THE SUNSHINE COAST NEWSPAPER COLUMN - CHEERS! A TOAST TO ALL RACING'S HELPERS LARGE AND SMALL

By Graham Potter | Sunday, December 22, 2013

Graham Potter writes a weekly column for the Sunshine Coast daily. Due to demand from those having trouble accessing the paper these columns are now also published on HRO courtesy of the Sunshine Coast daily

It’s a time of good cheer and festive greetings … a time of year when most people throw off the cloak that constrains them and put on their party suits and relax and enjoy life for an all too brief period of time before reality makes its return at the end of the holiday season.

That is ‘most people’.

As always though, horse racing doesn’t take any holiday and therefore its participants can, at best, only hope for a at least some limited ‘downtime’ to join their family and friends while they maintain their core contribution of helping to keep the racing show on the road so that its followers can enjoy an uninterrupted service.

Horses still have to be galloped, walked, fed, housed and generally cared for keeping trainers and their stable staff to their regular routine. Jockeys have to watch their weight amidst increased temptation. Race-day staff, from starters to barrier attendants to strappers, commentators and judges, to club doctors and vets, to stewards, to tote operators, to bar and gate staff, to security officials and more … all have to be in position before any meeting can go ahead.

To underline the weight of commitment by participants mentioned above (and of course the supportive role of their families) it is interesting to note, for the record, that there will be no less than twenty-nine gallops meetings across Australia on Boxing Day.

While final acceptances for those meetings are not due yet, it’s a fair bet that if translate the final field statistics into horse numbers, the number of trainers, jockeys and strappers, race-day staff involved etc … you would get some idea of the sacrifice that many people, most of whom will always only work in the shadows behind the scenes and will never see the spotlight, are making in the name of racing.

While some will say that comes with the territory involved in those professions, that doesn’t mean that a vote of thanks to all participants is not in order over this festive period for the part they play in providing the greater racing community with an outlet for their needs, be it for straight gambling, for entertainment or for social interaction.

I unconditionally offer that thanks here and I sincerely hope they can fashion just enough time away from their respective duties to be able to join in this special celebration with family and friends that the most of the rest of the non-racing community take for granted.

For all the hard, vital work they do, they certainly deserve that small treat.

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