Blogger or Blagger

From Turf to TikTok: The Last Gallop of a Grand Old Sport
There was a time when horse racing had an air of tragic poetry about it. Leather boots, flat caps, boiled bacon rolls at 8am, and old men muttering about a gelding who let them down in 1983. Racing was glorious because it didn’t care. It was a place for characters, gamblers, stable lads, and the smell of actual horse. Now? It’s selfie sticks and influencers squinting into iPhones while explaining ground conditions like they’ve just discovered the concept of rain.

Stephen Power, the Racing Blogger, is the poster boy of this new age – part digital evangelist, part travelling salesman, part 24/7 hype machine. And yes, he’s made horse racing look exciting again, in the same way fireworks make a landfill look magical for three minutes. But let’s be clear about something: this isn’t a public service. It’s a business. And business, in Power’s world, is booming.

Because while he’s waxing lyrical about Longchamp and "world-class content", the uncomfortable truth is this: racing is doomed as we used to know it. The sport is dying – not because the young don’t care, but because we’ve stopped letting it be what it is. Which, inconveniently, is boring to outsiders and beautiful to the weirdos who understand it.

A Wet Wednesday at Haydock Will Never Trend
No amount of vlogging, vignettes or vertical video will ever replace standing in the rain at Haydock, five deep in puddles, watching a rank outsider nick a handicap hurdle. That’s real racing – damp, unforgiving, and occasionally transcendental. It doesn’t want to be glossy. It wants to be gritty. That’s the point.

And while Power is out there flogging mug punts with the zeal of a QVC presenter on deadline, actual racing folk – the ones who’ve spent decades living off oats and overdrafts – are quietly realising that the game they love is vanishing beneath them. Not evolving. Dissolving. Being digested into the same hyper-edited social media mulch as everything else.

The problem is, the Racing Blogger is very good at what he does. Too good. He’s turned the turf into a content farm. Arc de Triomphe one minute, sob story the next, with a neat little betting tip wrapped in "passion". But passion, in this context, is a marketing strategy. And behind every camera angle and “bang tweet done” moment, there’s a quiet truth no one wants to admit:

This is not a love letter to racing. It’s a love letter to engagement metrics.

Mug Punting as Performance Art
Let’s talk about the betting – or, more precisely, the celebration of failure dressed up as content. Power makes no secret of the fact he punts, loses, shrugs, and moves on. It’s part of the shtick. But for the thousands of punters watching him with hope and a tenner on the nose, it’s not a lifestyle – it’s a loss.

Because here’s the dirty little secret of this social media racing boom: most people have to lose. That’s how the system works. Bookmakers don’t fund all those lovely paddock presentations and branded mugs out of charity. They do it because people keep chasing the dream. And when your dream is being narrated by a man who’s just filmed himself sweating through a breakfast bap in Chantilly, it becomes a surreal kind of masochism.

We’re not educating new fans. We’re baptising them in the Church of the Big If. If it goes in. If the rain comes. If Frankie pulls it off. It’s not insight. It’s theatre. A drama where the happy ending is you being marginally less skint than last Saturday.

Racing for the Gram, Not for the Game
Power is honest about it, at least. He knows he’s chasing clicks, not Cheltenham glory. He’s not hiding behind tradition or pedigree. He’s flogging a modern vision of the sport – all colour, all noise, all access. And he’s doing it very well. But let’s not pretend this is a grassroots revival. It’s a one-man media circus, with a VIP pass and a bookie’s receipt in the back pocket.

That’s not to say it’s all bad. Racing desperately needs fresh blood, and if a bloke with an iPhone and a fast mouth can get one more person through the gates at Newbury, fine. But don’t confuse visibility with vitality. This is not racing reborn. It’s racing rebranded.

The institutions – crusty, bumbling, and wildly resistant to change – have let this happen. While Power zips between France and Ireland yelling into a camera, the BHA are still wondering whether someone’s installed the fax machine upside down. They couldn’t market a pint to a dehydrated Liverpudlian. So, naturally, a vacuum formed. And Power filled it.

