to occur in his lifetime. He disagreed,
 " Who would have thought United would get relegated six years after beating Benfica !," was his response, "And Leeds have taken two major nosedives since then...and what about Forest and Villa."

As part of his lone crusade, he has been travelling to watch games from lower leagues, watching home games at the likes of Wigan Athletic, Tranmere Rovers, Salford City, Preston North End and Fleetwood Town. He met some Rotherham fans while on holiday in Benidorm and confesses he was in awe of them. " I have so much respect for them," he enthused. " Faithful to their local club through good and bad times."

He also wishes to experience how the ' hijackers' or ' parasites' feel. Twelve months back he joined a members club of a mega rich, rival city club, who have been experiencing heady times. Being a member entitles him to apply by telephone for a season ticket in a short, few hour time period. He tried last summer but could not get through. He will make another attempt this close season.

His general rules on supporting a club are that you have to satisfy two criteria. Firstly, you have to be within close travelling distance, have ties with the locality and can't have passed by other clubs on the way to the ground; and secondly, you have to have paid into the club for many, many years. According to his rules, all of this criteria has to be satisfied.

As he is vehement in these views, they can sometimes upset people. A few years back a work colleague asked him to come down to the basement car park for a fight. He declined, saying he had no wish to put his job at risk but felt that this level of reaction vindicated his beliefs.

There are some parallels that can be drawn with racing and what he believes is happening to his football club. He talks of ' links' being broken in the sense that locals are unable to obtain tickets meaning fathers can't take sons to the game resulting in a new generation believing that it is normal for fans to support a team through a television set.

Racing is suffering because a link had been broken whereby the father would be in the household betting and watching horse racing. This has now been a rarity for some time now leaving a generation who have been brought up to link betting with football, who are now fathers themselves. Link terminally broke.

Whether racing's fans should wish for the sport to hit a crisis, downsize, then operate on a scale with a manageable fixture list, with theme meetings something of the past, I'm not so sure.

It probably will happen sooner rather than later but where you can't make comparisons with footbal is in the sense that while a football club can be reborn with a new stadium built on a different site, once a racecourse is lost to a housing project, as so nearly happened with Kempton, then it has gone for good.

One wish my controversial work colleague hopes will come true is for betting to be banned on football. He claims it's not in the spirit of his sport. Unfortunately, it is too late now for the sports betting explosion to be put back in the box. It's even more unfortunate for racing as such a circumstance would have been a positive game changer.

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