My Day At The 2016 J & B Met

The 2016 J & B Met has come and gone leaving me feeling somewhat unfulfilled. Not as though my opinion counts……….

Let’s start off by acknowledging the feat of the Snaith yard in saddling no less than 8 winners on the day. Impressive. I also need to applaud the evaluation skills of Karel Miedema who, at the recent CTS Cocktail Party, cocked an eyebrow at me when I recklessly labelled Smart Call as ‘not for me’. Fools and horses…….

So – from the top;

This was my 43rd Met so I regard myself as being relatively experienced in getting through the day in one piece; both financially and physically.

To beat the mayhem & bottlenecks which are normally a part of the Met I arrived early at the event. The first part was easy – I took a long, deliberate detour and reached my parking area without incident or delay.

Thereafter, and despite the fact that the entrance to the course is very close to the Wynberg Sports Club area in which I had parked, I was almost press ganged onto a bus and sent on a pointless journey through the very bottlenecks that I had carefully planned to avoid.

The next ‘whoopsie’ followed shortly. The previous day I had taken a l-o-n-g round trip to Kenilworth to collect my ticket. Such a pity that I was not given the required wrist band that supposedly goes with it. So another 20 odd minutes and much chatter on walkie talkies eventually ended with the required ‘supervisor’ arriving to provide the wristband and grant me access to my appointed section. Happily for security I proved to be the early guinea pig as many others behind me clearly had the same problem and seemed quite keen to duplicate the racist incident that got so much publicity at the recent Queens’ Plate. But by now they had cut their teeth, so to speak, on a punter well experienced in management blundering without it developing into a twitter firestorm.

BTW – if you insist on using wristbands then try and avoid colours which blend with skin colours. I was blocked repeatedly during the afternoon by security personnel who could not see the skin toned band on my bony white wrist despite the fact that I was wearing a short sleeved shirt!

So I arrived at ‘base camp’ in the Garrett Bar. It turned out to be a very nice, quite intimate venue with excellent sight of the parade ring. Service was excellent throughout the afternoon with rather interesting fare ranging from sushi to mutton pies. As punting is the priority I tend to eat sporadically so I found the offering worked well for me & the 27 odd ‘others’ who made up our party. Booze was also reasonably priced.

Sadly the racing was where it went a bit pear shaped for me.

I know I’m an ‘old fart’ with no aspirations to attend the after party but the day is waaaaay TOO LONG. I can just about stomach 10 races but 12 is far too many if the exodus that started straight after the Met is any indicator of flagging interest.

The recent re-scheduling of the programme has made it, dare I say, repetitive and close to boring. Fully half of the races were distances of 1400m or less. They even managed to inflict us with one of my old favourites – a MR 72 F&M Handicap – when I thought we had palmed those lulus off to the Durban polytrack. On a premier day? C’mon.

…..and isn’t it time we buried this ‘Class Of 20XX’ nonsense? Predictably all the handshaking & the ‘parade of politicians and operator suits’ resulted in the race jumping late; despite a 50 minute(!) gap between the 7th race and the Met. Not that anybody particularly noticed this – the entire event is now so widespread around Kenilworth that many probably returned home tonight (or tomorrow morning!) in blissful ignorance of the fact that racing even took place. Certainly relatively few ever found their way to the parade ring although that might just have been as a result of the vigilance of the ‘wristband Gestapo’.

Kudos also to the bright spark who suddenly decided to inflict on us at ear splitting volume some frantic piece of music midway through the afternoon for no apparent reason other than to render any social interaction impossible for the duration of this piece. Huh?

Given all of the above you would have imagined that I must have gone home all of sour, wasted and broke. Not at all. I commendably restrained myself to losses of about three grand until the J & B Reserve (correction ; Honey) Stayers event where I smashed them out of the park on Ovidio; easily replicating the noise from the aforementioned music (and half losing my voice in the process).

Of course I will return next year; but only because I am an addict.

I am always saddened at how little these events appear to do for the sport. Event organisers – yes. Racing – not so much.

It’s all so uncomfortably corporatized. With a nod to that famous movie – if it’s the end of January this must be Kenilworth!

Rather the Queen’s Plate for me or for anyone who actually enjoys their racing. But twice a year is more than enough.

Garrick, would you personally prefer the met meet to be a two day festival , say 2 x 7 or 8 race cards

Thanks for sharing your experience again Garrick much appreciate, we are trying a Jolly Boys Outing to the big T on 20th, a bus from pub to track and back with new racegoers ( they don't normally punt but have a long CV for social activities ).

Garrick, course side of the grandstand was amazing this year. Punters and locals a massive crowd, quite a bit up on last year. about 400m of fans about 15 deep along the rail with a good view of the race - they all stuck it out cheering from at least race 2 onward. Looking up at the grandstand there were only one or two empty seats.

If you were in a picnic area down the course,or in the building, you may have missed connecting with the racing. But not down there at the winning post. It was full on! So happy for these people, they got their fix.

will post a pic in a mo

Sorry about the delay in replying, Bob, but I rarely return to a post that I have put up.

I think splitting the Met into a two day festival (Sat/Sun) might well work with, perhaps, the Investec 'Day Of Dreams' on the Saturday and the Met moving to the Sunday. We seem to have largely outgrown religious objections to racing on a Sunday and there might be fewer competitive attractions.

It would certainly allow for better 'amortisation' of the enormous infrastructural comittments (eg marquees) made for, at present, just one day.

I have had only one experience of festivals and that was Cheltenham which, as we all know, is a 4 day event. I found it a doddle to pace myself over the 4 days and enjoyed the opportunity to review and regroup each evening.