In racing circles, the fascination and fear surrounding public perception of the sport is inescapable. Constant and consistent changes to the Grand National, the padding and colouring of hurdles, and repeated reassertions of welfare on ITV Racing are reminders that there is a world which spans far beyond our own, blissfully unaware that Ballyburn might now be staying over hurdles.
Join our 20k+ subscribers to receive the latest horse racing news, offers, and expert tips directly in your inbox — 100% free!
Joe’s BloGG
However, instead of what the public thinks about racing, I wanted to find out what they know. So I posed a very short survey to contacts, friends, colleagues etc. to generate a set of answers to the following:
- Name a horse race/racing event
- Name a racecourse
- Name a horse
With this information, maybe we could enhance the quest for greater public awareness of our great game. Or maybe, I’ve just had a lot of fun laughing at the people I know and hold dear (sorry mum…).
Our Survey Said…
| Pos. | Race/Event | Racecourse | Horse |
| 1 | Grand National (29) | Ascot (14) | Red Rum (18) |
| 2 | Royal Ascot (8) | Cheltenham (9) | Seabiscuit (4) |
| 3 | Cheltenham Festival (4) | Aintree (9) | Secretariat (3) |
| 4 | Epsom Derby (4) | Epsom (7) | Arkle (2) |
| 5 | Gold Cup (3) | York (5) | Black Beauty (2) |
| 6 | King George (2) | Kempton (2) | 26 others (1) |
| 7 | 5 others (1) | Sandown (2) | |
| 8 | 7 others (1) |
For reference, of the 55 people who responded to my call, the split was roughly ⅔ male, ⅓ female, while ages spanned from 20 to 86 with an average of 38.5. None of the people asked were racing fans or affiliated with the sport. I felt that to be a conclusive enough array for what we needed, but enough of that. Here are the results.
Some fairly conclusive winners across the board then, with the racecourse poll being comfortably the closest and most competitive. Red Rum continues to blow away the opposition more than 50 years on from his second of three Grand National triumphs, with the big race itself still king among the general public’s recall.
The Takeaways
So, what is this for, and what can we learn from it? Ultimately, I will try to make a few points in terms of where racing should still be marketing itself, and where, perhaps, it places too much emphasis.
Grand National Still Grand
This was the least competitive poll from the get go. Though the order in which the answers came in does not matter, this particular question could have been resolved within my first 12 responses, from which nine said the Grand National when asked to name a horse race or event.
Much has been done to evolve the public-facing spectacle of our sport, and much has been made of those changes. Just last year, a seismic shift in the National’s history occurred when the maximum field size was reduced from 40 to 34, resulting in a fiercely competitive, if not overly dramatic race. Then again, “drama” when it came to the National often included thrills and spills which are distasteful to a modern audience uninterested in racing for 364 days of the year.
Nevertheless, more than half of my participants recalled the National before anything else. In an era where the Cheltenham Festival has at least pervaded an element of our society, and Royal Ascot remains a bucket list aspiration of pageantry and glamour, this was perhaps the most conclusive result of the lot. It is also significant that although the first two questions asking to name an event and name a racecourse did sometimes cause some crossover – e.g. Royal Ascot and Ascot could be two successive answers – that did not stop plenty of people answering Grand National/Ascot or Grand National/Cheltenham.
It has become en vogue for racing to almost fear the National with a critical eye. Yet, no answer returned to me with any hesitation or critique for the National: it is just what springs to mind. Not to go all Sean Dyche “woke nonsense” on you, but maybe we have reached the tipping point where any more changes would deface the race beyond recognition while having already been seen to do as much as we can.
The National is as dangerous as horse racing gets in 2024, but any naysayers should perhaps be pointed towards a replay from the 1970s to see what it used to look like for comparison. After all, the majority of the non-racing population still bring it to mind without question if tales of the thoroughbred are at hand.
The Grand National garners so much of our sport’s outside interest. Let’s be proud of it.
Top Hats & Tails For All
There was less to take from my racecourse column, though there are some demographic outliers. I live south of London, so naturally there has been more of a sway towards local courses such as Epsom, while there was a significant plea to university friends to join in my quest. We went to the University of York together, hence the Knavesmire appears in the top five.
However, I don’t believe there is too much coincidence about which track came out on top, not least because Royal Ascot was a distant second to the Grand National in poll no.1. The allure of the top hats and fascinators clearly extends beyond the racing element.
