Alan Ford: Too old and too white for a Met VIP?
The apparent focus on hip and young movers and shakers and a new breed of celebrity on the VIP guest list for Saturday’s J&B Met probably puts the cherry on the cake of the ever widening modern divide between horseracing’s realities and Mr Average Joe Soap. One only has to look at the day’s winning owner photographs and those who qualified for buyer cards at the Cape Premier Yearling Sale, to realise that off-shore money and power will carry the day – not the crippled passion of the common man.
This game has become so them and us and you and they.You sit in a tote, while they sip champers on a boat. The poor working classes subsidising the rich big earners.
That’s if you come from the passion pool. Horseracing’s real backbone. The battlers who spent pocket money on PA’s, and studied form rather than physics before even failing Matric. We idolised household names like Bert Abercrombie, Dana Siegenberg and Herbie Lasker . We eat, drank and slept racing forever.
But today we are just so horribly yesterday and out. We may as well change our Saturday routine and buy a second-hand fishing rod at Cash Converters. Maybe that way we’ll actually hook a Bass?
Fair enough, that’s all probably a tad melodramatic of me. I suppose that for the poor and middle classes, wealth is more mystical than offensive most of the time. A subconscious disdain for those born with a silver spoon in the mouth is offset by an admiration for self-made men like Raymond Ackerman, Tony Factor and our own idol, Mike De Kock.
The sport of kings is in fact extremely fortunate to enjoy the patronage of wealthy local and overseas owners and nobody is denying Sheikh Mohammed Bin Khalifa Al Maktoum and Andre and Joyce Macdonald their glorious Met win with the champion filly Igugu. Fair enough, an Australian bred winning our premier race is not something that will have our breeders banging their chests and doing somersaults. We’d much rather have had a Jet Master or even a Var, ridden by a Muzi Yeni and trained by a Jaap Visser. But that sounds more likely in an episode of Isidingo.
At least Igugu is proudly trained by one of South African horseracing’s favourite sons and a mostly ordinary man many of us unofficial life members identify with. Mike De Kock is one of the foremost products of an equine nursery that has produced top international horsemen over the past three decades – admittedly, ironically mostly jockeys.
The 2012 J&B Met week though has come and gone. And it has confirmed what many of us felt and already know. That times are changing – hectically, so! As usual, the wonderful week rode on the back of a host of elite functions and parties and a successful Cape Premier Yearling Sale – where I hear that only about ten buyers’ cards were in circulation and the rest of the unaccredited hopefuls stood by waiting for a call from their faceless bank manager, while watching and admiring the Queen Mary berthed in Cape Town harbour. The sales venue and the runaway score counter on the electronic price board also provided fair distraction.
Many waiters and car guards were also reporting that we had turned the proverbial corner – you know the clichéd one where moderate stables have one winner? Yep, by all accounts the larney clothes, the exotic accents and the snazzy jam jars, showed that the world economy is actually turning and booming – obviously on a very selective micro level.
Sadly it appears that the cold cost of progress, elevation and internationalisation seems to be measured in the masses of the real people that carried the sport for so many years, who now find themselves out in the cold. And here I am talking about the middle of the road trainer, owner and the loyal everyday punter.
We know how it works. Pressured small trainers attract pressured small owners with slow horses who don’t pay their way. But the small guys can at least afford to go and watch the free show, where the power players wave their buying cards, get free drinks and buy all the best horses so that they can win all the right races – and be invited back to all the right parties and buy all the best horses next year. I’m not green , but it is a matter of time, isn’t it?
The punters are at the bottom of the food chain – just above the grooms somewhere. Twenty years ago a punter could hold on to a dream and aspire to owning a hind leg of a donkey and having some fun. We know most of them saw their behinds without the assistance of a mirror, but the ride was thrilling. It is due to bland 21st century economics rather than anybody’s fault, but that dream has dissipated into thin air.
The reality is that Punters put the shoulder to the wheel the entire year and then when the Met comes round, preference is given to the connected on the one hand and the glamour grabbers with a bit of cash, on the other. Overpriced facilities put the best day of the year out of most ordinary folks’ reach. And then to just make us all feel a bit better, the sponsors focus on youthful Black Diamonds from another province, nogal, who couldn’t tell the difference between Igugu and Aggravacious and wouldn’t be able to answer a simple multiple choice question: like which of Mike De Kock, Eugene De Kock or Rob De Kock, is running the NHRA. Mind you, a few racing folk could struggle with that last one…
The Sunday Times reported this week that the 500 highly sought after invitations for the Met VIP Marquee were issued mainly to 18 to 25 year old Gauteng domiciled males. These wet behind the ears freeloading party animals apparently ‘mingled around the sushi bar, ate fresh oysters and spoilt themselves at a masseuse bar.’ Now that sounds so real and sustainable, does it just not? So Cape Hunt and Polo Club in the old days, you are thinking…And when racing shifts to Durbanville this week with average seven horse fields, they will all be flooding through the gates. Like bloody hell they will.
This shift in VIP invitation policy apparently arose out of marketing research by Brandhouse and Richard Brodrick, Brand Manager, is on record as saying that ‘the new batch of guests included some of the hottest current celebrities which we believe best represent South Africa as a whole and will appeal across all demographics.’ Besides that sounding like a cheesy press release issued by a spin doctor employed by Helen Zille, one can understand and respect that Mr Brodrick’s chief priority and bonuses hinge on whiskey sales, not horses, racing or bolstering crowd attendances at racemeetings in the dead of the Cape winter.
One guy who didn’t crack the VIP nod as he has done for years was radio presenter and television producer Alan Ford. He started his broadcast career with Radio 702 presenting a daily morning show and a weekend society show, interviewing the country’s top celebrities. He also produced Gareth Cliff’s morning show on the same station. He was also the architecht of the popular 3talk on SABC3. Alan is also consulting producer for the prime time talk show No Reservations. According to the Sunday Times, on learning that he wasn’t welcome in the VIP tent on Saturday, an angry Ford said:” So, I am now too old and too white? It’s absolutely disgusting.”
So if I understand it. The mostly white wealthy guys stayed in the building where they are comfortable and secure. They left their core market in the totes, where they can be found most days. Then they gave these mostly black yuppies air-tickets, a few exclusive tents , free drink, fancy food and some stereotyped township sounds, that us whiteys seem to believe all Black guys go gaga for. Never mind that the Kwaito Hip-Hop music drowned out the canter-downs, race commentaries and jockey introductions . Can’t risk a riot and be rude to the sponsors’ guests you know.
So a whinging recipe by all accounts. Everybody is now hooked on J&B and Cape Town. Racing has realistically not won a single new customer.
At least the NHRA can go on to skeleton staff as with the way we are going, we will only be left with twenty registered owners countrywide soon anyway. And let’s make a free body rub, sushi and oysters standard on all racecourses countrywide – including Flamingo Park.
That’s going to work just fine as long as the white middle aged males control the show from a distance.
