If you weren’t among the 50 000 fortunate on-course spectators to have witnessed Past Master’s brilliant win in Saturday’s J&B Met, then you would have been one of the minority couple of million who would have had to sit through surely one of the worst feature race broadcasts ever. A bored looking panel dominated by foreign bodies and a distinctly disinterested Darren Scott, coupled with technical issues, made for a forgettable day on the couch. If only Gone With The Wind was showing on the classic channel, I would have switched allegiances, without hesitating.
Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn! A famous line from the classic 1939 movie where the debonair Rhett Butler tells the lovely Scarlett O’Hara to take a long walk off a short pier. There are some parallels here with the disdainful attitude and chaotic approach to the veritable goldmine that should be horseracing television, adopted by the hapless Butlers in Rivonia. I am really very confused as to who should be held responsible for the mess that is our racing television product. On Saturday we had Mnet Supersport and Tellytrack broadcasting simultaneously. If the product is the intellectual property and product of the racing operators, then shouldn’t they also be doing something about it? While strong management is patently lacking, the Tellytrack boys should perhaps also grab a wake-up call and start appreciating who pays their salaries – and their all-expenses paid trips to the Grade 1 races all over South Africa. I notice the ever reliable Sheldon Peters was on Gauteng duty this weekend. Who paid Sheldon’s travel and accommodation costs while the Johannesburg boys partied in Cape Town? I challenge anybody involved in horseracing anywhere to justify this ridiculous staffing policy of allowing the tail to wag the dog, while Rome burns.
FLAT CAPE
My first thought. If horseracing is the sport of the people, what on earth happened to the SABC and why have we alienated the free-to-air broadcaster in favour of the elitist and money-mongering DSTV show that is Supersport? There are certain bad losers crying about the pace and the Cape crawl in the Met itself. The race is history and this non-entity debate grabs centimetres more newspaper space than the really important issue – that we will never get the game to the masses in this manner and the irony here for me was that a man of colour owned a J&B Met winner for the first time in its more than a century of colourful tradition. A defining moment of history and marketing opportunity lost. What a pleasure to see the successful entrepreneur and horseracing’s own Moses, Hassen Adams, proudly and emotionally talking from the winner’s podium to ‘his community’, as he put it. With the SABC broadcasting the show the moving acceptance speech may well have gone out to the millions of the less fortunate and underprivileged on the Cape Flats and the windswept reaches beyond the Vlakte. It is a strongly held belief that the Indian community in KZN are the racing fanatics and lifeblood that keep the game ticking over. If we want to talk colour bluntly, then let me opine that the Cape Coloured community is not far behind. There is just less disposable income and a helluva lot more poverty down South.
COMIC
The Met afternoon broadcast was a comic litany of technical issues and problems. First a lightning bolt struck at the Rivonia studios apparently. We lost pictures for what seemed an eternity and then the picture returned – sans the audio. An act of God and nobody to blame but why no apologies via a notice? Nothing. The sound resurfaced again two hundred meters into the Cape Derby. Then the general sound at Kenilworth, not for the first time this season, was ridiculously sub-standard for much of the afternoon. Just listen to a replay of the Met. Think back also to the previous weekend’s feature with Mike Bass and Marsh Shirtliff looking like mime artists in a silent movie. And the Queen’s Plate? Jehan Malherbe’s commentary could also hardly be heard and he sounded like he was standing talking into a loudhailer in the Cango Caves. The Met runners went to post out of order – on camera anyway – and the camerawork was substandard and shaky. Then the bored panel chaired by Just Plain Barren Darren Scott and assisted by the polished SKY television’s David Raphael and an English woman –whose name nobody at any of Tellytrack or Gold Circle could tell me – had to shout above a horrible banging drumming type noise. What Darren Scott knows about racing is questionable and he looked irritated for much of the broadcast. Why incur costs and promote outsiders and foreigners on a prime day at the expense of excellent local talent like our own star man, Dave Mollett and the knowledgeable Shaheen Shaw? Can we ever imagine the Hong Kong Jockey Club dumping their regulars in favour of one of our guys at even a Mickey Mouse raceday there? No way, Jose!
