Racing ought to distance itself from gambling in wake of community backlash
Reality TV, good heavens! If you want reality TV, watch the last nine holes of a golf tournament or have a bet on a horse race and watch that.
But watch that, ideally, without some corporate bookmaker ramming an inane message down your throat. Please.
If you accept the original premise, then corporate bookmaker advertising is the greatest blight on the history of television. Nobody wants, nor enjoys it.
It’s destined to go the same way as cigarette advertising and I really can’t believe that the bookies and various media outlets did not/cannot see it coming.
That is the preliminary step of the NSW government to tighten controls on the advertising, especially on the promotion of ‘inducements’.
It prompted various and interesting reactions including a lengthy comment piece on Racing.com (Racing Victoria’s media arm) which appeared under the heading of “Media, Bookies Unite Against Gambling Ad Ban.”
A veritable call to arms it would seem which is hardly surprising given the bookie’s advertising spend on Racing.com and in publications like Best Bets and Winning Post which Racing Victoria paid huge overs for a couple of years ago.
There is a growing community backlash against gambling and the racing industry ought to be distancing itself from the broad spectrum of gambling. Betting is just one element of horse racing and not insidious as it is in so many other areas.
I’ll be surprised if a blanket ban does not eventuate so the racing industry ought to be looking at other revenue streams and the bookie’s other PR strategies. Perhaps some racecourses could even revert to their true names.
This issue has coincidentally flared this week in the lead-up to the Golden Slipper which some might argue is the greatest blight on the history of horse racing in this country. That’s me, of course, just being a touch mischievous.
They’re about the same age. Mainstream television was launched on 16 September 1956 in Sydney with the Nine Network station TCN-9-Sydney. The first Slipper was run almost seven months later, on 6 April, 1957.
The Slipper’s primary architect was George Ryder who was accused of putting on a race to suit the progeny of speed sire Newtown Wonder who stood at his Woodlands Stud. As it turned out, Newtown Wonder produced no Slippers winners while Baramul Stud’s Star Kingdom sired the first five Golden Slipper winners.
A $3,500,000 dash for skeletally immature, young horses remains an obscene notion for many – bar winning connections.
Nonetheless the Slipper has become a great event in much the same ilk as the Melbourne Cup. It’s fair to say the nay-sayers got it wrong back in the 1950’s.
I particularly loved this gem from the Illawarra Mercury back in 1953 – “The Sydney Turf Club’s naive and nebulous scheme to promote a £20,000 race for two-year-olds has naturally enough been received with less than wild enthusiasm by breeders. And it will take some high-grade selling from the club to convince anyone that the whole thing has any virtue.”
Naive and nebulous! Wow. Don’t get racing journalism like that any more. So, Ryder did indeed have his work cut out!
The Mercury continued with a few other gems including that the payment scheme from the time of a mare’s mating represented a gamble that “would create a deep blush on even a bookmaker’s face” and that the plan “has as many holes in it as an unlucky Chicago gunman”.
“It’s a safe bet that it will find its way into breeders’ waste baskets,” The Mercury asserted. Hmm.
Further, the paper suggested that “if the club can sell the idea, it will need to add to its clerical staff. This, however, shouldn’t daunt the STC who could overcome the staff problem by offering a job to anyone who is prepared to bring his own wages.”
I’m not sure, to be frank, as to where the modern Slipper sits. But I would say, that in the past 30 years, only one winner Pierro could be mentioned in the same breath as earlier winners including Manikato, Luskin Star, Bounding Away, Sir Dapper, Toy Show, Baguette, Todman, Tontonan, Skyline, Sky High, Fine And Dandy and Storm Queen.
It was then a cavalcade of stars. Mind you there were ways and means then of keeping a horse going which you cannot implement now.
Ryder, as it turns out, was appointed to the STC board by the NSW premier William McKell. This was done so on the recommendation of trainer Maurice McCarten which brings us to this year’s Golden Slipper as Written By’s breeder and co-owner Neville Begg worked for McCarten for 22 years before training in his own right from 1967.
The Slipper was, until 1980, a source of frustration for the widely admired and eminently likeable Begg. From 1968 until 1979, Begg had had 18 Golden Slipper runners for three minor placegetters and his starters had included very highly fancied contenders – the much spruiked Special Girl who, as it turned out, couldn’t match it with Vain and Sufficient who was runner-up to Hartshill.
The tide turned in 1980 when Begg, training appropriately enough from stables named Baramul Lodge, won the Slipper with Dark Eclipse who’d begun the campaign as a clear second stringer to stablemate Fiancee.
Begg, with his son Grahame at the training helm, now looks to have more than a decent chance of winning the race again with the unbeaten Written By.
The perception is that the rain affected track might bring the “swoopers” into play but recent evidence does not support this. Only one of the past five wet track Slipper winners drew wider than 11 and none of them swept down the outside to win. She Will Reign made her run inside; Mossfun hugged the rails; Overreach raced on the fence before easing out in the straight while Phelan Ready and Sebring both cut through inside horses to run on.
Written By is perfectly drawn in four and doesn’t have to lead, he can stalk the speed. And he is proven on soft ground which was the case with the aforementioned five horses. I think he’ll win. I hope he does for the Beggs. Aylmerton the danger.