I was going to expand a bit on my thoughts for crowd generation from the last blog. Then racing took a massive blunderbuss and aimed it fairly and squarely at its own feet. We'll be lucky not to lose a stack more now.
To paraphrase Lady Bracknell, to lose 1 meeting is unfortunate, to lose 3 appears careless.
Generally speaking Friday nights and weekend meetings bring out your more casual punter. Your more "one a year" punter- usually the same meeting every year. Your punter who has other leisure interests but might pop a long with their mates. They might not pop along again. Weekend racing isn't especially cheap as has been mentioned in the press and on social media fairly relentlessly, and racing is facing the very real prospect of significantly reduced crowds at weekends if they don't get creative and do it now before it's too late. But this week sees a massive rearguard action required just to stem the outflow further. 3 meetings abandoned in 4 days and punter dissatisfaction must be enormous. How can you trust a day out with your mates in glorious sunshine when that glorious sunshine still can't prevent unsafe ground? Racing this week has been an unsafe prospect for the Great British Public to part with their (currently very) hard earned cash with no compensation automatically refunded in 2 of the 3 cases.
I don't know how preventable these instances were and whether there was fault there. I'm not knowledgeable enough or informed enough to give an opinion. What I do know (sorry to labour the point) is that we, as an industry, simply cannot allow this type of thing to happen if we think we will attract, or even retain, our customer base. 4 races, no refund- perfectly legitimate but perfectly short termist.
I was at a meeting that was abandoned several years ago now. Nothing anyone could do- torrential rain- mudbath- impossible to race. 4 races were run and the racecourse chose not to refund which they were perfectly entitled to. That meeting still sticks out now as the biggest crowd collapse year on year of all the meetings at that racecourse. People remember- we should not forget that.
Take the Ayr Gold Cup which was abandoned in 2017... 2016 crowd 12097
2018 crowd 10105
2019 crowd 10104
Coincidence? And there wasn't even a controversy about refunds as it just didn't take place at all. Lose the trust, lose the crowd. Incidentally this was at a time when the crowd for Scottish National in April was on the increase. In fairness the crowd was around 11000 in 2021 but benefited from a post pandemic "bounce"- this year's figures will be interesting.
We need to prevent the preventables- I'm guessing we haven't this week.
Let's get onto the, abridged, betting report
1) 7 losers, 2 winners. Count them... 7 losers. Even our mate Swanny thought we'd only have 5 or 6. We lost on the 11/1 winner Vazire, though our SP was 12/1. Maybe that's why we lost. Sticking plaster applied in the form of the unlaid forecast but a mere winning drop in the ocean of defeat.
2) 3 losers right smack bang in the middle- Pepper Steak, Red Showgirl (obvs) and Princess Shabnam who looked the winner until favourite Origintrail got up close to home to give us a win and wipe out the loss from the 1st.
3) Old Port our loser for our "half of what we take" rule/guideline plus a couple of smaller losers (Chase The Dollar and Heart of Soul which gave me the T'Pau earworm for the rest of the day). Another favourite, Spirit Mixer was the winner and places were kind so we were set for a good run at the remainder of the day. Little were we to know...
4) Two liabilities in at the top of the market (Boardman- small and Fools Rush In- bigger) plus Humanitarian at the bottom which I had to have a quid back on to get within liability- my only bet back of the day I think. Boardman won, but the places were kind and we ended up all square for a tiny win overall.
And that was that. I felt sorry for the announcer who had the task of jollying up Punchestown on the big screen which he attempted to with commendable enthusiasm but lost a few brownie points in the "reading the room" stakes.
The pro team at Cartmel, fortunately for us, had a decent day so all was not lost and we move on to Kelso tomorrow. Until then...
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