Sunday March 19th 2023

Nicky Richards amazing form continues, unfortunately, it was in the previous 2 races :P

I know. Where is the story? Hold the front page - a horse is killed on the track and a jockey is in hospital. It's a tough sport and these are frequent occurrences. If a footballer breaks his leg in a Championship match would that be reported prominently in Australia? The timing of putting up that story among the week's reporting from Cheltenham is highly political and deeply cynical. The Guardian has a bucket of fish and it likes to throw it to the performing seals of the anti-racing league down under - and if it brings in a few more of their ilk to its UK readership, so much the better. The Guardian racing desk doesn't have the balls to come out and say "We want racing banned" so this is the next best thing. It's a drip-drip of undermining the credibility of the sport.

There is no evidence to that effect. As I said, there is a huge news feed from Australia overnight and that story is just one of many. That story was one of about a dozen that the Guardian put out about Cheltenham. It put on a live feed every day. That is hardly the position of a newspaper which wants to see racing banned. The idea that it is part of some long standing aim of the paper to ban horseracing is irrational, in my opinion.

I also fail to understand this obsession about the Guardian's horseracing coverage? Why are no other newspapers subjected to a line by line textual analysis of horse racing? And given that the Guardian has a relatively low circulation comparatively, with the giants of the Press such as the Sun, Mirror, Telegraph, Mail et al are all apparently toeing the line and promoting horseracing to a level of perfection (?) without a scintilla of criticism about the sport, then there is absolutely no need for this profound insecurity about the future of horseracing? It does not add up.

In conclusion, I think that we were all disappointed when Chris Cook left in the general downsizing that took place. That included the reduction in coverage to a few times a week. But I fail to see any conspiracy to "ban horse racing". The rest of it is hearsay. As for the poor quality of writing, that is the name of the game now. The golden age is long gone.

You call it an "obsession with the Guardian's horseracing coverage" as if it is an unhealthy interest in it. We are here having this debate only because of what happened on Talking Horses - we don't have to reiterate the history of that. Is it any surprise that, as fugitives from the fallout from that, we continue to scrutinise the G's racing coverage? I don't know of other national newspapers with a digital platform that invites comments on their racing coverage. It is this engagement with readers that made TH different from all other online racing resources. It was generally more informed, more civilised and far less toxic than the wretched Betfair forum, just as you would expect from the great bastion of free speech and inclusivity that is the Guardian's hallmark.

To me everything changed with the retirement of that fine editor Alan Rusbridger and his replacement by Kath Vyner against the background of retrenchment caused by the sharp decline in advertising revenue and circulation. The sports editor was instructed to find savings; he saw racing as high on his list for cuts and did so with little regret as, so he implied in personal correspondence with me, he views the sport as out of step with the paper's centre-left standpoint on social affairs, that it is run by and for a wealthy elite and that it has animal welfare issues which many Guardian readers find objectionable. Meanwhile Vyner's role was itself under intense pressure as she became embroiled in the grip of an in-house cabal of trans activists.

You say you find no evidence that the Guardian wants racing banned. As I set out in my earlier post, I can find no other explanation for its hyper-critical perspective, its chronic negativity, its turning a blind eye to the good stories that everyone in the game is desperate to be highlighted. OK, the coverage of Cheltenham week seemed comprehensive but it was still far less than in former years. There was less build-up - no stable visits, trainer or jockey interviews or advance previews of the contenders for the major races; the rolling blog from the course was much abbreviated and allowed no reader comments; the evening round-ups were brief and perfunctory and read like agency copy. This could all be put down to a lack of resources. But it suits the overall agenda that racing is not as important as it likes to think it is.

Racing - which has a massive annual attendance, now has to compete for coverage on the website with niche-interest sports like NFL and Aussie Rules football - even last week with US college basketball. Who on earth follows that in the UK? Tom, you have to step back a pace to see the slow but sure decline ("managed decline", to coin a current phrase) in the G's commitment to racing. The need to make savings across all departments masks the real reason - that the powers that be at Guardian Towers no longer have their heart in horseracing.

Thank you for your time.

Looking forward to seeing this fella jump a fence next season..