October
SeptemberSky is not falling
Michael Lynch’s Sunday Age article ("Stakes too high in racing furore", 9/9) is a mishmash of clichés and contestable assertions.
After stating that racing "needs public confidence to have a viable future," and that "there must be no doubts about its probity," he later says that [because of the race-fixing allegations] "punters may well decide to keep their hands in their pockets."
He goes on to speak of empires unravelling, structures tumbling down and so on, but then virtually contradicts himself by claiming that racing is too valuable and interesting to die or even fade away!
Does anyone seriously think that racing has ever been squeaky clean, or even close to this? One can only think that writers such as Lynch simply don’t know the mindset of average punters or don’t want to know.
Here’s one or two assertions of my own.
The average punter thinks that racing has always had its corrupt side, probably always will. The average punter, despite the occasional whinge when he loses, deep down knows that this corruption sometimes works for him, sometimes against him, but for the overwhelming amount of time has no effect whatsoever on his long-term fortunes.
Even if you multiply the reported fixed races in Victoria (two or three at latest count) by, say, five, you get 15 races fixed over, say, the last two years.
That makes roughly 15 dodgy races out of 8000, one in 500. Does that put me off betting? Not at all. Does that put the average punter off? Well, in some respects I think I’m pretty average.
Lynch mixes in together concerns about the natural decline of interest in racing on account of modern life, sports gambling and new technologies with the latest corruption allegations.
By running these two issues together writers can attribute to the latter falling turnover on account of the former.
I contest this attribution. I claim, on behalf of the average punter, that the existence of corruption is at least to some extent taken for granted by him, and that the discovery of a handful of fixed races has virtually no effect on his betting activities.
(None of this of course is in any way an argument against pursuing jockeys, connections etc in relation to corruption. Of course this should proceed with all powers available.)
Parkville (Vic)