KEEPING PACE WITH HORSE RACING AND THE TAO OF ZAC

I don’t know Zac Purton well, but I feel that I know him better than perhaps he knows himself.

Confused?

Being on the outside of the Hong Kong horse racing bubble, I see someone completely different to what some of those rabid racegoers who pass my way see and insist on sharing their thoughts about how the ins and outs and sideways of how horse racing in the city should function.

Think I care?

What I do believe is that Zac is good for horse racing that is going through its most challenging of times.

He is good for the game, because he’s so out there that he’s in here, and that those out of the bubble understand where he might be coming from, and that maybe, like many of us are trying to do, he’s trying to make some sense of it all.

Ironically, many times, I find that these “supporters” of horse racing are a liability to the “fandom” of their favourite pastime by continually kicking it in the teeth and adding to the inane and often puerile nattering on unsocial social media.

By the same token, those at the top of the horse racing totem pole must be far better and more open communicators, and not add fuel to the fire by speaking with forked tongues.

They should also be able to attract hires who can actually bring new things to the table of change instead of fluffy resumes and a litany of irrelevant titles.

The hiring process is a very long and arduous subject for another day- and a short day before perhaps a new sports and entertainment media moves in and wins over a new audience.

Again, being someone who is still very much part of the heart of music and resuscitating it and winning back its core values and soul and a return to those days when us fans supported artists and what they created with honesty and passion and our pocket money, I find this to be sorely lacking in horse racing.

Maybe I’m wrong. But I doubt it.

Joao Moreira or Zac Purton or James McDonald or Ryan Moore?

Surely, they all contribute to the whole and compete for honours just as we all do in any business that we find ourselves in?

Like Jude, we’re taking a sad or broken down song and trying to make it better by realising that the movement you need is on your shoulder.

When we see riders fall during a race, and horses being euthanised behind green screens, we feel for them and their families. We are concerned about their welfare. We leave the racecourse unless a glutton for punishment.

We also think twice about entering the world of horse racing and ask ourselves, “What’s in it for us?”

Think about the musicians, we have lost to the 27 Club, and friends from school bands who exited this world too early.

We still mourn them and they remain part of our past, present and future. 

What is horse racing’s longevity and emotional attachment with its audience and how good is it at communicating this?

As I have written many times about horse racing, it needs to be more likeable, and this must start with the fans and those who run the show. 

It’s about presenting audiences with the most entertaining show on turf and dirt possible, and with each player- and its audience- having a role to play.

At a time when we’re in a topsy turvy fruitcake world with a bigly orange cherry on top, horse racing needs sullen and also immensely talented characters like jockey Ryan Moore, the British racing journalist Matt Chapman, and also Zac Purton, suddenly appearing last week in a hip hop video with a group of Chinese rappers in some surreal version of Gangstas Paradise.

Personally, we- and not just the Hong Kong racing tribe- needed that bit of Zacadiddy.

We’re hurtling into 2026, and watch how quickly cricket has evolved into a wonderfully entertaining mélange of “Bazball”, the audacity and immense talent of someone like India’s Rishabh Pant, 14 year old wunderkinds waiting in the wings plus new technological innovations to make the game more edutaining to a new generation of fans streaming cricket to appreciate various bowling, batting and fielding talent.

Horse racing might think it’s changing, but is it?

Was, for example, the pomp and ceremony of Royal Ascot a game changer or just a repeat performance of what had come thirty years before?

It might have been nice to watch the procession-like win of Sober, but, at least for this television viewer and his friends, it was thinking about how similar were the head movements of horse trainer Aiden O’Brian and Stevie Wonder. 

The point is that the world has changed. Those who don’t see these changes or refuse to see them are going to be Yesterday’s People and irrelevant to the future of horse racing or anything else.

There are already many who don’t believe that horse racing has a future and dismiss it as a “sunset industry” propped up by the usual suspects who are now thirty or even forty years older than when they were somewhat relevant.

When surviving on borrowed time and “energised” by buying and selling greed, it’s not a good ‘look’ despite what those vapid “influencers” whose time’s up might say.

Remember someone named Elon Musk?

And don’t think that Big Brother and his big little brothers aren’t watching and wondering what can work better for people on the land that horse racing is still being allowed to take place.

The Singapore Turf Club didn’t see what was coming down the pike from the government?

Racing in Macau didn’t hear the fat lady sing?

Horse racing in Malaysia is here to satay?

Is there still horse racing in Korea?

Will boutique racing partner with tourism departments and create Resort racing?

Maybe, especially at a time when travellers in these post Covid times are looking for new travel destinations that cater to those too young to bother trying to understand what was then, but extremely interested in what can be more than it is today.

These are questions that horse racing needs to ask itself, and perhaps start by simplifying the totalisator board that looks ominous and confusing to many 28-35 year olds.

It’s like a relic from The Planet of the Apes. And maybe it is.

WARNING: Foreboding visual below.