Racing must tear down age-old walls of secrecy
Alot of the anger from within racing directed at Irish trainer Gordon Elliott following “that photograph” this week has been for all the obvious reasons; for the disrespect it showed to a dead horse and because it is not how the vast majority behave.
But some of the anger was about the can of worms it opened, the spotlight it shone on the sport a fortnight before the Cheltenham Festival, and the awkward questions it raised.
That includes one which I do not think any racing jurisdiction has a statistic for: how many horses are fatally injured or have their physical imperfections exposed in training – as, apparently, did Morgan, the horse in the Elliott photo.
The world is a changed place. It is more than 100 years since our forefathers returned from a war in which a million horses died, and many of those which survived in good health were shot instead of being brought home, because it was cheaper.
We did not see the milkman’s carthorse keel over in the street, not many remember the ponies heading off for the pit and we live in an age when hunting vermin is not allowed. Values have changed and, in Britain, we are on the whole less rural and less agricultural than we were and more of us are once removed from dead animals.
Racing knows this and it also knows that if it is to survive into the 22nd century, it must have what the former chief executive of the British Horseracing Authority, Nick Rust, called a “social licence”. It must adapt, and that is happening.
No longer can it metaphorically operate behind 9ft brick walls with broken bottles on the top, in a bubble whereby someone comes to the bolted gate every now and again and announces to the outside world that everything is fine behind the walls. He then explains that he made that statement on the basis of no questions being allowed, retreats back through the gate, pulling the bolt across as he goes.
No question should be too awkward for racing to answer. Those walls now have to be glass and it has to be open all hours for
inspection. It is, unquestionably, racing’s job to turn over the stones before anyone else does.
Last year a trainer, Richard Phillips, came up with the idea of a national racehorse day or week, when trainers across the country would open their yards to the public for a sort of coffee morning with horses. The plan has been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic but it is in the pipeline, possibly for September.
If Elliott did receive any public relations advice last Sunday it was either pretty poor or it was naive; forget putting out a statement at 10.30pm on a Sunday night, trying to put the photograph “into context” was a mistake.
And though, on the whole, newspapers were less interested in the video of jockey Rob James which surfaced on Tuesday because he was not a big name, had Elliott put out a similar statement
to the amateur jockey at 10.30am on Sunday morning we might not be quite where we are now.
Elliott probably does not need any further amateur PR advice but I am going to offer it anyway. When this is all over, he has served his ban or paid his fine or whatever the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board decides to do today and, hopefully, some sort of a line has been drawn under it, he should draw up a list of the non-racing sports journalists who have got stuck into him this week.
He should then invite them for a one-on-one tour of Cullentra House and show them how he really treats the horses, the facilities, the stables that have both indoor and outside areas, the spas, the solariums, everything. If his critics are real people they will go. It might not change their minds about the sport but it might change their minds about him.
Values have changed, we are less rural and more of us are once removed from dead animals