I also ask myself whether a measure of incompetence at Tellytrack or friction overrides professional delivery of the Western Cape product via our channel 232? Readers may recall that I reported in last week’s Sporting Post (issue 1699) on the poorly communicated Kenilworth ninth race objection of Saturday 22 January when the Steyn-trained Eagle Squadron had won and where Tellytrack viewers were left in the dark. Following the publication of this article, I had a phone call from Gold Circle Western Cape Regional Executive Mike Greeff, who, to his utter and refreshing credit, was keen to set the record straight, despite, as he put it, ‘ it not being his or Gold Circle’s policy to enter into slanging matches in the press.’
TATA DATA
Mr Greeff pointed out that his Raceday Duty Manager Theresa Esplin had called Tellytrack seconds after the Stipes’ notification to them of the objection – this in itself was only moments after the race – and she had spoken to Matthew in the data room and given him the details. When she observed that no information was being disseminated by Tellytrack, Ms Esplin called Matthew once again shortly thereafter and actually spoke him through the final stages of the race to explain the basis of the objection. Matthew advised her then that Cecil Mthembu, who was the presenter on duty, had not broadcast what he had been told by his own data-room as he did not believe the details he had been given and he apparently felt that someone had erred down the line. Matthew thus appears to be the ham on this samie. Who should we then be buttering up, I wonder?
This then also clarifies and explains why the world went silent and all we got was a whole new result a half-hour later. It now also appears that Gold Circle were entirely blameless in the matter. What it does not explain is what Cecil was thinking – although in fairness it was a pressured time of the day in the studio. And not knowing the studio politics but being a regular viewer, I wouldn’t trust anything the Tellytrack data room staff told me either, in defence of Cecil. This raises a few questions about the communication processes at play and we really should not have the situation either where a presenter refuses to believe the data room, who have been instructed by a designated Duty Manager at the racing operator, who effectively own the television channel through PGE. The only folk that really suffer are the punting mugs – again!
SANDY SHAW
A similar incident recurred on Saturday, and once again in the Kenilworth ninth race. Studio presenter Shaheen Shaw announced a race review immediately after the race run at 17h50 , after Anton Marcus on the winner Cocoa Beach, appeared to have intimidated Marco Latorre on Andries Steyn’s Pasadera. Without another word, the result went final on the bottom screen belt at around 18h05, and at 18h20 it flashed up, without any reference again to the race review. In the ensuing time both Lingfield and Turffontein, which was run after the Cape race, went final and were read out. Gold Circle confirm that Tellytrack were definitely informed of ‘no further action’. How difficult can it be and it seems that all is not well in the state of Denmark? What vindictive , imcompetent anti-Cape forces lurk in the Tellytrack corridors? Or is that a dumb question?
IN DEFENCE OF GOLD CIRCLE
I fielded a few emails over the weekend following the late scratching of the Bass-trained Captain Thriller in the Kenilworth eighth race on Saturday. Some punters were angry that they weren’t allowed time to change their bets. Shaheen Shaw in the Tellytrack studio also recorded his disappointment at the lack of opportunity to amend bets and the consequent impact on turnover. Just to show what a bit of communication and clean accurate information can do, I called Theresa Esplin, who was the Gold Circle Duty Manager on the day. She explained that Gold Circle were obliged to adhere strictly, where possible, to off-times in view of a congested programme. She went further to explain that she could only ask for additional time from the starter if the scratching was the favourite or paying R3, or less, at the time of withdrawal for a tote win. She explained that Captain Thriller was paying around R6 for a tote win when he was withdrawn by the Vet. She said that whatever she requested, that the discretion ultimately lay with the Starter in any event, depending on the general behaviour of the field. She added that this was the laid-down procedure and that she was obliged to adhere strictly to the parameters as agreed to between the operator and the NHRA.
Thank you Gold Circle in the Western Cape and particularly to Mike Greeff and Theresa Esplin. It must be a bitter pill to swallow when doing one’s job properly and then being castigated on the websites and in the media, due to the lack of opportunity to state one’s case. What a difference when the lines of communication are opened. Might this be the start of a new era of punter education…?
