View From A Broad
© 2007, Alpha Mare Media
May 5, 2007
As I thought about the topic for my first Editorial for our site, one thing came to mind, very clearly. I hammered and wrote, and presented it to my Producer/Business Partner.
And this is precisely why we have Producers and Business Partners: I can write a rant that'll burn the hair right off your head. I can convict a saint and banish sinners to Hell with a sweep of my proverbial pen.
Unfortunately, my original rant was better relegated to another week—or the confines of my brain. I thank God daily for R.B. Wyatt, our Producer and business genius. I may be the Mare, but he's the profoundly gifted jockey who shakes the reins at me, urging me to run fast and turn left. As you may know, the horse who holds the lead in the back, running without a communicative, strong jockey-- often runs out of steam down the final stretch
So R.B. holds me back until the second turn.
And it's that final stretch that wins the race.
NUMBERS, SCHMUMBERS
Therefore, tossing aside my control issues (is there a shrink in the house?)—I submitted to R.B.'s wisdom, and am now faced with writing my real first Editorial.
Today, for the debut issue of www.AlphaMareMedia.com, I'm going to talk about some numbers that drive me nuts. Statistics, like so many numeric raindrops, fall from the heavens and bombard the Sport of Thoroughbred racing every day. Every day? Sorry: every second. Workout times; race times, and fractions; distances; height; weight; lengths; attendance records; speed figures; handle—to be honest, I hate the math of this Sport.
I'm here for the horses: their gorgeous, graceful, perfect beauty, running full-tilt boogie, transports me directly to the throne of God. A particularly spectacular race record (time or lengths margin) may capture my imagination. But in general, it's the horse, and the heart therein, that keeps me here.
It's the obsession with numbers, that human (male?) contrivance, that I hate. (And yes, you sticklers for word definitions: it is a contrivance, because it intentionally distracts us from the real reasons we should go to the track.)
I don't hate the numbers because I'm "a girl," and can't understand them. I can understand them—any woman or girl can. I hate them because they get in the way of our ability to glimpse the dance of immortality as it unfolds before us on the track itself.
Numbers are a way to take something that's ethereal; otherworldly; spiritual; ineffably beautiful—something beyond understanding—and reduce it to black printed digits on a piece of paper.
To wrangle the moon and put her in a box.
Raise Your Voice an Octave, and Repeat After Me…
And, interestingly enough, this statistics thing has long been an excuse for women to be held back in the Sport because, oh, gosh—all those big numbers probably confuse us, don't they?? (C'mon, it's compulsory to act girly when you say that last phrase: flutter your eyelashes, raise your voice an octave, and in a whisper reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe's birthday ode to Kennedy, purr, "Oh, noooooo! I couldn't possibly understand all those big numbers, Daddy!")
That would be funny, except that it's not.
Let's step back from my rant for a moment to revisit last summer. Hanging at the backstretch rail with a friend (as we'd done so many mornings during the last meet), I basked in the strength of the coffee; the heat of the rising sun; the rhythmic thud of the horses' hooves on the track. My reverie was broken by said friend (a very dear, sweet soul in racing, a man who loves the horses as much as a human can love)—this dear man said to me,
"Quick! A quiz! What's a furlong?"
It took me a nanosecond to come up with my response:
"You mean, a unit of measurement of distance? One-eighth of a mile? Eight furlongs equals a mile? Six-hundred and sixty feet? Fifty-five feet per second, if the horse is going 12 seconds per furlong? Is THAT the kind of furlong you're talking about?"
"That's good!" he exclaimed. I actually expected him to pat me on the head.
I posed a question of my own:
"Do you think that…because I have a uterus…I can't really understand this Sport?"
"Well, some girls wouldn't have known that."
Some girls, maybe. Girls who haven't been around a racetrack. But, I pointed out, I'm a woman, not a girl, and I'd been going to the races since 1960, when I was a girl. And that I first rode a horse and helped muck his stall long before my friend was born.
Stats. Numbers. One of the things that stick in my craw about this Sport—the assumption that we womenfolk can't understand all those big numbers.
Those big numbers have helped hold us back, simply because it's assumed that we can't figure out how much a 2:1 will bring us on a $2 win ticket.
