In another life, doing work for the now defunct Australian Jockey Club in Sydney, we were taught many a salutary lesson about using racing’s non-human participants to promote the game.
Tell everyone to get out to the races to see such and such a champion and there’s nothing surer than Such And Such goes over and people aren’t happy.
It’s one of the trickiest aspects of the sporting side of racing that running a campaign, any campaign, on the personalities has to angle towards jockeys.
Promoting sport by any of its participants can be fraught with danger – ask any code of football – in this new world of instant and universal scrutiny by millions.
Jockeys, too, are flesh and blood but they do know what’s expected, while horses will, through no fault of their own, let the side down and even stump up a message that is the antithesis of positive.
And in two places in two days, we’ve now had that lesson rolled out again with huge public relations flops.
Rather than protest about something hard, like human trafficking or torture or terrorism – which might bite them back hard – animal activists choose a softer target.
It was in poor taste and the billboard ordered removed, but to have that actually happen in the Melbourne Cup for a second year running and this time to the horse carrying the most money in bets, and therefore more attention, has handed the activists the next round.
Closer to us here, or farther away depending on how you want to frame it, it was good to see the Jockey Club on the front foot over Rich Tapestry’s ignominious defeat in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint.
.The horse did, like many everywhere, have a history of finishing races with blood in his throat if not a full bleeding attack. It’s a problem which lasix is believed to assist, but the Jockey Club asked connections of Rich Tapestry to race him lasix free, as is the Hong Kong way, even though permitted to use it under US rules.
He won his lesser lead-up race without it and problem free, but colleague Michael Cox last week asked the ugly question in his Happy Lucky Dragon Win blog – what if it all goes pear-shaped in the big one?
His first-up win as a relative outsider made Rich Tapestry a very warm favourite to win the main event, and, in the grand tradition of these things, that seemed to make a problem more likely. I don’t know, it just works that way.
And so it transpired.
Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges
Director of Racing Bill Nader stood strong and reaffirmed the club’s policies, regardless, and chief executive Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges has used his blog space on the Jockey Club site to address it intelligently, too.
And that’s the right approach. One instance where a more relaxed stance might, or might not, have made the difference should never be enough to be second-guessing what is actually more deeply rooted than mere policy. It’s a belief system.
It seems the Yanks didn’t run with the opportunity to kick the sand back, at least publicly, since they had enough headlines running after a protest controversy in their main race and their top female jockey pregnant and heading for shock retirement after winning her Breeders’ Cup.
But rest assured, anyone who was thinking about Rich Tapestry reversing form from first to last, throat this time filled up with blood and mud, they weren’t thinking about anything but lasix, rightly or wrongly.
– Andrew Aitken, www.scmp.com
