The Farce at Ascot

The farce that reigned at Ascot last Saturday is not an isolated incident in British horse racing. In case you weren’t aware, racegoers who didn’t adhere to Ascot’s new 2012 draconian dress code were given an orange sticker to wear during the meeting to show they had been spoken to and that their dress was unacceptable, a policy reminiscent of the ghettos of Poland in the 1940s.

The first point is that a dress code requiring customers to wear a jacket, shirt and tie in the middle of January is preposterous in the first place. Like any spectator sport, people should be allowed to attend wearing whatever they like as long as it’s clean and comfortable. I regularly go racing and couldn’t care if someone is wearing a tracksuit or a morning suit when stood next to me at the paddock.

I concede that for big traditional meetings like Royal Ascot and Glorious Goodwood, the fashion is part and parcel of the event and a dress code for these meetings is fine and should be enforced (although the racecourse shouldn’t have to deem when it’s too hot or not to wear a jacket, this is something for the individual).

If I lived thirty minutes from Ascot and I fancied going racing at lunchtime, getting changed into a suit would prevent me from going. Racing is a casual spectator sport and the dress code should reflect this.

My second point is that this whole episode is representative of British racecourses. Most of them are stuck in the past and sticklers for tradition, rules and regulations with officious employees policing racecourses to the letter of the law and enjoying behaving like little Hitlers.

Racing will fail to attract new people to the sport until this backward culture is transformed to put racing in line with other sports.