In the week that the world lost Pete Seeger, it is an appropriate time to ask of executives who know nothing about what they are doing 'when will they ever learn'. Having taken all the terrestrial television rights to horse racing, Channel 4 hand it over to some theorists who promptly ruin it. Yes, the 'hardcore', as The Observer call them, probably do watch on At the Races and Racing UK but horse racing has long been divorced from other sports ever since a trip to Haydock or Catterick was not included in Grandstand, in among the rally car races or indoor athletics with Ray Smedley gradually disappearing off the pace, or with John Rickman, doffing his trilby, and Lord Oaksey, when he was sober enough, introducing the ITV Seven.
The world has certainly moved on and horse racing has become more of a niche but the audience have voted with their remote control buttons against the soi-disant 'slick' Nick Luck and the eminently dull form book student, Jim McGrath. Personally, I like Graham Cunningham but there is too much of a feel of bland seriousness about the enterprise now and although I'm sure Claire Balding knows a lot about horses and is a consummate broadcaster, she fails to say much that I need to know.Oh, where are they now. John Francome was 'the greatest jockey', the gifted and knowledgeable horseman, and McCririck was the modern age buffoon redolent of racecourse weirdos like old Prince Monolulu. But you win some and you ose some. At least we lost Derek Thomson.
I watched a race in a betting shop last year, it might have been the year before. Tommo had been allowed to commentate on Musselburgh on a quiet Tuesday. The odds on favourite had been waited with at the back before coming to join the leader at the last, quite clearly on the bridle and due to win by ten lengths or more, while the pacemaker's jockey was reduced to throwing everything at his tiring mount.
And Tommo raises excitement to fever pitch by exclaiming, 'It's neck and neck!'
And the bloke next to me turns round and says, 'that wasn't really neck and neck, was it.'
And I said, 'no, but Tommo hasn't had a clue about horse racing ever since I can remember.'
And so all it is, really, is another modern day fable of failure by consultants, marketing people and executives to understand what it is they are in charge of. It is the X Factor factor, the reductio ad mediocritem, the downgrading of something that didn't need messing with by people who didn't know.
You can turn to At the Races if you want but on a quiet night even that can be more about Jason Weaver bickering with Luke Harvey while a floodlit programme of low grade handicaps from Wolverhampton doesn't give them enough to talk about. Some of us remember when the England cricket team thought it might be a good idea to bring back Colin Cowdrey and Brian Close to face the West Indies. So perhaps we should ask Peter O'Sullevan, soon to be 96 years old, and posh spiv, Old Harrovian, Julian Wilson to come back and save horse racing on television.
