‘Don’t worry, the horse will tell you’. In the time I spent with Kelly Marks, one of the stories that sticks most clearly in my memory is of her reaching a crossroads with her beloved horse Pie and asking her mentor, Monty Roberts for help. He advised simply – ‘Don’t worry, the horse will tell you’. Hmm, they don’t call it horse whispering for nothing then ….
The end of that story may have been filed carefully in a lost recess of my brain, but that particular phrase somehow springs to mind on a regular basis. Having reached a certain age, I confess that I have noticed a creeping reluctance to try new things, or open doors to the unknown or untried. I don’t approach life in a particularly brave or scientific manner, but whenever I reach a quandary, I have got in the habit of applying this little piece of wisdom. Experience has shown that when I put my horse first and make up my mind to follow, my heart comes right along with it and this funny little philosophy has taken me on some extraordinary journeys over the years.
My most recent sojourn started with an email from my editor with a simple link to a website – www.willswritingawards.co.uk. I clicked and stumbled into a whole new world.
The Wills Writing Awards were established in commemoration of an Englishman by the name of Martin Wills, who was, by all accounts, an extraordinary and much loved young man with a passion for two things – racing and journalism. He turned his love for writing into a career in journalism, and followed his love of horses by hunting, point-to-pointing and racing on the flat in an amateur capacity. When his promising young life was cut tragically short in April 1992, his family and friends were deeply affected by the loss, but determined to keep his memory and work alive. Close friend Johnny Henderson (father of top British jumps trainer, Nicky) suggested establishing a writing award for young people in tribute to Martin’s love of writing and to have the entries centered on a racing theme to commemorate his love of horses. And so the Martin Wills Memorial Trust was born.
The Trust is now a registered UK charity and has been holding its annual writing competition since 1993. Their focus is on finding, nurturing and promoting creative writing skills in young people. The Awards are open to residents of the UK and Republic of Ireland and consist of 3 categories – an Under 15 Award, an Under 19 Award and an Under 26 Award. And as mentioned, all entries have to have a racing theme.
The incentives are attractive and substantial. There are cash prizes for the winner and runner up in each category, winning entries are published in the Racing Post and Irish Field and the winning writers are treated to an all expenses paid day’s racing at Newmarket, a tour of two local racing yards and in addition, the winner of the Under 26 Award is given the opportunity to gain work experience at the Racing Post. No wonder that they receive in excess of a hundred entries a year!
The eloquence and imagination of the submissions are enough to make this would-be columnist hang my head in shame. The website publishes winning entries from as far back as 1999 and they are a mix of the magical, the macabre and any and all aspects of horses and racing you can think of. And quite a few you can’t ! I encourage anyone with an internet connection and a few spare minutes to dip in and explore. Prepare to be amazed!
Although the stories are incredible works in their own right, the literary accomplishments are of almost secondary importance to the awareness and interest that these Awards generate. Our heroes and champions cannot exist off the racetrack without the journalists who bring them to life in the column inches of our print, electronic and popular media.
I used to look forward to our big race day events when local broadsheets would run front page articles, complete with colour photographs of the runners, the gallops and of course the results (yes, there was some fashion coverage, but this was usually, sensibly, of secondary interest). Local terrestrial TV channels would not only cover racing during the course of the normal afternoon’s sports coverage, but coverage and results of the day’s bigger races would be featured in the sport sections of the evening news as well.
Coverage like that was priceless and ensured that racing was placed centre stage in the public consciousness. And so racing remained a talking point even amongst non-racing enthusiasts, even alongside other South African sport staples such as rugby and cricket. I dare say in his day Wolf Power was at least as well known as Naas Botha or Clive Rice.
Today racing is faced with increasingly tough competition from big name, big budget sports and other gambling activities. We are vying with them for coverage in the mainstream media and unfortunately we are losing. Mainstream press and TV racing coverage has declined dramatically over recent years and our fight for public interest is being lost along with those column inches and TV sound bites. Racing is relegated to ever decreasing space in the sports pages of the daily papers (if it gets any coverage at all) and with the advent of Tellytrack and subscription services, racing is marginalized still further and made even more inaccessible to Joe Public. And the biggest threat posed by the loss of general public interest is the loss of those all important sponsorship opportunities.
Our current marketing strategy seems heavily focused on gambling and betting, but in doing so, I think it loses the point somewhat. Bets and facts and figures make for dry and dull reading and are, quite frankly, boring. I would like to venture that people do not come racing for the love of betting. People come racing for the love of horses and the love of the passion, excitement and stories that they generate. And unless you keep the horses as your focus point, you are merely trying to promote numbers.
Yes, the machine that is the racing industry does need to be driven by the gambling ‘engine’, but we cannot simply cater to our existing audience and expect them to be satisfied with advertorials about the latest bet types. There may be several variations on the Lotto, but I can guarantee you that the Powerball is really not enough to lure me down to my local café on a weekly basis. Where’s the fun in getting to tick a slightly different set of boxes ?
We need to advertise and promote ourselves – our horses, our trainers and our riders. We need to keep our current fan base informed and interested and well as winning new supporters. And so we come back to those all important basic principles. You cannot love what you do not know. And you cannot know something if there is no interesting or accessible information available.
It thus becomes increasingly important that we employ skilled journalists and racing writers to make our horses and our stories interesting and important enough to leap off the page and engage the general public.
Racing South Africa have just announced that they will be sponsoring a journalism prize at the forthcoming Equus Awards and I commend them (not only for selfish reasons!) for taking the initiative in reinstating this important competition. Now more than ever, we need to reward the invaluable contribution that our racing journalists make in keeping our sport alive and our horses galloping across our local broadsheets and electronic media.
Yes, the industry finds itself in challenging times and there are undeniably problems to be faced. How do we go about finding solutions? I’d like to venture that, if we’re brave enough to listen, ‘the horse will tell us’.
