A Love Letter To Racing

You know anything with layers and depth and complexity and genuine vibrancy has been neutered in pursuit of optimisation, monetisation and standardization, leaving a big ersatz pile of nothing

You DO understand that on some level, don't you?

Horse racing is the antidote.

Twitter @RacingWhat

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello everybody and welcome to this episode twenty of Rap, the Watch Racing About Podcast. Wanna get into something a little bit deep and meaningful and possibly a little bit challenging today. Definitely self-indulgent, but you know my my microphone, my rules. Well, I hope it's gonna be of interest. That is the most important thing. I hope it will all sort of come together at the end. And well, what am I twitting on about? Well, basically it's this. It's entitled Why I Love Racing. Why the hell am I talking about why I love racing? That should be self-evident. This is a racing podcast. You are racing people, you're here for the shits and giggles to be had from racing. Why do I need to justify it? Good question. I feel I need to talk about why I love racing because, well, let's face it, there's a lot of negativity about racing in the written word and on podcasts like these, and certainly on bigger and more well-researched and well-informed and dare I say more entertaining casts on TV. No, check that, not on TV. On TV, everything is wonderful in the world of racing. What I was gonna say is on those other media though, that there's there's lots of not necessarily negativity, there are lots of questions being asked of racing, and some of which racing can't come up with a plausible answer. And you may be forgiven if you are new to our sport, and if you are then welcome. You may be forgiven for thinking these people are negative shysters. What is it they don't like about sport? It just seems to be a never-ending round of misery. You know, particularly for punters, you know, there's never-ending tales of woe about which jockey is crap and which horse is a thoroughgoing bastard, and which race courses rip them off, and and you know, the the ledger of negatives is long and and painful. And you'll be forgiven for thinking, well, you know, what the hell do these people get out of this sport that they purport to love? That is the mindset that I'm gonna be addressing, and it's important for me to get that across because I think we live in a conniving age, an age where the words optimization and monetization have got a lot of clout and have got a lot of resonance. We're trying to optimize our content, we're trying to optimize, and by optimize, it means you know, maximize our coverage and maximise the number of followers that we have on social media in order to move to the next word that I talked about monetizing that optimization of content. And content, there's another word, you know, it used to be stuff that we were interested in, and now it's a catch-all phrase of content, which I'll probably use anyway, but there we go. My mind's like a Swiss cheese anyway, and I'm all over the place. As you know from being a long-term listener to these podcasts. So, you know, yeah, we live in an age where discourse and you know, podcasts like this and and and and any kind of interaction that PCP that people seemingly have are optimized and and monetized, and money is at the bottom of all that we're talking about. And and yes, we've got to uh make a turn to in order to to live, you know. We're not some sort of sub-Saharan agrarian farming bartering community. You know, we we live in a capitalist society for better or worse, and we need money to live, and I understand that. And the internet opens up various possibilities for us to be able to do that, and some people have got a very good living, thank you very much indeed, from the world of horse racing, which enables them to do that, and some people do that with a degree of integrity and honesty. Most, if I'm honest, do it. Well, what we call the gravy trainers, people that take out as much as they can from horse racing, and this is a long roundabout way of saying I never want to be one of them. There is little chance of me getting to that stage because these casts, whilst entertaining and interesting, and they do have some sort of traction out there, attract a crowd of between tens and occasionally a thousand, and that's it. Not enough to move the algorithm, particularly in my favour, and certainly not enough to attract anybody wanting to sponsor or advertise on this particular platform and this particular channel and this particular podcast. So my discourse with you, fellow listener, will never be monetized. It's really going to be optimized because, as uh you've no doubt gathered, and certainly from the rambling nature of this particular cast, it is, as I've often said, a question of me going press the microphone, see what comes out, and hopefully it's of interest and it gains some sort of traction. It's important for me to get across that this comes all comes from a good place, from a place of love, from a place of respect. Let me put that into some sort of context and stick with me on this because it's going to go off see me on highways and byways, and hopefully I'll be able to grab it and lasso it and bring it all back to a meaningful conclusion in a few minutes' time. You've probably gathered from listening to the cast that I'm a big fan of music. Why am I talking about music? Well, because that's something that really gets into my soul that I really love and can four young plank spankers, drums, guitar, bass guitar, vocals can take me to places that very few other things and experiences can. You know, a well-written song with melody put across with passion by a bunch of kids with not much else on their mind other than to be the best that they can be and and to and to change the world. You know, that that that that's great. You know, that that rocks my world. And and that is important to me. And I'm talking about music because you you you may have heard, you may not have, but but there's a there's something called Suno, which is a music app, it's an AI app, which turns basically music prompts into complete songs. So you can put a prompt by a genre or style. You're not yet allowed to do it by artists, so you're not allowed to say, I want this to sound like people pick your favourite band, you know, Cradle of Filth, uh, to Britney Spears, to Ed Sheeran, to Mozhead. You know, you're not allowed to do that yet, but you can probably do something similar on the dark web if you're so inclined. But you can put in a genre or a style, post punk 1984 prompts, and and and you can make a song in in 30 seconds if you've got sufficient skill and ability with AI. And and why do you want to do that? Well, because you can download between four and seven thousand new songs each day to Spotify. You don't need to be that much of a clever sort of guru, just put these songs out there, and the way that Spotify is monetized, we're back to that word again, means that the pool of money that you are like to generate for yourself is going to be huge. And I'm gonna say all power to you. No, not all power to you. You are you disgust me if that is your idea of making a living. There is no love, there is no passion for the music, it's just a question of what are the songs that I can write today, what content, there's the word again, can I create today? You know, it it's it's it's sterile, it's horrible, it's