October
NovemberWhateley waffle
The death of Red Cadeaux triggered an amazing response from Gerald Whateley from Sunday’s ABC Offsiders.
While referring to claims that the deaths of four horses over the last three Melbourne Cups were a result of separate and contingent events, he waved his hands about seemingly expressing doubts about this, saying “four horses in three years is not acceptable”.
He backed up on Monday morning radio, expressing identical thoughts. (So even if on Sunday he was perhaps overly emotional, by Monday he’d had time to reconsider, but no change in his position.)
What are we to make of this? One of the seemingly most respected sports commentators seriously entertains the suggestion that there’s something else than sheer bad luck going on in these deaths. No discussion of the individual circumstances of each death, no broad statistical analysis of deaths in 3200m races, no discussion of whether there’s even an iota of evidence to support a thesis of the Cup becoming (somehow?) a more physically stressful event over the last few years.
Perhaps if the numbers increased to (say) ‘six in six years’, then the judgment of ‘not acceptable’ might actually begin to have some bite, for regardless of the realities of luck one can imagine many people drawing different conclusions, but Whateley is a senior commentator and so-called analyst, and from my perspective without excuse here.
With an opportunity to actually lead sensible discussion, instead he gestures towards something dark, with no justification apart from the woefully inadequately-sized statistic of ‘four in three’.
The overwhelming probabilities are that down the track Whateley’s thoughts on this issue will look downright silly, but get ready for him to up the ante if there happens to be another death in the next couple of years.
Parkville