Frankie Dettori as a Demigod, and Other Modern Parables
Of course, he still fawns over Frankie like he’s a cross between Sinatra and Saint Peter. And you know what? Fair play. We all love Frankie. He’s earned it. But when the Racing Blogger says “It’s Frankie’s world – we just live in it,” he’s also unintentionally describing the warped universe of racing media today – where a few charismatic figures hog the oxygen, and everything else, including the sport itself, becomes background noise.

Meanwhile, the average punter is stood freezing at Fontwell with a fiver on a 16/1 no-hoper and a rapidly numbing hand, wondering what happened to the sport they fell in love with. The paddocks are emptier. The prize money’s a joke. The fixtures come at us like spam emails. But at least someone’s filming it in 4K.

The Tragic Glory of the Ordinary
Racing, in its bones, is not glamorous. It’s men with red faces shouting into the wind. It’s women in mud-caked wellies wrestling two-year-olds. It’s the bloke who’s gone to the dogs – financially and emotionally – because the horse he bred turned out to be more donkey than dynamite.

What it isn’t, and never should be, is a backdrop for Instagram.

The Racing Blogger means well. He’s not evil. He’s just... inevitable. A digital symptom of a sport that lost its confidence and handed the keys to the loudest voice in the room. But TikTok will not save racing. Twitter will not revive the Levy Board. And no number of jump-cuts, slow-mo gallops or shouting from an Irish field will ever match the quiet, sodden magic of a wet Wednesday at Haydock.

That’s where the sport still lives. Quietly. Painfully. Beautifully.

And no one’s filming it.

 

Great read and written piece... As they say, its all about the grass roots of any sport, and no more than horse racing, as someone who has been at Haydock on a wet and windy Wednesday shouting on a 16/1 rank outsider...!!

The thing that gets me the most about the one and only vlogger, Mr Power, is the huge amounts of money he is prepared to bet and then just laughs it off as he see's his investment turn to dust. I bet the majority of the people who do follow him can't even raise that amount of money in months of saving, yet he carries on like its just like dropping a £10 on the floor of your local pub...!! Not the image i think helps...

 

Great writing stick !
The digital world is changing everything at a pace that is unprecedented, thirty years ago there wasn’t a mobile system , you had landlines , newspapers , and meeting places , now …….newspapers have all but gone , landline you hang your washing on , meeting places , decided on a group chat .
Every facet of life is being upended , well almost , I’m getting on my bike , with a tent and going meandering in Ireland , I’ll camp wherever , I’ll moider with some people, I’ll drink some Guinness, I’ll have space to just relax, no distractions, I know it’s escapist , but don’t half do you good .
All aspects of life are being altered at such a pace , and sadly I don’t think it’s necessarily for the better ,whilst control , monetisation and restrictions increase , I’ve always thought , you only get out what you put in, and to enjoy or appreciate good things , you need to have endured the oppposite , the cold weather , the arduous task, all things that test your mettle . It’s what makes us .
I’d rather be on the weather exposed bank at bangor on a wet nov , with the cranks and weirdos of the nh scene!

 

Good stuff Stick

 

The Court Jester

As with most things in horse racing, the character in this story is a charade, an act of masquerade. The big bets, the drinking and no doubt drug culture, the access to the great and good. This is an actor in a game, and in many regards he has made what seems a "good" living out of it, visiting parade rings around the world, going to big sporting events, eating and getting pissed. However, I think if you look closer, this is someone who was obsessed with wellness and being "fit" and now they often look a shell of a person.

To me, that is almost horse racing in a microcosm. A sport that is built on the link to royalty, the sport of the rich and the "good", and we saw great crowds and the glitz and glamour of Royal Ascot. However those shining lights in the sport are becoming far more rare, like a blogger's winning nap, in the throngs of low attendance numbers, racing tax stories, dodgy syndicates and horses dying left, right and centre.

