Sir,

It was great to see a contribution from Colm McCarthy in The Irish Field (May 23rd, page 31). He is one of the best economists this country has produced and he conveys his thoughts in a very clear and practical way. As Irish economists go, McCarthy is definitely Group 1 calibre.

His message about the economy and the Government’s finances will have made depressing reading for people whose drug of choice is positivity. However, it is important that the industry’s leaders take on board what McCarthy is saying in terms of the Government finances. In fact his article should be mandatory reading for every member of the board of Horse Racing Ireland and its senior management team.

McCarthy tells us to reduce our reliance on the betting tax and search out other sources of revenue. I would agree with this but think he is mistaken in his comparison between racing and football. Our industry leaders have hired people from the world of football, GAA and rugby on the presumption they will be able to generate a similar amount of popularity in horse racing.

We haven’t see much success so far and I don’t think we will. This is due to two key differences between racing and the aforementioned sports.

The first is the nature of the product. Football, GAA and rugby are non-stop action and one can’t predict when the scores will occur. Racing’s action occurs every 30 minutes and some of the action may not appeal to some customers.

As a result of technology, customers can choose to not attend meetings. They can watch the races they are interested in on their phone, tablet or television.

This has turned racing into a televised sport. In fact the technology has made each race programme into an a la carte menu.

People might ask ‘Can’t the racing programmes be improved?’. The answer is ‘no’ because (a) the number of top-class horses is limited and (b) we have to provide opportunities for all the players at the various levels. Failure to do the latter would result in much lower levels of employment and economic activity.

When McCarthy suggests more intensive use of our best tracks he is oblivious to the media rights money and fixtures. HRI can’t just redistribute fixtures. They would end up in court with the tracks who lose out. In fact HRI giving €25,000 to tracks for every fixture the tracks lose this year is evidence of how Irish racing is tied to its historical fixture list.

The second problem with comparing horse racing with other sports is the lack of tribal (for want of a better word) support. When Dundalk met Shamrock Rovers in the FAI Cup Final that McCarthy refers to, there were thousands of people there to support each team. Similarly, when Leinster play Munster in rugby, there will be supporters of the various provinces. The same happens in GAA when Dublin take on Kerry.

There is no counterpart to this in horse racing. Aidan O’Brien is a brilliant trainer but there isn’t 2,000 people who will go racing regularly just to support his team. This tribal aspect is missing from racing due to the nature of the product.

The challenge for racing and racecourses is to find out what needs to be done to make people want to go racing more regularly. Technology has made race programmes an a la carte menu. We need to adapt to make people view it differently. The younger members of our community may be able to point us in the right direction. After all, if we can’t get them interested, the support base will be continually eroded.

Yours etc.,

John Lynam,

Dublin 2

Weight matters

Sir,

In view of Cecil Seaman’s (Lexington, Ky.) excellent study of over 44,000 yearlings and two-year-olds (personal communication, 2007), correlating their sales weight with subsequent racetrack performance (optimum weight earn the most prize money and diminishes towards obesity), I must congratulate the Osarus team on including the valuable information of both height and weight this week on their digital platform for their breeze-up sale. - Yours etc.,

Richard McCormick

MVB, Dip Eq St, MRCVS

Dunboyne,

Co Meath