Michael Moynihan: Gordon Elliott controversy could foretell wider change of culture in horse racing

The recent controversy interests me in how it weaves together some very interesting threads — animal safety and basic decency, yes, and the modern rush to cancel, but less discernible elements also.

I didn’t use the term ‘cancel culture’ deliberately because a) nobody should use the term ‘cancel culture’ without seeking a preemptive general absolution on the grounds of taste and b) that’s an unfair use of the term ‘culture’ in the first place.

The great Raymond Williams line applies in sport as much as anywhere else — the great achievement of the bourgeoisie is to convince everyone that its culture is the only culture: furthermore, that it’s the natural culture.

Difficulties arise, though, when my natural culture is directly opposed to your natural culture.

The recent controversy showed neatly what happens when a couple of cultures collide: the modern eagerness to condemn, swiftly and utterly, intersecting with the traditions of the horseracing business.

Those are only two of the cultures involved, though. Take a step back and recognise this controversy for what it is to the vast majority of people — a nine-day wonder that they’ll move on from when Meghan Markle gives her next interview.

For those with a deeper involvement the stakes are different, whether you’re an animal rights advocate or a racing fan; whether your end game is an improvement in animal welfare or a resumption of non-controversial coverage of racing (or both, possibly).

But is there another level to explore? Is the last week or two indicative of change at a scale so wide that it’s barely perceptible?

I think so. One argument that surfaced recently centred on the reaction to the photograph, and specifically the outrage expressed in many quarters about the photograph: the question was why the same outrage wasn’t expressed when horses die in races.

The obvious retort, that such deaths were different/accidental/an occupational hazard/inevitable/rare was open to an equally obvious counter-retort: why does racing have to operate in such a way that horses have to die at all?

Sports like rugby and American football, in which collateral human damage was once understood to be accidental/an occupational hazard/inevitable/rare, could advise racing that such defences are no longer acceptable.

The problem is that for those sports, the end game is tricky to envision with the pressure they’re under now because of the growing awareness of the problems of concussion. There’s an argument to be made that those games can be made safer; there’s another argument that a player can acknowledge the potential danger involved if fully aware of the risks.

Well, the second argument hardly applies to horses, but the first argument could be applied to horseracing, if there were a will to do so.

The irony here is that social media, the enabler of hair-trigger overreaction, may be obscuring a far more profound, but more gradual, cultural change than short-term ‘cancellation’.

An examination of the very safety of racehorses has profound ramifications for the sport itself. So has the growing distaste with gambling. History and sport both have plenty of examples of how fast the tide goes out: in living memory the smoking ban and the disappearance of cigarette sponsorship in sport are obvious examples.

That’s what can happen when a culture is no longer accepted as natural and inevitable.

A something of collective nouns

Greetings to the people who run The Press Box podcast, Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker, for stimulating a worried columnist with space to fill.

In their latest episode, the boys mused on the appropriate collective noun for various media-adjacent professions (an on-the-other-hand of economists, a pedantry of editors, etc.) and in so doing, piqued this observer’s interest on collective nouns here.

Clearly the key is isolating the single attribute you associate most with a group of people linked to a particular sport. Then it becomes easy.

A superiority of hurling fans. A tetchiness of Gaelic football fans. A despair of club GAA members.

A touchiness of League of Ireland fans. A bafflement of Premier League fans. A coolness of St. Pauli fans. A celebration of Maradona fans. A sulk of Messi fans.

A jargon of rugby fans. A chauvinism of provincial rugby fans. A bandwagon of international rugby fans.

A contradiction of GAA officials. A defensiveness of FAI officials. An elusiveness of IRFU officials. A joke of AFLW officials.

A loudness of MMA fans. A dwindle of Conor MacGregor fans. A cult of sea swimmers. A breath-spray of road runners. A wheeze of middle-aged male cyclists. A West-Cork of rowers. A Taylor of female boxers. A nonsense of World Cup bids. An infection of Fifa involvement.

A pricetag of strength trainers. A self-declaration of sports psychologists. A hindrance of press officers. An exasperation of managers.

And my own crowd, I hear you ask? Simple. A pity of sportswriters.

French excuses a load of waffle

Sometimes in this game you find yourself scrambling and scratching around, wondering if anything at all happened in the world of sport this week.

Then we learned the French rugby players got Covid going out for waffles.

A quick primer: France-Scotland was postponed the weekend before last because of an outbreak of the virus in the French camp. My ears pricked up at an aside from the French sports minister, Roxana Maracineanu: “I don’t think it was written in the protocol that the players could go out to eat waffles.

“If they went out to eat waffles, they had to be retested when they re-entered the bubble.”

So many questions. So little time.

If it was cassoulet washed down with sancerre and topped off with a comté vieux, I could have understood. But... waffles?

If you think that’s unfair, consider that despite 16 Covid cases, “an internal investigation by the France Rugby Federation found that no rules had been broken”, according to the BBC.

Coming from the country where doctors speak with abandon about former patients, I presume the investigation report was signed by an Inspector J Clouseau.

Cleansing the system

If you look elsewhere on the page, you can see my opinion of social media, an antipathy noted by one or two pals who are fond of asking me what my alternative is.

(“My coronation as emperor of the world, obviously.”)

I have a recommendation that should rinse the toxins of social media from your synapses. There is a new collection of Joan Didion’s pieces to be had, which amasses quite a few bits and pieces that have not appeared in books before.

You’ve probably read The Year of Magical Thinking, and if you’re serious about reading, there’s a copy of Slouching Towards Bethlehem or The White Album somewhere in your attic.

This new one, Let Me Tell You What I Mean, is a necessary restorative: Didion’s discursive, flowing prose is always worth your time. Settle down with a coffee. Which is where we came in.

Contact: michael.moynihan@examiner.ie