MY CALL: ALMOST ON THE ROPES ... BUT STILL RACING

By David Fowler | Tuesday, March 24, 2020

David Fowler is the principal thoroughbred caller for Radio TAB. David, who is a keen form student and punter, has enjoyed a lifetime involvement in the racing media. His personal blog, ‘My Call’, appears exclusively on HRO.

Twists and turns with no clear end point.

I used this term here last week when we embarked upon the first week of a different racing world caused by the Co-vid 19 pandemic.

At that point my chief concern was the financial plight of race clubs, their employees and their contractors with “closed shop” meetings resulting in no revenue.

My understanding is that particular predicament has got worse in the last seven days.

Yet the last 48 hours whether within or outside the country has turned Australia on its head.

In the face of this massive upheaval, racing’s controlling bodies yesterday greenlighted a continuing of the product, albeit on the strictest of conditions.

Can these two such events remain mutually compatible?

No. The odds are lengthening about racing continuing in the short term.

But, significantly, it has little to do with the way racing authorities and participants are handling the current set-up.

A report card on their performance nation-wide last week would have been impressive without resting on their laurels.

Yet racing’s potential demise is factored on events happening around them.

The announcement of the postponement of the AFL and NRL 2020 seasons tightened the noose around racing’s neck.

On a broader front, a complete shutdown of a country’s economy is gaining traction. New Zealand and Britain are the two most recent examples.

If Australia followed that lead, naturally it’s all bets off.

And on the broadest front and one that’s hard to quantify, there is a growing public perception that racing should be shut down in the interests of lessening the health crisis.

Yet this is a personal reading of the tea leaves. Only an opinion although based on some fairly weighty evidence.

The present facts are that racing is continuing. It’s worth considering then, by extension, if it does what changes might we see?

Health measures at tracks will become more stringent. A no brainer.

Racing itself could become quarantined or zoned. For example, is there sufficient pool of horses around Eagle Farm and Doomben to run a race meeting?

Zoning was announced in greyhound racing in New South Wales yesterday.

With the implementation of state lockdowns, upcoming racing carnivals in Adelaide and Brisbane may be postponed or scrapped altogether.

Expect the Oakbank carnival early next month to go by the board and discussions are underway between Racing Queensland and the Brisbane Racing Club regarding the 2020 Carnival.

There is some potential wriggle room to delay some of those feature races to July which will be an item of discussion.

From a purely racing point of view, we are in a far more precarious position than we were a week ago.

But we are racing. Hopefully you can find a winner at Eagle Farm tomorrow.

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