He has the magical mystique of an Elvis Presley, he runs like the wind and is one of the true legends of the turf. Yet even Pocket Power’s awesome humbling presence did little to bolster the attendance at a depressingly barren Kenilworth Racecourse on Saturday. There were probably more folk walking their dogs on the Rondebosch Common at the time of the running of the Grade 2 Green Point Stakes and, but for the loyal lone flag brandishing supporter in the famous Marsh Shirtliff silks, the in-course area looked, with due respect to the dead, like a cemetery. Lifeless.
Well done Marsh, Mike Bass and the Webbers. What a horse. If the Pocket can’t bring souls back in their droves and reignite the flame, then is anything on earth going to work? I haven’t got the answers but I have a few thoughts and opinions. The Cape Premier Sale may be just around the corner and while it is being touted as the greatest and most innovative event to hit the sport in years, one wonders what earth-shattering cataclysmic change is going to be triggered to unleash new life into a crippled game. Fair enough, Cape Town is without a doubt a great destination, Met week is the ultimate party and social time and we all love horseracing. But how on earth do a relatively small percentage of well-heeled local and foreign buyers, fussed over by smiling racing executives and pressured breeders, hope to change the very stark realities of our everyday life? The exclusive golf days and plush cocktail parties for the only-if-you-are-somebody set just serve to define the game further as a foolishly elitist domain and a closed society for anybody without real tom or some influence. Charity begins at home and the comforts, interests and patronage of our bread and butter punters – the folk who support horseracing even when the summer sun is not shining – is surely a far more pressing priority right now? I don’t want to be guilty of the very stereotyping that I am being so critical of, but when the punter who earns R700 or R800 per week takes his R20 Place Accumulator, his investment in the game is driven very often by an equal dose, if not a lot more passion, personal stress, pain and consideration than the millionaire who buys a few horses for a couple of million and then sits back and waits for them to run, while he views the share market and follows the sun. And yes, maybe I am envious, but there are a helluva lot more of us plebs than the mink and manure monkeys who seem to believe that the sun goes down when they are seated. We need both sides of the spectrum but we firstly need to acknowledge that the game needs the man in the street. Why is it such a bitter pill to swallow?
TOP CLASS
Everything in horseracing appears to be geared dreamily towards the top end of the market. And I sometimes truly wonder if this ‘top end’ even really exists. Some of the packages advertised by Phumelela for Saturday’s Sansui Summer Cup are mind boggling – I was even tempted to ask if they include the cost of return air-tickets. Seriously, how does the average regular punter even consider spending a couple of hundred bucks and more to go and watch some, admittedly, top-class horseracing? Startlingly, so much effort is put into attracting the once-a-year visitor. You know the kind of guy who sits down in the marquee in the Turffontein in course area and is amazed to hear around 5 o’clock that they are already on the ninth race. The regular patron is probably not that particularly interested either in a sound experience or rave or whatever the after-party is all about. And even if he has been to Turffontein for every single ordinary meeting for the rest of the year, he will have to fork out the R40 entrance fee if he is not an RA member, as I understand it. Is this the way to win friends and influence punters? I seriously believe not. The message they are sending out is that your money and presence is good enough for the rest of the year – but we are sure as hell going to nail you for your R40 on Saturday – and not give you anything extra that we can think of off the top of our heads, for it.
Why not rather take the stuff- the- pleb attitude and turn it into a positive by placing posters in the major Tote outlets around Joburg and invite punters to put on some closed shoes and a nice tie and be ready at around 10h30 on Saturday morning for a complimentary bus ride to Turffontein? On the bus they could be given a cold pie and a free beer as well as some lucky draw betting vouchers and made to feel a little special for a change. Get them psyched up and excited. It’s payday for a lot of people and what a pleasure to feel that racing is giving them something for free. How much could this whole exercise cost? Not that much at all when viewed against the relative cost of all the side shows we’ve seen. What for instance did that drawn out Summer Cup draw function last Tuesday night cost with all those guests – and are punters really that interested in hearing all about the support components involved in the day? We are here for the horses and the racing – hearing what wonderful work every little PR set-up involved in the day is doing, was frankly boring and irrelevant. We want to hear Mike de Kock and Piere Strydom – not some corporate animal who is making a mint out of the day. I was also amazed to hear one chap say that they want to get the Summer Cup to the level of the Met in five years. Maybe he meant five hundred years or there was obviously too much free drink flowing courtesy of Phumelela that evening. And this particular gentleman has obviously never been to the Met!
ENTRANCE FEE
Astonishingly while Phumlelela are threatening to charge R40 entrance fee on Saturday, Gold Circle can’t get a crowd for free through the turnstiles to watch a great horse in a top-class race. The Ocean Basket Green Point Stakes saw a top-class field go to post but where were the fans? I bumped into a jockey over the weekend and asked him to describe Kenilworth on Saturday in his own words. ‘ Bloody dead’, was his reply. And that is certainly the way it looked from the Tellytrack pictures. So what is wrong in our prime racing season? One is inclined to automatically lay the blame for the total and utter non-event that is our average racemeeting squarely at the door of our industry leaders who appear to be doing largely sweet nothing to arrest the decline of a once great sporting attraction. Horseracing it seems is, however, not alone with our national sport also suffering under the ogre of attendance apathy on a large scale. It seems that the lords of the beautiful game , and for slightly differing reasons our racing fathers, have for too long assumed that Joe Public would continue supporting live sport in spite of increasingly attractive alternatives, declining facilities and the fact that various factors have led to the average spectator – both in soccer and horseracing – being a lot more discerning these days. Fans want to be made to feel special and part of the action. This just doesn’t happen. The facilities are plain moderate, the food is shocking and the service is apathetic. The ‘stars’ of the show don’t dish out autographs, they don’t shake the ordinary mans hand. They are aloof, in plain English. There is little pre-publicity and marketing of forthcoming events in non-captive market environments. Soccer has some of its own unique problems – a profileration of drugs and security issues seem to be at the top of the pile here . They also have a national team that is plain damn useless. We have the great horses and top jockeys so we have little excuse really. We just need to go back to the basic packaging of the product. Raise the bar in terms of access, quality of entertainment and catering. I havent been to Soccer City but Kenilworth is poor, poor, poor, when it comes to the quality of its public food and drink outlets. They are a disgrace actually and these are basic items.
Thank goodness for men like the Ocean Basket’s George Nichas who continue to stand by racing. The day, from a television spectacle viewpoint, was not a complete damp squib and there were some nice, albeit very basic, marketing touches which included the handing out of Ocean Basket vouchers to winning connections – not the jockeys and definitely not the grooms, of course – and the kitting out of the starting stall staff in the familiar ‘crew’ t-shirts of Ocean Basket staff. Why on earth though the Sansui Summer Cup countdown logo had to dominate the screen in the Cape race build-up mystifies me. Every sponsor is important and maybe Sansui and Ocean Basket don’t compete for the same market, but slapping that Sansui logo there in the very time that George was getting the exposure for which he had paid was bad PR. This North versus South dominance thing sure runs deeper than we realize sometimes.
