Even the bit pounced on by Catherine Murphy – the €13,000 paid to Garrihy for promoting a race meeting in another jurisdiction – is hardly as staggering as the Social Democrat TD made out in the Dáil earlier this year.
Such content, they argue, “allows Horse Racing Ireland build its digital media following across Tik Tok, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to promote and sell tickets to Irish festivals and race meetings. HRI’s following across all of these channels grew exponentially on the back of this content and provided real value for money for the promotion of Irish racing”.
Too much of it is symptomatic of a chronic lack of self-confidence in selling racing on its own merits. Rather than pushing the sport for what it is has to offer, there’s a promotional instinct to push what it isn’t rather than what it is. Backed by a betting conglomerate, the pitch was Pendleton would learn how to race-ride in time to compete at the festival in the biggest amateur prize of the year, the Hunters Chase.
There’s nothing wrong with a sport playing around with a touch of celebrity glamour now and again. Sometimes it can deliver some unintentionally funny results such as Martin Brundle’s “I’m sure it would have been extremely interesting”, but it’s a frippery in F1′s scheme of things.