With all the inevitability of a favourite getting stuffed, another gimmick to supposedly make racing more relevant to a younger audience has been floated. The horses can’t talk so the plan is to sell the game through their riders.
Never mind plentiful evidence of how sticking a microphone in front of the horse might yield more insight than if it’s pointed at the jockey, “morkoting” types have looked at other sports and opted for “personality” as an original concept.
A dozen top flat jockeys, including Ryan Moore and Frankie Dettori - although curiously nobody Irish - have signed up to a league due to start next year. It will see them compete for points in up to 10 events at some of the world’s top tracks.
It doesn’t want for quality. New Zealand-born James McDonald is on board, as is Japanese racing’s most renowned figure, Yutaka Take. So too are Brazil’s “Magic Man” João Moreira and Irad Ortiz, the top US-based rider.
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“We have watched the success of other sports take the power of their athletes and build them into global icons, with the outcome being a whole new generation of fans that now feel a deeper human connection with the athletes,” the bumf says.
“The concept we have developed with our foundation jockeys is designed around following a similar model to other sports and we’re delighted that the world’s best jockeys have come together to drive this change in the way our sport is marketed to the next generation fan.”
Not for the first time, the Netflix series Drive to Survive has a lot to answer for. A conspicuously successful look behind the scenes in F1 keeps spawning less quality variations such as ITV’s stilted talking heads series, Full Gallop.
Significantly, in this case it seems the jockeys will own equity and be shareholders in the league concept. The aim is to secure total prize funds of $15 million (€13.3 million) within a couple of years through commercial partners.
It suggests assurance about their own attraction to both sponsors and audiences. If the concept looks little more than a variant on the jockey’s challenge concept that’s been around for decades then it is at least an attempt at an ambitious upgrade.
Crucial to success will be a media hard-sell. Inevitably Dettori seems to be front and centre. The Italian is firmly in the veteran stage of his career, but is a seasoned performer when it comes to selling himself.
Dettori is also a rare example in the modern era of a jockey with a distinctive image piercing the wider public consciousness.
Hong Kong-based riders Vincent Ho and Zac Purton are familiar with widespread popular attention, too, although the idea of the taciturn Moore undergoing media training to emote on cue is one to relish.
However, at heart the pitch smacks of a fundamental insecurity in the sport itself and its wider public appeal, particularly in this part of the world.
Dire warnings about how racing is on the skids when it comes to the next generation are nothing new. Neither are silver-bullet attempts to renew the old game’s popular appeal, almost all of which fail to hit the board never mind any bullseye.
Britain’s recent racing league contorted the sport’s basic nature into a team structure complete with bells and whistles from other arenas, to which the public response was mostly indifference.
Practically no other major sport mixes such a cocktail of self-importance and self-consciousness. It ties itself into knots about this stuff when the truth remains now, as ever, that you simply either get racing or you don’t.
Different aspects of it grab different people. For many it’s betting. For some it’s the horses themselves. To others it’s the social aspect. And there are those for whom their favourite jockey is like someone else’s favourite footballer.
But those bitten by the racing bug are mostly in thrall to the overall package. It doesn’t do to be complacent about the next generation. No sector or business gets to opt out of the job of selling itself. But enough of countless generations before have got it, and the safe bet is the same can continue if racing concentrates on getting its basics right rather than resorting to gimmickry.
There is a role for variations on the jockey challenge theme. But racing’s prime way of engaging with any audience, young or old, is to make it the best version of itself in substantial terms, aiming to be as straight and clean and equitable as possible.
Much of the motivation behind contrivances like this latest idea is to simplify things for any new audience that might be out there. The problem for those charged with flogging the sport is that it’s horse racing and its central characters are more Garbo than gabby. That can make it a tough sell to any floating audience.
It also means there is a complexity to racing that ultimately is at the core of its appeal. Audiences either get that or they don’t. It’s like checkers or chess; more people can play the simpler game, but chess buffs tend to be devotees for life. Get enough of them and relevance is assured at any age.
Something for the Weekend
Haydock hosts a rare mixed card on Saturday. Trainer Alan King crosses the codes and is in rare form at present including with a bumper success at the Punchestown festival. He has two in the Swinton Hurdle. BIG BOY BOBBY (1.35) could relish the quick conditions more than most.
Later at Haydock, Frankel’s half-brother, Kikkuli, lines up for Listed contest, although he is up against an old rival in TIBER FLOW (3.55), who is proven over course and distance as well as ground.
