This is an emergency. It cannot wait, believe me. If racing is to hold its place in public affection, let alone increase its popularity, it must make a priority of remedying its absurdly indifferent attitude to Easter. That means putting on more and better cards than the present modest mix. And it means racing on Good Friday.
Already, I sense I am ducking metaphorical rotten tomatoes from many racing professionals. Why mess with a single free day, they will plead? And what about the annual Good Friday Open Days that bring new people into the sport? Both questions are simply dealt with.
The answer to the first is that almost any other day of the year would represent a more sensible blank for racing than Good Friday. Only on New Years Day – when Cheltenham and other tracks ritually break crowd records – do you find so many people lost for something to do. The advantage of Good Friday is that fewer are hiding with hangovers.
Until last year, the law of the land prevented betting shops from opening, but the repeal of that legislation has created a marketing opportunity that racing has so far failed to grasp.
Administrators seem reluctant to press for fixtures, sheltering beneath the convenient smokescreen of those admirable occasions in Lambourn and Middleham. Smokescreen? I can hear the blustering as it is pointed out that these enduring events attract thousands, mainly families, and spread the racing gospel while raising significant sums for charity. Indeed they do, and forcing their end would be counter-productive.
But why must race meetings and Open Days be mutually exclusive? Why not make an additional virtue of the showcases by putting on local fixtures later in the day? Surely that is not too lateral for the tramline thinking of too many in this sport?
Each Open Day could start at 10am, with stables remaining open until lunchtime. Those who wished to stay for any afternoon events – which tend towards the fte and fairgound – could still do so but there would be an alternative attraction of a genuine race meeting down the road.
Newbury, 15 minutes from Lambourn, could put on a mixed meeting of decent quality. Catterick is the local track to Middleham and might expect a record crowd if they cashed in with a similar card. Each fixture should start racing no earlier than 3pm to allow the Open Day audience time to come on. Double tickets, admitting to both venues, could also be promoted by the two racecourses.
It really isnt difficult. And anyone raising the customary complacent protest that the present arrangement works perfectly well needs to look themselves in the mirror and then absorb the attendance figures from tracks such as Plumpton and Towcester yesterday.
Easter is a natural opportunity for racing to market itself beyond its customary audience and it is not only on Good Friday that it is failing. The turf Flat season is supposedly two weeks old, yet there was only one meeting on the level on Saturday – staged on Kemptons all-weather track, of all things – and one yesterday.
John Gosden, perhaps the most articulate of all Flat trainers, is disgusted by the offering. The population of Britain is having a four-day holiday but look at what those in authority, in their wisdom, have put on, he said.
The British Horseracing Authority will claim that its hands are tied unless racecourses want the fixtures. But it is time for firmer leadership, for going public with what it believes necessary. A critical rebranding exercise for racing is under way and negotiations for the 2010 fixture list are about to start. The wasting of Easter should be high on the agenda of both.
