| Product: |
Horse Racing in General |
| Date: |
18/05/03 (59 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: More knowldgeable, yet smaller, crowd, Less queues!, Cheaper by and large
Disadvantages: Not top class racing, Possibly fewer "personalities" - Keiren Fallon and Tony McCoy could well be where the bigger races are
This isn't really one for regular racegoers. I say this to anyone who has a passing interest in racing but has never been to the track, or to a family who fancy a summer evening meeting and are thinking about taking the kids.
Horse racing is, to me, the best sport going; once you get hooked there are so many ways to follow it, so many layers and levels. This isn't just about Racing Post-clutching beer-bellied chaps who file out of Ladbrokes at closing time smelling of cigar smoke. This is a sport worth following, and one you really can enjoy.
Thing is, its all too easy to get scared off when you're a new racegoer. Big crowds, types of racecourse, race meeting, horses in attendance, can all influence your day if you're a new racegoer.
If you want to get a taste of the sport in the kindest possible way, go for a small meeting, midsummer, flat racing, maybe an evening meeting at Yarmouth or a non-premier track. Newmarket Nights is a series of summer evening meetings topped off by a musical performance - Jools Holland is a regular - but the crowds are starting to get big.
With that kind of meeting, fair but not crowd-drawing horses running in decent races, the crowd shouldn't be too daunting. Of course, if you decide to take the kids to Newmarket for 2000 Guineas Day, you could well find yourself wishing you hadn't. Last time I attended that meeting, drunken City types were seen to be urinating on walls and I saw more drunken ladies in heels - not good on a mostly grass racetrack - than I did horses. A top-class race or even one top-class horse can double a crowd. If a Group One horse has an exercise after racing on the course, a non-betting event, then the same applies.
And if you're not keen on the dressing up, then avoid Ascot and other "premier" tracks. National Hunt meetings are in general more relaxed about such things. Personally I can vouch that Towcester racecourse is one of t
he most pictuqesque National Hunt courses, and next NH season they're offering free entry to the course after being closed for a season or two for renovations. Now that's what I call an offer.
All things allowing, going for the smaller meetings and avoiding crowds who have more interest in what Gucci have designed lately than in the odds for the 3.30, you'll get to enjoy the atmosphere and take in the day to day racing game. Fingers crossed you'll enjoy it as much as I do.
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