Blinkers Off: Spring carnival crowds on the decline in worrying trend

A TREND is emerging at the Spring Racing Carnival that might be the most alarming wake-up call for racing in decades.

Cox Plate Day

RACING’S various woes, mistakes and gambles were always one thing, the spring carnival another.

The spring was immune, an ingrained festival that sat above the sport and was not affected by its ups and downs.

But a trend is emerging that is affecting the very thing that could not be touched. It is a growing crisis that might be the most alarming wake-up call for racing in decades.

Carnival crowds have plummeted.

Melbourne Racing Club has been creative and innovative in trying to lure punters away from the couch and on to the course.

It has forked out for rock bands, upgraded the on-track menu, renovated bars, created drinking decks, even provided portable mobile phone chargers and free wi-fi.

But only 30,000 turned up for the Caulfield Cup. That’s 22,000 fewer than turned up to see Railings win 10 years ago — a stunning figure when taken in context. Each year for the past five years, the crowd has dropped by about 1500.

Moonee Valley Racing Club has not revealed how many turned up for the Cox Plate, but will today. It won’t be a large number.

The track seemed desolate, just like Caulfield.

Everyone was talking about it and the club — to its credit — is worried about it and pondering major changes.

The area out the back of both courses, the lawns and walkways near the stables and pre-parade rings, are usually full of people, most keen to have a gander at the beautiful horses. But on Saturday they were virtually empty.

Ironically, when Daryl Braithwaite started belting out Horses for the seven billionth time just before the Cox Plate, the crowd out front roared with approval.

Hugh Bowman and Winx win the Cox Plate on Saturday but spring carnival crowds have been on the decline. Picture: Colleen Petch

If only they’d been as excited to see the actual horses out the back. You wonder if racing’s torrent of bad press has influenced the mindset of those, the carnival-only racegoers, who wouldn’t normally take notice.

Famous trainers have been portrayed as cheats. Every second headline has the word “drug’’ in it. Do such negative portrayals resonate beyond the racetrack and into the community?

All three city clubs are addicted to gluttonous 10-race programs and two of the three — Caulfield and Moonee Valley — have gambled on running their feature race when families are usually starting to think about dinner.

One of the clubs, the Valley, has split its signature meeting in two — Friday night, then Saturday. By staying home, maybe the public is telling these profit-first race clubs that they have tinkered with a winning mix and got it wrong.

Smaller crowds on these big days actually makes the experience more enjoyable, but the far greater measure of a successful mega-feature meeting is a big crowd.

Cup Week will be interesting. If the spring carnival has always seemed protected from the good and bad of racing , then Flemington has seemed cocooned.

But it’s an exhausting, relentless, expensive marathon of early starts, 10-race cards and late finishes.

Oaks Day has been on the wane for some time, suggesting carnival-goers are sending the message that maybe less is more.

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@MattHeraldSun

Originally published as Blinkers Off: Spring carnival crowds on the decline in worrying trend