Yorkhill was impressive at Leopardstown© Photo Healy Racing
I once made No.51 in someone's online 'C--t of the Year' chart. Louis Walsh was 52. Joe Brolly was only 64 - what ya think of DAT! Did it constitute abuse? Hardly. There are a few within racing who'd have me Top Ten at least. I made the indulgent error of 'googling' myself and found out what some nut with time on his hands thought of me. So there's the tip for the boys and girls of the jockey's room: if you don't want to feel abused, don't go on social media. It's not renowned for kindness.
No doubt it's a generational thing; Millennials supposedly spend their lives straddling screens so jockeys are no different when it comes to corporate information-gathering platforms. And in a perfect world online anonymity wouldn't provoke ugly abuse as outlined by Tom Scudamore and others last week. But in the real world, for those in the public eye such as jockeys, the best course of action is surely not to engage with social media.
For many that would be like cutting off a hand, which is in itself perhaps a clue that they are attaching way too much weight to what the faceless and nameless think of them.
The reality remains that anyone complaining about online attention while still engaging with social media is a moron. And I'm quoting George Clooney on that, someone with more experience in plotting a path through unwanted public focus than just about anyone else on the planet.
Twitter sells itself as a communal exchange of information but for every 'Arab Spring' there are countless tiny confirmations of how so much of it is a resolutely self-obsessed 'Look At Me' exercise. Whatever the grandiose theory, it's usually about flogging something or someone. It's attention-seeking, and it doesn't really matter to those prepared to spew out vile anonymous crap what kind of attention it is. So why give it to them.
Long ago the newspaper rule with letters was simple: if they weren't signed, they were immediately binned. Now an industry has grown around facilitating this 'green ink' rubbish. But the decision to read it or not continues to be personal. Just turn off the tech.
For racing figures to get het up about whether or not to legally pursue these inadequates gives them a legitimacy they don't merit and trivialises online bullying and trolling which really does do damage to the really vulnerable. It comes across as precious. Everyone knows social media isn't home to the happy and content: if someone hasn't the mettle to put their name to something, it's worth nothing, so treat it as such.
And if anyone thinks it incongruous for someone scribbling a blog to be giving out about attention-seeking, I should firstly point out I don't do this for anything but money, which is cool; secondly I put my name to it; and thirdly the ratio of weirdos reading it is gratifying low - I think!
But enough of such foolishness and on to the much more serious. Rather than being about popularity, policing of any kind is both vital and thankless. But if kudos are deserved at the Turf Club for its preparedness to press home the largely circumstantial yet compelling case against those involved in the Like A Diamond matter, talk about a brave new era on the back of a new Rule 212 is already starting to sound a little hollow.
Central to the new running and riding rules is how horses are seen to a reasonable and informed member of the racing public to have run on its merits. It is official recognition that perception matters when it comes to the betting public. So officialdom has to be seen to take account of what jockeys are seen to do.
Saturday at Navan was the first National Hunt day the new rule was in force and it saw an enquiry into the running and riding of the Robert Tyner trained Pack Your Bags in a handicap hurdle. Explanations were noted. But if that justified an enquiry then the running and riding of Blackwater Bridge in the later handicap chase surely did too.
Maybe the horse is very moderate and maybe third was the best position it could have achieved whatever the circumstances. Maybe Denis O'Regan's riding style accentuated how Blackwater Bridge's effort looked. Maybe the jockey was inspired to get Blackwater Bridge as close as he did. In fact it may be as close as this animal ever gets to winning a race.
It's hard to believe though that every 'reasonable and informed member of the betting public' looked at it and concluded the ride didn't look notably quiet. Under the new regulations, at the very least it would have been appropriate for O'Regan to explain the circumstances he found himself in and have that explanation publicly reported.
But there wasn't a question asked. Criticising the failure to do so doesn't presuppose those involved did anything wrong. If they were questioned, no doubt the answers would have been satisfactory. However they weren't asked and in the new regulatory atmosphere they surely ought to have been. Instead the whole thing smacked of old-fashioned presumption that the public interest - no matter how reasonable and informed -remains mostly irrelevant.
Maybe that's an unfair perception. But since perception still doesn't seem to count for much it probably doesn't matter anyway. However it's early days and maybe the brave new world needs getting used to.
Presumably there were plenty out there who perceived 5-2 about Heartbreak City in Sunday's big handicap hurdle to be a reasonable bet. And a theoretical argument could be made that he was. It's always a pain though when reality doesn't conform to theory.
The punting reality was always that if the Melbourne Cup runner up went by the post a dozen lengths clear with his mouth open most shrewdies would have said fair play and still congratulated themselves on not having a shilling on him.
And it's worth betting that those same shrewdies are likely to pile into Yorkhill any time he gets a strong pace to pitch all that power and talent at.