loveless, it's making money by numbers, and basically you go down that route and dark things happen to creativity, and you are as a and I'll dignify with uh a word with with a definition it doesn't deserve, you are a musician in inverted commas with that is very far removed from your audience, and that disgusts me. Certainly, you know, i if you go to a live music concert, it's not gonna be too far before we get prescribed sound and prescribed light shows, all artificial intelligence generated, and again, as an artist, you're one step removed from your audience, or several steps removed from that immediate sharing of a vibe, a sharing of a feeling with your audience if it's just reduced to an algorithm which will give somebody an instant hit of dopamine, and then we move on to the next hit of dopamine. So that that is an example from an artistic platform or uh an artistic medium that I love, music. And you can take it into football, the days of pick them out from which ever generation I'm addressing here. George Best, Giorgio King Cladze, Matt Letissier, Gareth Bale. Those people are gone pretty much. And and now football, you know, we're looking more like a game of chess. If I receive the ball here, then I do that. Go subroutine. You know, it's like watching software engineering sometimes, I think, you know, watching a top-class football match nowadays. Rinse, rewind, repeat with slightly different bleeps and whistles and personnel. And and there's your game of football. And I'm hammering this point probably to the point where you've switched off out of frustration to say that racing, let's bring it back to racing, Peter, because that is what the punters are here to listen to. Racing is very, very far, I hope, and continues to be very, very far, from that cynical approach to the their audience. They fuck up, or we fuck up, and that's Legion, you know. You just have listened to me need to have listened to to this cast over the you know, over the the months that I've been doing it, you need to listen to the Bar Stewards Inquiry. That yeah, those guys can just deliver a withering evisceration of racing, you know, from poor jockey ships to poor stewardship to the big stuff, to our overarching the future of racing, the future funding of racing, and those guys can do it far better than I can. Talk about the problems that are facing racing and how how how how bad it all is. It's easy to do that, but racing as a pure medium and spectator experience is very simple. A bunch of forces run from point A to point B, first one across the line is the winner. And yes, let's talk about betting because that's what we're here for, or that's what we should be here for. You are momentarily engaged, you I don't say momentarily, if you're a punter like me, you have been engaged for uh several hours pulling together, cogitating over your bet, and you are heavily invested in which horse gets from A to B the quickest, and for a few minutes you feel alive and you are invested financially but also emotionally and with your soul, you know, there is nothing more important to you during those few seconds or few minutes that that race is run that than that race, than what is transpiring and what is taking place in front of you, and that's a good thing, isn't it? You know, in an age of conniving media, conniving politicians, people that will say anything to get your vote that don't address long-term problems, that will just say something to address the here and now to give you that dopamine hit, football that I've talked about, the music that I've talked about, put in your own thing that gives you a jollies. It over the years it's been watered down, and you're getting an UrsaT second-hand experience that isn't as good as it used to be. Let's say that that is something that I we can all agree on, I hope. Racing is still a very engaging and life-affirming sport for the simple reason that it's as simple as I've just mentioned, and and it's important to recognise that. And for me, you know, that is what it can be all about, but it can be so much more than that. I've talked in the past about Dr. Kate Fox and her book The Racing Tribe, and wherein she goes into great depth about the various sort of subgroups within racing, you know, people that don't go for to the races for a bet, the people go to peacock about the place, you know, to dress up and be seen, people that go purely for the aesthetics of the horse in flight, and I can dig that. That's something which, you know, I don't necessarily have to be financially involved in a race to get something out of it on that aesthetic gut-visceral level, seeing horses, going hammering tongs. You know, I I talked about this as recently as Ascot last week when Bo Echo and Gishad and Talk of New York were pushing themselves to the limit uh in the final two furlongs in the second race at on uh over there at Ascot a couple of weeks back. But you know, and you can go and see that the mingiest sort of plaiter, claiming level race. You know, you can see horses just running for the sheer joy of running, and that is a thing of beauty, and I can understand people going racing just to witness and be part of that. There are people that go racing for the social side, why not? You know, it's a sociable sport. Yeah, the the point I'm making is that racing can appeal to the entrepreneur and the accountant in you, it can appeal to the poet and the gypsy and the dandy, and it can appeal to you at different times on different levels, in in you know, in whatever way that I've just sort of outlined. That is what makes it great, and that is why I love it, and that is why it's important for you know for me to try and get that across, and subsuming or overarching, or you think of the word that you want here, Peter. You you get what I'm talking about. Let's use the word. Uh subsuming all of that is the need for me to get across to you that this is where I am coming from. I am not a racing blogger, I am not a tips that out to rip you off, I am not somebody pushing a hidden agenda. I'm just a bloke with a microphone and a bit of a mouth on him that wants to do something for posterity to see if I can get better at it over the years, to see if I can hit a seam of something relevant and important, and a listenership that goes, Yeah, I can I can understand where he's coming from. This guy sounds interesting. Let's rattle his case, let's get back to him, let's talk with him, let's meet with him, let's tell him he's an arsehole, let's tell him he's on the money. You know, that is why I am doing it. That is why it's important for me to be up front and and talk about why I love race and why these casts and these words come from that place of love. And and yes, that might not be very cool, so you know, laugh it up. And isn't this guy a an arsehole? Well, no, I'm not. Fuck the tyranny of cool. I I don't want to just be caught for being cool's sake. I want to get across something that is it's important to me and it's vital to me, and hopefully I've managed to do that in these few minutes that you've lent me your ears for, for which I thank you, for which I commend your internal fortitude, and like I would say, you know, thanks very much indeed for showing up for well for this particular cast because it's it's an important one, this one, but for all the casts that I put out going sort of way back when. That's it for now. As I say, thanks very much indeed for showing up. Me over and out. See you next time.