Big, audible sigh.
In spite of my disdain for the numbers in racing—and the very masculine obsession with reducing the numinous to mortality by measuring it—there are a couple of big numbers that I love, and one that will continue to flip me out until we shift the paradigm.
Big Numbers That I Love: 52%, 61%.
These numbers, according to the Sporting Goods Manufacturing Association, represent the fact that the majority of the fanbase of Thoroughbred racing is female. I kid you not: the SGMA does extensive, year-long surveys, and these percentages represent numbers from 2002 and 2004. Interestingly enough, it may not appear to be true to us simply because our expectations are otherwise: if we expect to see something, we do.
Hollywood, and the American Myth of the Well-Behaved Women
The Hollywood image with which we grew up provided the expectation that racing fans are male: women may accompany their men to the track, but surely, in the black-and-white world of 1930s and 40s Hollywood—a lady would never go to a racetrack by herself! A woman alone (or with other women) at Santa Anita was surely up to no good. Perfect fodder for a madcap escapade, because, darn it, those dames are so silly!
Think about it: virtually every Hollywood racing film of yore featured a scene in which degenerates—always male, always savvy—crowd the rail at a racetrack. And, in LaLaLand theology, since a woman can't be a degenerate—no woman would be in the throng. But that is the Hollywood version of horse racing: men in various stages of angst and excitement, crushing against the rail to scream at a "nag" who, dammit, loses the race. Disgusted, the men throw their losing tickets to the ground and curse God. (For some reason, they think that God made them pick the wrong horse, or that God fixed the race.)
And, really—if it's in the movies, it must be true, right?
Of course. And Johnny Depp really is a sexy, gold-toothed pirate with dreds, who'll leap right off that screen to take me away from it all. Thank God.
Unfortunately stereotypes are difficult to overcome, because they become engrained into the mind, and the collective mind of a society. Stereotypes are usually based on prejudices—either intentional or inherited—and fly in the face of reality. But to extricate the stereotypes, to dis-believe the myths, takes an intentional, intellectual decision: "I will not believe this myth; I will seek to discover the truth, myself."
Finally, Some Statistics with Which We Can Live…
This particular stereotype, that the majority of race fans are male, is just plain not true--according to the SGMA statistics. These are stats with which we can live.
Another significant statistic: 51% of the readers of The Blood-Horse and of www.bloodhorse.com, and a comparable number for Thoroughbred Times and www.thoroughbredtimes.com –are women. If this number seems unlikely, please check the demographics in their Advertising sections, online.
So reality flies in the face of a long-engrained myth. And that myth has been responsible for the prevention of full participation of women and girls in our gorgeous sport. Yes, yes, many of you reading this may think that I'm just running off at the fingers, sitting atop my Feminist high horse. But before you judge me, check out the second statistic, the one which has to go: that only approximately 5% of all the professional positions in this Sport are filled by females.
Do you not see a huge margin of difference there? If "only" 52% of the fanbase is female (and 52% is still the majority)—then logic would dictate that 52% of the professional positions are filled by strong, smart, capable, savvy women.
5%? Five percent? Five percent??
That's right. Think about it: if, for every 11 administrators at a racetrack, the top six were women—do you think the sport would change for the worse? If you're a female, and you're reading this, and you're thinking (even for a second)--that six women couldn't run, say, Churchill Downs "all by themselves,"—then you, too, are a victim of the Hollywood myth that's wrapped itself around the collective unconscious of our society.
Yes, if any females reading this View think that we're better off with men in the top positions at every racetrack; farm; company; law firm; feed manufacturer; tack shop; professional organization; member associations—if you think that racing is "just fine" with men at the helm, and that your own gender couldn't administer with efficiency and a firm hand—then you, too, have fallen victim to the myth.
And if women continue to hold these myths to be truths, thereby holding back ourselves—or, worse yet, future generations of women and girls—then nothing will change.
Why the Paradigm Must Shift
Thoroughbred horse racing in America is threatened by many factors: low track attendance in some locations; mismanagement of racing entities; casinos and poker rooms dominating the campuses of many tracks (and taking attention away from the drama and real Sport unfolding on the adjacent track).
