whipping boy
Horseracing crowds are dwindling. The Met a few weeks ago attracted an estimated 50 000, but if one in 10 of that bunch of social butterflies makes it to the track this weekend, the infrastructure would collapse under the strain.
Hardcore punters have mixed feelings about big-race days. The Met and the July pools are always swollen with money from suckers who don’t back anything shorter than 20-1. So, the theory goes, the normally shorter-priced animals with real chances become easier to back for the real punter. But the suckers are also a nuisance. They make the queues at the windows a nightmare, they’re noisy, disrespectful, dress funny and, well, there’s just too damn many of them. Worst of all, the backward idiots who run racetracks clearly prefer the designer-dressed dummies over the regular customers who can actually read form. So they put on dancing girls, marching bands, best-dressed couple awards and sniff disdainfully at the scruffs with their noses stuck in their form books. This laughably outdated notion of horseracing as a genteel pastime survives in the memory of many a veteran, and also in the vision of one Frank Stronach, a rich American who is buying up racetracks all over the United States. He wants to attract big crowds again by including shopping facilities, hairdressing salons, boutiques, cafes, restaurants, musical concerts, and so on, in the racetrack experience. The mystery is why he needs to include racing. One American horseracing writer observed caustically: “They seem to be under the illusion that people will go to the racetrack for a fine dining experience.”
But Stronach’s interest in the sport does extend beyond real estate. Five years ago, almost to the day, he was pleased to get news that his Canada-based mare Serene Nobility, a US stakes winner, had delivered a colt by Dixieland Band. The foal was named Mutaahab, sold for $190 000 and sent to Britain to race. He ran six times as a two-year-old, counting the Royal Lodge Stakes among his triumphs before being sold again for 115 000 guineas as a three-year-old. In all he raced nine times in Britain for four wins and five places. Early last year two ambitious South African racehorse owners, Bernard Kantor and Fred Crabbia, bought Mutaahab for an undisclosed sum (whispered to be in excess of R1-million). The four-year-old ran a good second at Turffontein and a month later resumed winning ways at Scottsville. Suddenly he was being touted as a serious contender for the July. But the first unplaced runs of Mutaahab’s career followed and he was eliminated from the final field for the July. The would-be champ was starting to look more like a chump. The colt was transferred to the Cape yard of Mike Stewart, gelded and fitted with blinkers. On Met day he had his second run for Stewart and showed a glimpse of his old form with a good second. If now near his considerable best he will have the field in the Cape Summer Handicap, over 1?800m at Kenilworth on Sunday, at his mercy.