RFC Wins An Award

I see the guys at Racing For Change are in the Awards already this year. Their ‘Free Week’ campaign was judged to be the best Media Relations Campaign of the year at the recent PRCA Awards; good luck to them and I am sure they all had a jolly good night out.
The organisation certainly knows a thing or two about self promotion, a quick glance at their own ‘news’ page on their website testifies to that, and they know how to garner column inches in the press as well. but I am guessing not many of the Trainers quoted in the racing press over the last few months were involved with the judging panel; can’t help but laugh every time Mark Johnston refers to them as Racing For No Change.
No doubt we can look forward to the lovetheraces website winning awards soon. Take a look if you have five minutes spare.
First off you have the ‘Voices of the races’ in which the very attractive Tabitha introduces herself as ‘A presenter and a commercial model from sunny Hull!’ and adds ‘What I know about horse-racing you could write on the back of a postage stamp’ and the intriguing Eliza who tells us she is ‘a Geographer by profession ‘ and that ‘during a year out, I fell into working as an in-house model for Agent Provocateur’ one way of getting teenage boys interested in the horses I suppose - the ‘Scene at the races’ section includes pictures of various people you don’t know and one great photo of the back of some blokes head – the ‘Fashion’ page is there so you are up to date with all the latest news in regard to whether heels or flats are the must have this year – the ‘Star Spotting’ page is the one in which you can find photos of people you may recognise such as ex-footballers and the cast members of a daytime soap opera– then there is the ‘What’s On’ page all about what courses are holding what concerts after racing, and then finally you come to the ‘Course Guide’ and ‘New to Racing’ sections just in case you actually wanted to know something about horseracing!
I am all for bringing new people to the sport but surely we should be using the brilliance of the sport itself and the enjoyment to be had from it as the main selling point not just as another jolly day out in which horses happen to be in the background.
Just this weekend we had the seasonal reappearance of Kauto Star and the wonderful battle for the Flat Jockeys Championship between Paul Hanagan and Richard Hughes going down to the very last day just as in 2007 when Seb Sanders and Jamie Spencer shared the spoils – neither of which were even mentioned on the site.
It is good to see blogs from Amy Weaver and David Crosse on the lovetheraces site to give an insight into the life of a trainer and a jockey and the blog of Hilary Pavitt as a keen racegoer and owner but surely they should take a much higher profile position on a horseracing site? It is also nice to see the not so imaginatively named ‘Girls on Top’ section with short biographies of some of the top lady jockeys in the game today.
In truth though none of this tells us much that we didn’t already know or for that matter holds information that hasn’t been printed elsewhere before and often done better - see sites such as eclipsemagazine.co.uk which has the fashion pages and photos but also a complete racing news and features sections, blogs from jockeys, trainers and others, competitions, guides, reviews and an on-line shop.
Ultimately the questions that need answering are is the RFC actually doing anything that we haven’t seen before? If they are is anybody outside of the game taking any notice?