Tomorrow's fish and chip wrappers

My obsession really started when I joined Pacemaker magazine in 2000. Pacemaker has been through many guises under various ownership over the years and now it is part of Thoroughbred Owner & Breeder, by whom I am currently employed.

The three years at Pacemaker in the Haymarket days were the best years of my working life. It was wonderful to be able to concentrate solely on racing at last and I was fortunate to work with three excellent people, all of whom constantly showed me the error of my ways if I dared even to mention jump racing. They set me on the path from which there was to be no return: a love and appreciation of flat racing and breeding (though I secretly still love jumping but my nerve is failing).

I am happy to say that all three remain my friends to this day. Jeremy Early, an extremely talented nature photographer in his other life, is currently writing a fascinating series on the great owner/breeders for TO&B which I have greatly enjoyed reading as, I hope, have many other people who share the obsession. John Boyce is Darley's statistical guru and we worked together there for a number of years after Haymarket sold Pacemaker. In many ways, John is responsible for me being in Newmarket in the first place and I should be eternally grateful to him for that. Julian Muscat was the editor and it pains me greatly to have heard last week that he has lost his contract as a racing correspondent at The Times. Julian will hate me even mentioning this but I'm pretty certain he'll never read this blog so I should get away with it. He was a superb boss and he is, without doubt, one of the most talented writers about racing that this country possesses. It is unfathomable to think that Julian's services are not required by a paper as highly regarded by The Times but it seems that in most walks of life now, one doesn't necessarily need to be good, one just needs to be cheap.

The news of The Times dropping to just one racing correspondent followed on from the same announcement at the PA, where Martin Kelly has lost his job. I suspect we'll be seeing some more of Martin on ATR. He's a hugely enthusiastic and likeable character and I wish him luck in his freelance career. It's not only The Times and PA cutting back but Horse & Hound, my magazine of choice since I first sat on a pony aged four, is also reducing its racing and bloodstock content. Obviously H&H is in the unenviable position of having to try to be all things to all people and covers dressage, showing, polo, show jumping, eventing, driving, endurance and pretty much every other imaginable equestrian discipline. But I have to admit to an awful twinge of sadness when H&H dropped through the letterbox last Thursday and I grabbed it to read while having my muesli, only to find there was no racing report. It just felt wrong.

So what's the message from all this? Is racing really that much of an irrelevance in today's society? Not so if the recent figures from racecourse attendances for the first half of this year are anything to go by. Or are these people just coming along for the extras, such as pop concerts, beauty pageants and bouncy castles, all now given so much prominence that the horses themselves are in danger of becoming a sideshow? Maybe.

It's easy to get bogged down in the constant worries of falling prize-money, potentially reduced opportunities for horses to even race and the trivial manner in which many racecourses now treat their core product but it's also important to keep in mind exactly why we're here doing this in the first place. No amount of gloomy levy forecasts can take away that exquisite unique thrill when a horse you bred or own or love or follow or have backed passes the line in front. Even on a horribly wet Tuesday at Bangor. Thank you, Ex Con, Douchkette, Batgirl, Silken Thoughts and co. for reminding us what it's really all about.