Whipping up a storm
Only racing can conspire to turn something that was supposed to be a PR win into a PR loss.
Richard Hughes dramatic news last night merely highlights and drives forward what racing will be talking about this weekend. Forgot the wonderful racing at Ascot on Saturday or the fact that Cheltenham is on the cards today. Everybody will be talking about the whip.
Steve at Mull it Over, sort of sums up the mood in racing at the moment. He also seems to confirm what I mentioned on Monday in that form will be really jumbled up in the short term while these changes work their way through.
I’m not well educated enough on the use of the whip to give you a firm judgement. But I can see why it is used in racing, and also what racing is trying to address. I do wonder whether education is a key component missing from racing? I didn’t really have much of a clue about racing when I first started to get involved but slowly learnt the ropes. For a complete novice it must be daunting.
Maybe good promotion and education, maybe through shared ownership, would help racing’s cause? From an outside viewpoint, at the moment there is too much of a gap between the core of the sport, the authorities that run it and new people getting interested in it. That has to change for racing to move forward.
Category: Horse Racing
