Sport distilled to its raw essence of racing and betting

For dedicated punters, Galway Races was better with no people, writes Declan Lynch

IF you’re a maker of TV dramas or movies, this is a particularly poignant time to be alive. In theory at least, the world had finally come right for you — there were no people out there, getting in your way when you were trying to make your masterpiece. There was no traffic to be diverted, none of the usual intrusions of everyday life.

Usually if you want to make a film on the streets of New York city, you have a lot of arrangements to make, a lot of logistics. Now at last there was none of that stuff to worry about: the city was authentically deserted; you could have made any movie you wanted — if you had a movie to make.

Now the great cities of the world which normally ‘resemble a film set’, were actually cleared of all the regular impediments to that ideal.

Alas, at the very moment when all the world indeed became a stage, all the players were forbidden to make their entrances and exits, though eventually the football players and the players of golf and the horse-players were able to perform in their usual arenas, albeit mainly for a TV audience.

Indeed last week’s renewal of the Galway Races brought up some of these agonising issues which have never confronted us before — like the tree falling in the forest with nobody there to hear it, can you say that the Galway Races has happened if there are no actual people at it?

No paying punters anyway, just the essential workers, including the RTE crew of Hugh Cahill and Jane Mangan and Ted or Ruby Walsh, each of them standing at a podium like the candidates in a Presidential TV contest, but with a higher standard of argument, of course.

Certainly you had a race meeting, and it was being held in Galway, but if the multitudes are conspicuous by their absence, if there aren’t even any bookies at the track, does this constitute the Galway Races, as such?

One for the philosophers there — and indeed for some of the aficionados, this was perhaps a better Galway Races than the actual Galway Races. Because it pains them so when they are distracted from the gravity of their business by talk of food and fashion, by supposedly ‘heartwarming’ stories which do not warm their hearts at all.

No, it sends a chill through them when they see interviews with random punters who are only there for a laugh, and want to send greetings to their people at home in Two-Mile Borris. And as for the excitement of Ladies Day… for them, there is the opposite of excitement.

Therefore, to have nothing but the raw essence of the horse-racing itself, and the even rawer essence of betting on them, would for some viewers be a boon.

Of course, these viewers are not normal people, as such, and we must forgive them in their brokenness. Yet they have waited all their lives for this de-peopled Galway, so we can allow them to enjoy it on this one occasion — and just hope to God that they won’t be enjoying the same again next year.

We must also hope with all the fervour in our souls that the de-peopled Premier League which finished last Sunday will soon be bringing us the real noises of real crowds, but we must not understate the magnitude of the achievement which we have witnessed for the last few weeks.

As we argued so fiercely in this column, elite sports — and football in particular — are the perfect environment in which to attempt some sort of a return to TV life as we knew it. These people are supervised so intensely, and tested so rigorously at the best of times, and they are so rich, they really do live in the kind of isolation you need for an experiment like this.

And there is something for the philosophers here too: they are enjoying the paradox whereby fans of Liverpool who despise the Tories must pay tribute to prime minister Boris Johnson, whose disregard for human life helped to create the conditions in which the restart of the Premier League could be contemplated.

After that, the superior standards which prevail in sports in general were able to bring it all back home.

Yes, even in the time of coronavirus, it is to footballers and jockeys that we turn for leadership, for visions of professionalism and seriousness — not least because when we turn to CNN, we see this headline at the bottom of the screen: “Trump praises doctor who warns of alien DNA, sex with demons”.

Really, there’s no contest.