(Male) administrators across-the-board keep whining, "How will we get more people to the track?"
I fear the day when every Thoroughbred racetrack across America has been reduced to a bedlam of neon-and-brass casinos and green-felt poker rooms inside; amusement parks, petting zoos and splashwater kingdoms outside. When those who run the shows are willing to do anything—anything—to get more people to the track. Their utter lack of insight, their inability to perceive the painfully obvious, is stunning.
We don't need monster casinos, poker clubs, amusement parks and kiddie pools at a racetrack to raise the numbers. Get rid of the crap and distraction: the cacophony of all that nonsense has never been proven to convert poker players into capable handicappers and bettors. Never. Those whose hands are superglued to VLTs* are not the candidates for a lifelong relationship with the Sport of Thoroughbred horse racing. It's nearly impossible to get one addicted casino gambler to walk south to the Clubhouse: transforming millions of them into fans of our Sport is never going to happen.
Why? Because the love of this Sport starts, first and foremost, with a love of Thoroughbreds. Only those who've experienced the power and joy of these most-perfect horses, their sculpted musculature and spirit racing toward the finish line—those are the only candidates for lifelong fandom in our Sport.
It starts with the Thoroughbred, and it ends with the betting. Not the reverse.
It does not go the other way, and it will never succeed. You cannot enhance the fanbase for Thoroughbred racing by bringing pasty-faced casino gamblers out into the sunshine; propping them up at the rail with a Coke and a hot dog, and insisting that they watch and become fascinated. Ain't gonna happen.
As long as the (predominantly male) racing administrations insist that VLTs and theme parks are the answer to securing the future of racing—the Sport is doomed.
* (And yes, I do realize that VLT money can help raise purses and standards of living for backstretch workers, horsepeople and the horses themselves. But everything in moderation, please. It takes a cool head to not rush, head-over-heels in love with the notion. 500 VLTs at a racetrack may be great: 5,000 is excessive insanity.)
The Obvious Solution
Last summer, I had the privilege of chatting with Hall of Fame Trainer, Leroy Jolley. Mr. Jolley has had his Trainer's license since 1952. He's been around a while, he's seen the Sport from all angles. And he knows whence he speaketh.
He was eager to talk about a topic that's been on his mind: how to market this Sport.
He raised an eyebrow, tilted his head and said to me,
"Let me ask you something: who loves horses more than a 13-year-old girl?"
Nobody, I responded.
He then went on to suggest that one, $10,000 ad in the center of Town & Country would garner more interest in this Sport than 100 similar ads in Sports Illustrated. The men who read SI are there for the swimsuits and basketball, not to become interested in The Greatest Game.
Isn't that Einstein's definition of insanity? "To do the same thing over and over, and expect different results"?
Racing keeps excluding women, and not considering us as fans and potential owners, trainers and other professionals. They keep trying to market our Sport to readers of Sports Illustrated (who don't give a damn), and to casino and poker gamblers. Their eyes are filled with hopeful expectation that somehow, some man will float over to the Clubhouse from their kabillion-dollar casino, and (with all the evangelistic zeal of a new convert)—bring a billion friends along for the ride:
"Look what I've discovered, Boys! Horse Racing!"
Leroy Jolley knows it won't happen. I know it won't happen. A hundred women I know, know it won't happen.
The only way to preserve this Sport in this generation—and for future generations—is to give women and girls full play in the sport. We're already the majority of the fanbase—why not court us? Don't waste another dime on the courtship dance with poker players and amusement park fans.
To grow racing in America--romance the women of America, and the world. Casual fans will turn into hard-core fanatics. Fanatics will turn into authorities and go-to people.
And don't romance us by painting everything at the track baby pink and slapping butterflies on it. We're not simple—according to the SGMA, we're a force with which to reckon.
The way to grow racing in America, and to secure its future, is to give props to the 52% -61% of us who are already fans. Quit treating us like we're silly children; get us fully involved and hand us the reins.
Don't worry, the Sport will be safe in our hands. As safe as if in its Mother's arms.
May the Horse be with You,
Mare Altieri
© 2007, Alpha Mare Media |
