IS RACING THE WORLD'S MOST BORING SPORT?

Now that I have turned up punting horses for good ( other than perhaps in the July & Met ) it suddenly occurrs to me that having a bet on a race was almost solely responsible for keeping my interest in the sport alive.

Although there is not much that racing can do about making itself more interesting it is possibly worth noting how some of the world's leading spectator sports have continually evolved over the years.

The two sports closest to my heart are rugby and cricket.

Cricket - Having watched test cricket s-l-o-w-l-y decline as a spectator drawcard the sport re-invented itself with ODI and thereafter T20. Now we have the IPL. Whether these satisfy the purists or not they are certainly a lot more entertaining than the options that were formerly available to spectators. If racing ran cricket I assume we would still be stuck with test cricket only whilst the regulators ran sobbing to government.

Rugby - The rules have been amended regularly to speed up the game and provide more playing time. Dig out a video of a 60s or 70s test and you will be astonished how dynamic the sport has become. We will shortly see the introduction of 7s as an Olympic sport ; which should open the discipline to even more nations who have previously been disadvantaged by the physicality of the 15 man game.

The last major change to racing was the introduction of starting stalls - which even I am too young to remember. Other than that probably only the drugs administered have steadily evolved.

Whilst watching a race recently it suddenly occurred to me that a racing fan watches horses parading, circling and being reluctantly bundled into stalls for far longer than the actual racing. And this is entertainment? An average of 12 minutes of racing for every 5 hours of boredom. I wonder if cricket fans would watch if all we ever saw was the batsman endlessly taking guard?

So perhaps the answers to declining interest are a little more obvious than we care to admit! A football fan probably gets about 70 minutes of movement in a 90 minute match and even a first timer can latch on to what is going on within about 5 minutes. A racing first timer gets about 12 minutes per meeting and is bored stiff with the remainder of the activity , the complexity of the sport and the foreign language being spoken around him or her.

Brilliantly put and it probably explains why the only person I can get to the races is my 4 year old daughter ...

true, but consider the amount of races and the long afternoon. Whereas for a rugby game its 2hrs compacted and a bit longer for cricket. If you went to the course for say, 3 races only, you'd be less bored. Racing isn't any more complicated to understand nor more boring than cricket and rugby with its own set of rules to follow and consider. Where the sport is lacking in its duty is educating each generation they hope will become fans. It is very difficult to be excited about something you don't understand or cannot attach comparative value to i.e. linked to the historic performance of a team, who they are up against and those teams' past performances and the challenges each side faces when they meet.

So if that information is made available and used as a pump up more people will find it interesting and be excited by it. Just like when you go to the races and all the horses look the same - brown and fluffy, much the same as watching rugby - butch men charging after a ball. You have to understand what the challenge is to be able to become engaged -Don't you think?

Garrick, I challenge you to get me excited about watching rugby. Its so bloody boring!! and cricket is even worse. But that's only because I don't know the rules...so what do you do if you didn't grow up as a little boy in South Africa learning these games on your afternoons after school. How and when do you learn this? Same with horseracing...when does the bug bite? If my dad didn't take us to the tote as kids every now and then and made sure we watched every major Met and July race the bug probably wouldn't have bitten.

Don - I don't know about teaching you rugby but I believe I am taking you to dinner once you get back from the UK. Be nice to see you. We can do some wine research as well : Open ,pour, drink. Easy sport. That's probably why it's so popular!

Garrick, perhaps you should consider this... it is not the sports that have become boring but people themselves. The endless lust for everything to be at speed and with technological wizardry. The enjoyment of racing as a punter is in studying the form and finding those elusive winners, basically beating the puzzle that the form etc lays before you. But people can't be bothered (and most probably don't have the intelligence anyway) to do that these days, they don't have the time..!!!???! What do people do with their time that makes them so occupied? It baffles me. Apart from endlessly sitting with their mobile phones tapping away. Seriously, consider how boring (and anti-social) it is for someone to spend endless hours on their mobile, talking or tapping... give me sport of any kind any day. I have never owned a mobile and hope I never will. Your comment on cricket... I love cricket, I hate T20, it is simply not cricket and if the game continues to evolve in that direction then it will become little more than rounders. I remember the wild "celebrations" over how great that 1 day match between SA and Oz was a few years back, absolute rubbish, terrible for the game, what little kid is going to want to grow up being a bowler when everything is weighted against him and he watches ball after ball sailing to the boundary. He'll want to be a batsman and won't care how the ball is delivered as long as it sails miles and the crowd in their immaturely and lack of knowledge go whoop whoop. You talk about rugby from the 70s and 80s but that is recognised as a bad couple of decades for the sport, but look at a football match from the 50s with all the smiling faces, the game was then a lot slower etc but did it effect people's enjoyment, absolutely not. Today is all about being the best at things people don't have to understand (because they don't have the time etc), just so long as they can whoop whoop, whistle in that so cool way with the fingers stretching the mouth and go home and say it was "awesome" (look up the word awesome in a dictionary and see how often it is mis-used by today's society). Anyway, I wrote much more than I intended, got on a bit of an annoyed roll there Bottom line, I worry only for the future of sport because I worry about the future of people. That is not to say sport can't do more but until we stop bringing up kids to be a genius on a mobile and a computer by the time they reach 10 then sport as we know and love it will continue to decline no matter what they do. But of course parents don't have time to play football or whatever with their kids these days, easier to leave them sitting in their comfy lounge seat nice and quiet and occupied with their mobile phone, mum n dad simply don't have time these days to do anything else...

