Quality Racing Actually Matters Sometimes

All eyes can now focus on the upcoming Christmas action — Friday’s unloved Dundalk fixture apart — when tradition has it that even those with no interest in the sport go racing on St Stephens Day. The cartoon is that these once-a-year racegoers cram in to Leopardstown in particular and are barely aware of horses outside. And that may be true. It’s reassuring though how Christmas attendance figures indicate how the quality of the actual racing can matter sometimes.

Stark evidence of how quality racing doesn’t correspond to crowd figures is ample on the flat: and St Stephens Day at Leopardstown is often presented as evidence of the same phenomenon over the winter. But attendance numbers don’t back that up.

In fact the St Stephens Day crowd at the Dublin track has slipped noticeably, from 14,802 in 2013, down to 12,815 a year later, and continued its slide again last year to 11,844. It was a notably bad day weather-wise a year ago although rubbish weather on December 26 isn’t exactly unknown. However it was still notably short of the Day 2 tally of 17,431 - Paddy Power day - and 16,466 came on Day 3 for the Lexus. Day 4 has always been something of a relative after-thought.

Attendance figures are an unreliable indicator of public interest and many pay them no heed in terms of totting up customers paying through the gate. Sceptics will arch an eye at how the Paddy Power day crowd is so large, no doubt pointing out the sizable amount of ‘freebies’ floating around. Leopardstown officials respond that such tickets are actually paid for by sponsors before being distributed so ‘freebie’ isn’t absolutely correct although whether such a technicality is relevant to those getting tickets is debatable.

Much more reassuring are continuing impressive attendance figures for Lexus day. It seems the prospect of a high class and competitive staying chase can still bring out Irish race fans in numbers. A vintage race like the 2012 classic won by Tidal Bay is impossible every year but it does seem that the actual line up matters to genuine racing enthusiasts.

That wouldn’t make any impression on many of the St Stephens Day crowd. It is after all much more of a social occasion for them. And quite why their figures are sliding, when so much effort is being put into attracting the uncommitted to racing, could be another subject for another day. But it’s almost heart-warming how a straightforward racing factor can influence who chooses to go racing. All that’s required now is some star quality, like, say, Valseur Lido V Djakadam.

A lot has been made of Brian Kavanagh drafting documents - including the 2009 advertisement for his own job as Horse Racing Ireland’s chief executive - for others to sign off on. And the way this whole matter has played out, that is a ridiculous state of affairs. But ultimately it’s ridiculous because the state guidelines on CEO’s serving just one term in a semi-state body weren’t followed. And that’s the responsibility of those doing the signing off.

It would have been better if, for instance, an official in the Department of Agriculture had drafted a spec’ for the CEO job: but as anyone who has tried to navigate racing’s bureaucratic snake-pit will confirm, almost every query to the department ultimately winds up being referred back to HRI. It is after all why HRI is there, to oversee racing. And that last thing government wants is to have to babysit the babysitters.

So the on-the-ground reality is that no one else in HRI was going to draw up a job spec’ even if someone was prepared to shuffle deckchairs for appearances sake. Does anyone seriously believe some HRI underling was going to do that? And this sort of situation is probably common in most organisations, although it is ironic that Kavanagh’s pitch contained a reference to how scandal-free his tenure had been.

That it has all blown up in HRI’s face means such detail is getting forensically examined. However the root problem in all of this is that racing’s brass didn’t play the semi-state game. They believed the one-term guideline didn’t apply to them and didn’t even stop at two terms, instead ploughing on for three without even going through the motions of advertising.

The potential impact of this on Kavanagh’s authority will be fascinating because there appears to be no painless way of resolving this issue in any way. But focussing on who drew up what document and when is a side-issue. Brass gets paid for signing off, not drawing up. That’s the same at billionaire boardroom level down to a GP signing off on a prescription. It’s the nature of responsibility. Put your name to it and you carry the can, for good or bad. Or you do in the real world. Clearly racing continues to exist in a parallel universe.

It’s not just Irish racing which is out there when it comes to bureaucratic cock-ups. It was some gymnastic feat for the BHA to annoy EVERYONE over the Jim Best affair but they’ve managed it. All that’s left now is for Best’s wife to take over the licence and the cocktail will be complete. And maybe the fault is in some obscure definition of a rule that requires rewriting but the real impact will be that no jockey is likely to ever again ‘fess up in the way that Paul John did.

That he did in the first place was near-miraculous. By doing so he was all but writing off any chance of a future riding career and while the odds were that wouldn’t have been a headline career anyway it was still a major step. The idea of something similar happening here, in a much smaller racing jurisdiction, where everyone is mostly one step separated from someone else, is hard to imagine but it must be near-impossible now.

And finally, now that racing here is all flush again, with record prizemoney levels announced for 2017, can whoever decided to stop employing big-screens in front of the stands reverse their decision: sure it’s far from how we were reared but far from being a decoration they have quite rightly come to be regarded by many punters as an essential for major meetings. They do show us actual racing.