Rouge Wins At Wincanton

Vieux Lion Rouge (pictured above) followed up his recent course success with victory under a penalty at Wincanton in the novices' hurdle.  Our five year old son of Sabiango has now won both of his hurdling starts with any amount in hand and was extending his record to five wins from six starts in total.  David says that he may well step him up in class now and he could contest the Neptune novices' hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival in March.  I see that one fearless punter had £5,000 on to win £1,000 - I bet he was holding his breath approaching the last!  Former Irish point-to-point winner Davy Doubt made a promising start for the yard when runner-up in the bumper, while Bygones Sovereign picked up more prize money by finishing third under conditional jockey Tom Bellamy in the competitive handicap hurdle.

There are four meetings taking place this afternoon - a jumps card at Catterick as well as all-weather flat fixtures at Lingfield and Wolverhampton and a 'jumpers bumper' meeting at Kempton.  At least the Kempton card will give the jumps trainers a chance to give their horses a spin.

I was in my local betting office in Brixham yesterday and I asked two young lads if they ever went racing.  They said that it was boring - you spend several hours on the track, yet only get about 25 minutes of action.  They suggested things would be a little more interesting if some of the jockeys were to come out of the weighing room between races and explain how the previous races went.  We need to get youngsters more interested in the sport...what is going on?  Racing is inaccessible to many with prohibitive entrance fees and extortionate catering prices - they can go into a bookies and watch it all for free!

Whenever I go racing (and it's not as often as it used to be) I seem to see all the same people, just older.  As far as I can tell, spectating at the track is a dying sport - there were 2,200 people at Wincanton yesterday and I wouldn't mind betting that a massive percentage of them were regular older people.  A poor football team like Torquay United draw in those sort of crowds, so why can't a decent track like Wincanton (and I am not singling them out, because it is a problem across the entire industry) get a bigger audience?

Another sport that is behind the times is greyhound racing - they have tracks closing down all over the place.  It is another difficult sport for youngsters to understand unless they are given an insight.  We need to make sure that horse racing doesn't go the same way...jockeys and trainers need to be more accessible, whatever it takes to get people through the gates.  What do you think?  I would be fascinated to hear any views.