Franklin dear, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes

Yesterday, we had the sight of a 37 rated 11 year old meeting his demise on a UK racecourse, Peachey Carnehan, a name that many on here will have put on their online docket and possible had a nice return from at some point. 169 races, 17 wins and over £100k in prize money, but that wasn't enough to keep the old boy into retirement,

A sport that is built on horses, with an authority that is in its own words "Building a brighter future for our sport, our horses and our people", and yes, they do have those words in bold. So how as a leader of the sport, have the BHA let Peachey Carnehan meet this demise as a race horse? Perhaps in the same way they have the hundreds of other horses who have died in the sport in 2025. It borders on gross negligence.

The BHA site has a headline news story, and that reads #AxeTheRacingTax - play your part. Perhaps it should read #AxeRacing - we are playing our part. The sport and authorities seem to be doing a great job on that!

So the racing tax, a sport who has sided with Fixed Odds Betting Terminals, Big bookmakers and the ARC group, are now asking for Tom, Dick and RacingBlogger to play their part in saving the sport from a big loss of revenue. Ironic, and delusional are two words that come to mind. You reap what you sow,

The tax would harm the sport, but a sport which is completely disfunctional and eating itself, perhaps it will be the great vehicle for change. A trimmer, more fit and no longer a shell of a sport. Now wouldn't that be something!

Family fun days, gigs and costs

Disclaimer here, I managed to get a couple of free tickets for Stratford last weekend, a meeting sparse on runners, but it attracted a very big crowd. Mainly due to the super weather, and the fact that it was family fun day in the centre course. I obviously didn't go across to the centre, but instead we sat on the deck chairs near the parade ring and watched Shetland races, a pantomime horse race and then the pantomime of NH summer jumping.

Everyone knows I don't like summer jumping, its not interesting to me, and it has far too high a fatality rate. The reason as I see it is that horses who have had problems are run on summer ground, either because they can't cope with soft ground and testing races, or that trainers think its easier to win a summer race. The horse doesn't seem to be having a brighter future here too.

So with fear of seeing another demise on the racecourse, as I had done on my last visit to Worcester earlier in the summer season, we had what was a lovely day out. It was great to see the daughter of a former jumps jockey win the shetland race, I mean, who would have guessed that the winners surname would be shared with a participant of the sport, or as BHA say "Our People".

The pantomime race only had three runners, which I think wasn't far off the mean number of runners per race on the card. One of the horses split in half as it crossed the line, again not that uncommon on UK jumps courses this summer.

So was family fun day a success? Well they looked to be having a jolly good time on the inner course, with dinosaurs, parties, face painting and a clown show. Two of those things were also seen in the many BHA meetings over the racing tax and the proposed new head of BHA.

So people don't go racing for horses these days, its got to be for music, for family fun or for a right royal knees up. Is this cost or is it lack of interest?

The sport has changed, but the stattos, the weirdos and the fanatics remain... for now

No doubt the sport has changed, the audience being targetted is different, but that doesn't mean that the rare sparks of light are completely disappearing. The Cheltenham Festival was brilliant in my opinion this season, it was about the horses, the jockeys and the compelling narratives. It wasn't about your Bloggers, your Celebs or even the price of beer. It was about the horses, the stories and the sport.

That alone kept me involved in the sport, but for how long? I have no idea.

The Man Who Would Be King

So to finish off, RacingBlogger might parade around racing like the king, but he is just another everyman character in the charade that is horse racing, no different to the many who have gone before, be it on TV, in print or ownership. He is no Dorothy Paget, but perhaps he is to the younger generation what John McCirick was to a different generation. The everyman, the weirdo, the interest.

However what I really wanted to end on was Peachey Carnehan, named after a character from The Man Who Would Be King, a character that is crucified between two pine trees, but remarkably survived, and was set free. He became a broken and mentally unstable character, who carried a severed head, on which the crown was still present.

Peachey bore the crown on a severed head. British Racing clings to its own—cracked, crooked, and worn. The king is dead. Now bring on the rebellion.

 

Like Rich Ricci, Gigginstown and others have done?

it’s still out of reach for the majority of racing fans.

 

Are these extracts from an article or have they been produced by our very own? If the latter, all I can say is congratulations on the excellently articulated pieces which, I have to say, our dear Cyc would have been proud of.

 

You can tell mines not AI, no machine has my thought process