This was the only significant victory for flat racing across the survey, although Ascot does of course host jumps racing over the winter too. That said, I would say those who selected the Berkshire track mostly drew it to mind because of its five-day summer extravaganza where no hurdle or fence is deigned fit to interfere.
There is an almost equal level of discomfort within racing circles to their links to the upper class as there is to the Grand National’s brand of daring. Yet, once again, the responses I received suggest this is overplayed. Let’s show off the extravagance of it all. It’s colourful, it’s buttery and summery, and there is great racing to enjoy.
All it takes is someone to point out they can wear something equally as pretentious on Clarence House day in January (beneath a sturdy coat) and Ascot’s jumps gets the boon too.
The link between the racecourse results and significant festivals is worth note too. Ascot, Cheltenham and Aintree were a cosy top three, with Epsom leading the rest. The Derby may be a big race, but it was a footnote in third behind the Grand National. Maybe Epsom’s two-day meeting needs a rebrand as an event as opposed to merely a host location. As a local, I’m happy to go full M.E.G.A for the cause (Make Epsom Great Again).
GG Jumps Journal – Champions: Full Gallop & the Cult of Personality
Ryan Moore’s incomparable riding ability got another global airing in the United States this week. True, he was not enough of a miracle worker to shield the dirt from poor City Of Troy’s eyes, but he nevertheless delivered impeccable rides aboard both Lake Victoria and especially Henri Matisse, on whom he timed an inexorable outside…
Wed 06 Nov 2024Red Rum Rules All…But It’s Murder for British Racing Elsewhere
I oscillated between joy and despair as I organised poll no.3. Naming a horse was not as straightforward an exercise as the first two (more of that later), but the clear winner in people’s hearts remains Red Rum.
Three Grand National triumphs, public appearances, and a feature on Sports Personality of the Year clearly get you somewhere. It’s been close to 48 years since Rummy won his third Grand National, and he was buried by Aintree’s winning post nearly 30 years hence. It was pleasing that horse racing’s greatest ever British hero won this by such a yawning margin, but we can’t exactly live off his glory from 2025 onwards.
Where my heart began to sink was sifting through the remainder of the chart. Only one more racehorse from Great Britain and Ireland was mentioned more than once, and that was only because Arkle appears on stamps in Ireland. He’s even older than Red Rum though, so it’s hardly a triumph.
Only three other horses earned multiple entries and Hollywood played its part. In second, Seabiscuit owes a debt to Tobey Maguire, while Secretariat does similarly to Bojack Horseman. Then again, they would have resonated even more so in the United States, though once more both raced before Red Rum was but a footnote in Aintree’s history.
And finally, warping back even further in time, Black Beauty’s two votes ensured fiction also intervened. Anna Sewell wrote about His Grooms and Companions in 1877, but still more people named him than any racehorse to have competed since the 1970s. Even Desert Orchid managed just a single paltry vote, while Tiger Roll, our closest Grand National headline-maker in half a century, did not get mentioned once.
Does the sport place too much emphasis on the horses themselves to do the talking? By this measure, we almost certainly do. When Red Rum was ballet stepping his way through four-and-a-half miles of Liverpool terrain, the National was second only to the FA Cup final in sporting significance. You simply had to tune into it as a once-in-a-year, ten-minute rollercoaster ride.
It was not deliberate, but the order in which I asked the questions ended up being the order in which I’d conclude racing’s priorities lie. Because ultimately, Frankel, Sea The Stars, Kauto Star, Best Mate and Enable all had one thing in common here: cultural irrelevance.
Focus on the big events, then make more of them, and then maybe, just maybe then, there will be another horse on stage alongside Gabby Logan and Dan Walker as Hollie Doyle wins Sports Personality for the fifth year in a row.
A Race of the Unreal
It was both slightly alarming, but also very amusing, that a few of my survey’s participants could not name a horse, either in a racing context or any other. Fictional horses such as Black Beauty, Shadowfax and Maximus from Tangled all got runs out of the public, but at least they exist in some form of media.
The following do not, albeit some names guessed do actually exist in the racing world. However, being pulled out of thin air categorises them among the following runners and riders of the imaginary GG Grand National, sponsored by the Jumps Journal:
- Khaleesi
- Golden Chance
- Big Gussie
- Benhurchariothorse
- Queenie
- Lucky Jockstrap
- Twinkle
I would be intrigued by the psychology of the public’s idea of racehorse naming conventions, not least in the case of number six. Nevertheless, a 4m2f marathon on soft going may well suit Lucky Jockstrap, though the chariot horse must also have experience in brutal conditions. Lobbing Charlton Heston over 30 fences might be a challenge though.
