Derek McGrath© Photo Healy Racing
Racing is not something that I grew up around or was actively involved in when I was growing up but since making the move into the industry I have continued to learn an awful lot about it and am really enjoying it.
I worked as a veterinary surgeon and in the animal health pharmaceutical business so I know the environment and would have attended horse racing but I wouldn’t have worked in the background of the industry so that has been a learning curve and one that I’m continuing to absorb.
Like most people I can sit and watch a range of different sports and once you spend the time to appreciate what is current in the sport I think you can really get into it and I love learning what is current in horse racing and why horses perform as they do and why some don’t and I have a great admiration for the people who are involved in the industry and really dedicate their entire life to it.
I’ve had an eye on racing for a while prior to making a move across from rugby. I felt it was a very interesting industry and I would have also looked into the industry in Britain as well and what I would have noticed there is that they have got possibly a more challenging environment because they have so many different bodies that have an interest in how the industry is run whereas Ireland has the advantage that it has less bodies and a more centralised approach. There are many things that work well in Ireland.
I’m looking at the specific needs of the Curragh in an environment which is ambitious to do things in a different way and think about how we can address our challenges.
I would have looked at a couple of different projects before I joined the horse racing industry because I think one of the challenges for horse racing is to consider how it shouts above the noise. We work, in a sporting sense, in a very competitive market place for entertainment and with the changing behaviour of all consumers being offered so many different forms of media and if you look at what other sports are doing; such as rugby having introducing the 7’s, golf is now looking at different ways of presenting itself, cricket has 20/20 and many different sports are looking at different ways to present a sport to a new audience. I think that is one of the interesting aspects about horse racing. Events like Longines Irish Champions Weekend are attempting to address that.
We’ve seen it in racing this year with events like the Pegasus World Cup Invitational and The Everest sprint race in Australia which are events more to do with entertainment and the interests of the general public.
Maybe sometimes, looking at the way the industry is constructed with so many different interests and maybe at times conflicting interests, it can result in quite an inward looking perspective as opposed to looking at how the sport is presented externally and from a public point of view. That is something that really interests me. It can be something we look at.
I could describe racing and rugby as very similar in many ways. You’ve got professional sports people who are focussed in a very singular way on their needs - there are huge similarities in a trainer and a director of rugby in any of the teams that I would have seen.
They are all trying to control the detail at the finite level and of course, working with animals increases the risks and a number of variables. Those at the top of the heap present their performance in a very simplistic way and it looks like something that can be taken in a stride but we all know that behind the scenes there is a huge amount of work, preparation, knowledge, instinct and talent that all comes together to provide something remarkable and you see those same instincts so, in many ways the two sports are not different, yet in other ways they are hugely different.
If you look at somebody like Joe Schmidt getting a team of 23 people to all understand what their role is and deliver a vision, it is not dissimilar but it is much more focussed in horse racing where there is a triangle of the trainer, the jockey and the horse and there’s a much higher volume to the competitive mix. A rugby coach might have just one match a week whereas the trainer is not only working 24/7, but they might have four horses running one day and six runners the next day at a different meeting so there’s a real challenge there. It’s extremely admirable.
I think we’ve achieved an awful lot at the Curragh this year. I think now there is a good understanding between all the groups that come and use the Curragh that we are open to doing things differently, we are listening and we are beginning to see people engaging with us in a positive manner and come to us with suggestions of how we can raise standards or do things in a different way.
Clearly there are a lot of things we need to deliver on and we have very high standards but everybody that is associated with the industry will do better if we get more people interested in what is happening at the Curragh and that is beginning to happen. We’ve learnt an awful lot this year that we can not only bring into the second year of our development next year but also on to the new vision we have for the Curragh.
I have seen a few different aspects to racing this year, going to Royal Ascot and seeing the height of racing, I’ve been to York and I’ve also been to the Shergar Cup and to Galway and they are all very successful and popular events but they are at different spectrums - one is quality of racing and the other is the quality of entertainment. I think there is room for all of that entertainment and as we go through the fixtures that we have at the Curragh, we can cater for different types of events and be very confident that there is a market and an appetite for that. It’s all about quality, whether it be racing or entertainment and we’ve a long way to go to hit the standards that we would foresee to do that but our objective is that, whoever you are, we are looking to raise the standards of your experience at the Curragh.
Our next major event is Irish Champions Weekend and I’m thoroughly looking forward to the occasion and already it looks like we are going to have a mammoth clash between Big Orange and Order Of St George so it is an exciting time.
