Covering Horse Racing

Maryjean Wall, a racing writer for 35 years at the Lexington Herald-Leader did a great Q & A on Talking Horses, a feature of Bloodhorse.com last week. She spoke about her profession--which is dwindling--and of the future of the sport as well as some of the highlights of her career.

One excerpt I found especially heartening was the following about the role of horse stories in mainstream newspapers. "I will say that I think there still is room in newspapers for racing stories--of the right type," she said. "What I'm talking about here are human-interest feature stories."

I know she is right. The purists of the sport will always prefer the Racing Form over the New York Times, but when the New York Times covers all aspects of the sport, as it did so well during this recent Triple Crown series on its blog, The Rail as well as in print, then the public sits up and takes notice.

And face it, with a cast of characters like those who surrounded Big Brown, it made for some pretty interesting reading. I am sure people who never followed horse racing, followed the unraveling of the Big Brown empire. The trick however is to keep the momentum going--not necessarily for more stories about drugs and other vices (although vice is always more interesting than virtue) but for other heart warming and/or heart wrenching tales of the backstretch.

And believe me they are there. And in the Grandstand. And in the Clubhouse. And most certainly in the barns.

These are topics, that Wall notes "have wide appeal across the lines of horse racing into daily life." That is what is missing in all this bad press about racing. Stories with heart. And sadly, as Wall notes "the issue is not only one of attracting sports fans but of attracting fans period. And guess what? Racing has looked the other way for so long that it has missed, possibly forever, the opportunity of bringing in new generations of fans."

Case in point: the fact that race tracks do little to "produce leads" on human-interest stories and sell them to the sports departments at their local newspapers. As Wall notes, "We rarely ever heard from a race track with a good story idea. The tracks pump out reams of promotional copy about their upcoming stakes races or who won these races but they don't alert reporters to the types of stories that titillate editors and readers. It's one more example of horse racing shooting itself in the foot."

It's just one more way racing could indeed generate interest among the legions of people who love animals by making them and the people who care for them lovable.

Anyone want to read a good book proposal that does just that?