On Thursday of last week, a press release issued by the Racecourse Association (RCA) heralded the introduction of an ‘On Tour’ blog, which it described as, “a roving safari through the best, and worst, of Britain’s sports, retail and leisure venues.”
‘What a great idea,’ your correspondent thought, a rare, online diary that could develop into a must-read social commentary. I expected a clutch of perceptive observations made en route to the racecourse providing glimpses of how sport interacts with society.
After all, the raw material is potentially excellent – everywhere from Chepstow’s undulating run-in, set amongst beautiful countryside, to the contrasting road to Aintree, surrounded by anything but.
The diary could be a modern-day tour around Britain, its author asking local pubs, restaurants and hotels how they fare during, and outside of, race days; he, or she, could speak with locals and establish how many head to meetings and how frequently. Is it expensive? Do they enjoy it? The possibilities were endless.
Unfortunately however, I was barking up the wrong anthropological tree.
Instead of a penetrative snapshot of Britain and its longstanding love of horse racing, the RCA kick off with a promotional piece for the O2 Arena, the discredited Millennium Dome, and an introduction to the venue’s website which, it says, is: “Beautifully merchandised and thoroughly helpful.”
"Beautifully merchandised"?
Just where is the link to the sport of kings? Unless indoor racing is planned, there isn’t one. Next up on the RCA schedule is not the road to Ascot or Goodwood, but Twickenham, rugby’s HQ.
Horse racing has taken centre stage this week with those at the Cheltenham Festival enjoying their annual binge of betting and boozing.
Four days of racing, massive crowds and a town brimming with punters could form the basis of a novel, never mind an online blog; a description of how one extricates oneself from Cheltenham’s car park would account for two days at least.
The Festival remains one of horse racing’s crown jewels. Unlike meetings anchored by big-name races, such as the Derby or Grand National, the calibre of Cheltenham’s four-day card is consistently high.
To give some idea of how important the Festival is, consider the following: it attracted 219,263 paying punters last year. Throughout the whole of last March, on 106 other race days, only once, at Uttoxeter, were more than 10,000 people (13,411) attracted to a meeting. Attendances measured in hundreds were not rare.
Despite this often miserable showing, figures released recently by the RCA concluded that 2010 was a bumper year for racecourse attendance. The number of people going racing across the country rose for the second consecutive year, with average daily attendances up 3.4 per cent.
With the country slowly emerging from severe recession, racing appears to have maintained its appeal as an attractive, and occasionally cheap, day out. The RCA figures indicate a rise in total racecourse attendance of 0.9 per cent, despite a drop in the number of fixtures being staged.