Still love the horses, also enjoy soccer and rugby, "I don't like cricket, oooh I hate it"

Looking forward to Olympics, especially athletics.

Such an interesting topic of discussion ... I hope it doesn't stop here.

I've been reading in another blog (cricket) discussion about why folks prefer to watch it on TV and won't "go to the course", won't bother to turn up at the cricket grounds for matches, especially the longer forms of the game. Seems to me it is today's culture to want everything quick and effortless. Why take the trouble to pack up lunches, folding chairs, etc. and find your way to the ground, find parking, maybe trek half a mile with kids in tow and bags to carry, buy tickets, find a spot to sit, and then maybe get rained out halfway through the match? When you could have stayed home. Specially if the kids start whining, "I'm booooored!" after forty minutes.

Same applies to racing I guess. From my own point of view (and I haven't been a kid for a very large number of years!) my interest comes from the horses themselves, both their beauty - I'm a keen if amateur photographer - and their career/history/background/racing style. I've moaned often enough on ABC and elsewhere, though, how these are the two things no-one on Tellytrack takes a blind bit of notice of. All they want is betting and more betting. Quick cash. There's no money for good camera-work on course, for interesting magazine programs not dominated by the sponsors into becoming mere advertorials, or for plenty of discussion of the horses, jockeys, etc., like one hears (when allowed the Time) on their local coverage of Singaporean or Hong Kong racing.

I love racing, and I love cricket (yes, even Test cricket!), but I know there's not many out there who do. Just btw, why do people say Test cricket is boring, but are willing to watch golf? That also takes 5 days, can also get rained out, and you can't even see all the contestants at the same time. And there's none of the wrestle between bat and ball, batters and bowlers, each trying to dominate the other. But look at the golf Majors, the people are packing every inch of seating, and even standing at the various holes to see a distant golfer hit a small ball to an even more distant destination. Go figure!

Agh, let me not get into a rant. The problem is embedded in our society, it's not specific to racing. Yes, racing is boring to the outsider, but I don't know how much education will help. I sit in a fascinating place to see the effect of education in a more general sense, on the up-and-coming generation of South Africans, teaching at a largely black university. Sadly I have to say that education cannot change their values, their aims and ambitions, or their morals. These are set by the time they arrive from school. We all want as much as possible, as quick and as easy as possible ... all of us ... and until we want to change we ain't gonna change.

Very interesting topic - different strokes for different folks - I don't believe I will ever find racing boring - but have to admit if I have to watch the chariots all day it would drive me round the bend. I love cricket - all forms of it, but of course it can get a bit dull when you have 2 batsmen grinding it out on a pitch where the ball does not 'come on' and does nothing for the bowlers either, but there are many more times when tactics come into play and it can be fascinating watch - in my opinion of course. T20 is a bit of a lottery and for all the big hits and 'DLF maximums' can become boring in its own way.

I also like watching rugby and a bit of golf, but football is really not my favorite sport to watch - they kick the ball around for more than an hour and then sometimes do not even manage to get it into the net (not to mention all the theatrics that goes with it - sometimes it's worse than WWF) - but I still watch the occasional 'big' match - especially when Man U plays

I don't think anybody has worked out why some people prefer a specific sport to another - could have something to do with upbringing I suppose. Some people love shopping, I can't stand it - it's just human nature?

What I like about racing is that its all over in about 1 to 2 minutes. I have recently noticed that I have become quickly bored with soccer and rugby, and yet watching soccer used to be a favourite pastime for me.

Garrick, I humbly suggest that your inability to enjoy racing without a bet says more about you than it does about the sport.

I learned something very important during the year since my horse won the Kentucky Derby.

Right after my horse finished first, I receive friend requests from a few hundred people on Facebook, most of whom were men that bet horses. After they realized that I would not be giving them tips, the next 1,000 friend requests consisted mostly of women and young girls, true fans of the sport of horse racing with very few punters among them.

There are, I reckon, hundreds and thousands of such fans across the width and breadth of America.

But because the racetracks are the lone entity that promotes the sport in America, and they survive by punting, these sport fans go largely unnoticed.

Garrick: question....if you find racing so boring, why do you come on here and post? There seems to be a lot of bored and fed up and frustrated people that post here that don't like racing. Why do they congregate here?

im sorry, for the first time i agree with irwin, garrick you worry about the betting not the horse. i go to the vaal often to spend time with the trainers i now and let me tell you i am always breath taken by the beuty and power of the thoroubred horse. if you think of what this animal achieves in every race you wont be bored

Well, if betting is the only thing about racing that interests you and you stop betting, of course you will be bored. Having never been a betting man worthy of the name myself, I don't find it at all boring and I;m with Barry and Flash Harry on this one.

Different strokes for different folks. I'd rather watch paint dry than watch rugby. The only rule they can bring in that would make rugby interesting for me is if they reduced the playing time to thirty seconds.