The mares Khaleesi, Queenie and Twinkle descend gradually in regality; you’d imagine the former would fly over the obstacles what with all those dragons, though Queenie might find the test below her standing. Poor Twinkle sounds the type to do a Devon Loch before the first.
Big Gussie was, I’m reliably informed, a friend of mine’s horse on Red Dead Redemption 2. A grounding in the Wild West should ensure he has the temperament for this, but surely Golden Chance is the name of a winner? Well, as it happens, there have been six Golden Chances according to the Racing Post’s database, which goes back to the mid-1980s, and only one of them has ever won a race.
For my money, Khaleesi beats Gussie and the Jockstrap in a nail-biter up the Elbow.
Some Demographic Tales
Lastly, some housekeeping. A few interesting tidbits emerged based on the people I asked. Within the 55, there were a handful of contacts from the sports journalism world who all answered in remarkably similar fashion. They were responsible for all three of the shouts for the Gold Cup as racing’s headline event, while all gave variations on a Cheltenham theme for their horse: Jonbon, Envoi Allen, Faugheen, Annie Power and Sir Gerhard have all won there in the past decade.
The doorway from other sports to racing opens in Prestbury Park then, but only two others gave similar answers from the outside.
There is also one final victory for the Grand National within the “name a horse” prompt. Despite no further push on my part, a friend gave Shutthefrontdoor as their answer. For all that he was a talented horse who won an Irish National at his best, his day in the sun was an extremely brief one, but he had a funny name, and he was favourite for the 2015 Grand National. Highland Wedding and L’Escargot have also lasered memories for their parts in the famous race in 1969 and 1975.
Therefore, I can only hope that everyone who participated picks the winner of the 2025 Grand National. Or that Lucky Jockstrap makes an extraordinary…ahem…rise from irrelevance to take Aintree by storm.
Fascinations & Irritations
After all that, I still have some things to get off my chest from the past week.
Fascination – The Feeling of Fate
I had an historically bad day of punting during ITV’s racing on Saturday. Seven races into the broadcast, and from four each-way bets, I had had three finish fourth, one position outside of a place return, while three win bets had resulted in two seconds and a penultimate fence faller.
It wasn’t that every horse I backed ran a stinker. Indeed, they ran well, got my pulse racing dreaming of my next visit to the Ascot box I’d inevitably purchase with my winnings, and then narrowly, oh so narrowly failed. When this happens once it’s frustrating. When it happens six times in seven races, you start to wonder about the F-word.
Fate does not exist 99% of the time. We go about our lives without even considering any ethereal conditioning to our being. However, sport makes us sinfully aware, and as Richmond Lake somehow faded up the Aintree run-in to finish fourth in the Grand Sefton (at 25/1! Won’t somebody think of the Ascot box!), I had to switch my TV off so as to be made blissfully unaware once more.
Irritation – Jeriko More Flinteur Than Sprinter
Jeriko Du Reponet started pantomime season early on Sunday, supposedly playing up when being saddled, arriving on course beyond his race’s starting time, then ballooning a fence so early, he landed abreast the birch before Nico De Boinville wisely called it a day.
The uncomfortable element to this is that, having opened at a best price of 2/9 the evening before, Jeriko Du Reponet was available at almost Evens by the time his Sandown quartet began their gallop. That is an almighty drift for such a strong favourite, and it is understandable if punters felt aggrieved.
My takeaway was more about the performance, however. His Supreme Novices’ Hurdle blemish could easily be excused, but his billing is that of The Next Big Thing. Given Nicky Henderson has trained Sprinter Sacre, Altior, Shishkin and Jonbon in recent years, are we really to believe that Jeriko Du Reponet is in that league?
Had any of those luminaries play acted in similar circumstances, I would bet significant money that all four would still have won on the bridle, even overcoming the blunder that Jeriko Du Reponet made. But then again, after my punting weekend, it’s a good thing I’ll never have to find out.
GG Jumps Journal – GG Fixes Jumps Racing & The World
You read that right. We’ve fixed it. It’s sorted. Unfortunately, unlike world peace and the environment, horse racing is a harder puzzle to solve. So many moving parts contribute to a sport in turmoil: a declining equine population, prize money bottoming out, talent condensed within too few stables – all make up just a few…
Thu 31 Oct 2024Looking For More Racing Info? Check Out Our Racecards & Top Tips Sections
Make sure you’re following us on all our social media platforms to keep up to date with all the latest horse racing news and the best tips.