Epsom's long drop: can it be arrested?

Contrast two Group 1 races held on Saturday, 3,350 miles apart. The Betfred Epsom Derby, 246 years in the making, vs the Belmont, 90 years its junior.

The Belmont, held this year at Saratoga, whilst its home at Belmont undergoes a major rebuild, enjoyed a terrific buzz as Sovereignty added to his Kentucky Derby victory with the final leg of the US Triple Crown, beating favourite Journalism, the Preakness winner, by 3l. Add to that an international flavour in the first British runner by Jamie Osborne's Heart of Honor, who may hit his own sweet spot over longer distances should he persevere in the US calendar.

By contrast, the Epsom Derby is being talked down by industry commentators, even if the 22,312 attending enjoyed the occasion as much as usual. The harsh reality is that the Derby has been on the decline for some years, and current trends in racehorse training are conspiring against it, as Greg Wood alluded in his Guardian column on Monday.

In the modern era, the Derby has been run on a Saturday since 1993, when a momentous decision was made to move from a Wednesday, largely to arrest the decline of the race. Attendance figures for that period are quite misleading, as there was no means of charging or reconciling for admissions to Epsom Heath, one reason why images of the era show open-topped buses stretching to Tattenham Corner. the infield crowd - always an estimate - reckoned to double the audited crowd in the stands. The Derby was at one stage the only horse race which was afforded its own bank holiday when Parliament ceased its business for the afternoon to enjoy the horses.

Peaking at 48,206 in 2005, there has been a steady decline in public attendance at Britain's most famous flat race, and no evidence that Epsom has yet reached the bottom. So how can a race meeting fall so far in the public consciousness?

Globalization of racing

Flat racing is increasingly a global sport, where the world's top breeders and owners race their stock in the leading jurisdictions: the USA, Australia, increasingly the Middle East. British racing retains a reputation for the best quality bloodstock largely because many of those breeders are invested in the long heritage of racing here. Events like Royal Ascot simply can't be replicated among the brash newcomer events like the Everest, Golden Slipper, and Saudi Cup. But as our political standing in the world diminishes 50 years on from the last vestiges of Empire, so this will perhaps eventually catch up with our racing. Owners and breeders have too much choice where once there was none.

To that end, trainers increasingly recommend international programmes for their top stock to the detriment of our premier 3 year old event. They may say the Derby is a unique race on their bucket list, but their choices say something else.

A later Racing Calendar

Although there are big all-aged races in the Middle East through the first few months of the year, there is a considerable focus of big and prestigious races in the autumn. The Derby is no longer the sole consideration for owners, whose ambition may be to win the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, or at the Breeders' Cup. In many respects, the Derby is simply too early in the year nowadays.

Concentration of power

In parallel with this, the bloodlines that are consistently mopping up black type races are held in fewer and fewer hands, many with interests in multiple racing jurisdictions. Juddmonte, Coolmore and Godophin are global bloodstock entities, carving up the Group I races between armies of high quality racehorses in their care. Aidan O'Brien enjoyed 3 of the 18 runners in the Derby; Ralph Beckett and the Gosdens 2 each. The bluest blood is in a relatively small group of decision-makers who are soaking up all the graded races. That Aidan O'Brien has now won the Derby 11 times - whatever the scale of the achievement - tells a story more of his access to the best bloodlines than any genius in racehorse preparation.

This is one reason we should celebrate the achievement of second placed Lazy Griff, a syndicate - owned horse straight out of the pages of Dream Horse. But in the broadest terms, not enough racegoers know who is likely to be running in the race, so they are not rooting for their favourite.

Media Visibility

This year's winner ran three times as a two year old, and was appearing for a third time this Spring. Whilst this is not unusual, there are plenty who appear sparingly in their juvenile year, and this helps not a jot in exposing those horses to media scrutiny.

What's more, the Derby is not a compelling enough story for sports editors to allocate additional space in the same way that they do for the Cheltenham Festival or Grand National. The Derby doesn't sell newspapers, and although it ranks among our most wagered races, it has lost any cut-through with the mainstream public. Retrieving this looks a most challenging task in an era when mainstream print media has all but done away with dedicated racing columnists. Only the Guardian and Telegraph among the serious papers still run racing editorial, and who can blame them when the hottest news appears in social media or bookmaker sites first nowadays?

Fighting against this tide is incumbent terrestrial broadcaster ITV, but one implication of the move to Saturday is a further marginalization of the television audience. At least ITV gave the race unfettered coverage; in Channel 4 days, it played second fiddle to cricket, which is symptomatic of the compression of sports into busy weekend broadcast slots and the fragmentation of the TV audience with red buttons, multiple channels for sport, and a wealth of other viewing choice that didn't exist even 20 years ago.

Entertainment value

The cachet of attending the Derby is certainly rather less than attending Royal Ascot 2 weeks later. Ascot has plenty to amuse the occasional spectator wishing to be seen or heard; at Epsom, the quality of the racing has proved insufficient to lure a broader demographic looking for a day out. There's no Number One Car Park for the après-races party; no bandstand to gather round, and even Tattenham Corner station is a long hike if you're in high heels.

A certain dress code can assuredly add to the style of the event, but Epsom's roots as the people's race are more among the Eliza Doolittle demographic than the aristocracy. This is a venue for the Pearly queens - more "Gor Blimey" than "Yes My Lord."

Cost

Cost needn't necessarily be a disincentive to attending. At the time of writing, the Saturday of Royal Ascot is already sold out, more than a month in advance of the event, where the pricing is higher than at Epsom.

However, Ascot devotees might readily concur that the ambiance of the occasion, its royal cachet, singing at the bandstand afterwards, all combine to offer better value for money.

But zooming in on Epsom's core audience of Londoners, they've been caught in the vice of a cost-of-living crisis. Epsom is just another in a long list of events that can be dropped from the calendar.