If there is version of the Oscars for PR stunts, Switching Saddles by Victoria Pendleton – in association with Betfair – deserves to sweep the board. In its conception and execution, it has been brilliant from start to … well, where we are now.
Victoria Pendleton to ride on Gold Cup day at the Cheltenham Festival
Rumour suggests that Pendleton’s fee alone for devoting herself to riding horses for a year is at least £200,000, while Betfair has also bought her horses, paid her trainers and advisors, and even hired a PR agency to manage the media campaign, but whatever the cost, Pendleton is worth every penny, because she is not doing it just for the money.
Her infectious enthusiasm for horses and racing is not a front, and a 30-second chat after one of her rides is enough to establish that.
She sat on a horse for the first time barely a year ago and has not looked back, even suggesting recently that had she sat on a horse as a child, she might never have climbed aboard a bike.
Pendleton also projects her enthusiasm very directly, outside the racing bubble. The web traffic on any article with “Pendleton” in the headline makes it very clear that her quest to ride at the Festival has caught the public imagination. Inside the racing bubble, though, she has divided opinion as well. Some see only positives in the attention she brings to the sport. Others, like the former champion jockey John Francome, think she is “an accident waiting to happen”.
There is a strong sense that you are either in one camp or the other: pro-Pendleton or against, and they can’t both be right. But the reality is that there is still a lot to be said for both sides of the argument, because no one knows what the script’s final scene will contain.
For me, victory for Pendleton in next week’s Foxhunter is a 40-1 chance, rather than the 16-1 you can get from a bookie. I think she is being priced up on the “Loch Ness Monster” principle, that if people are daft enough to take well under the true odds, why should a bookie do them any favours? But it is a horse race, and there is a chance, no matter how slender, that Pendleton will ride into Cheltenham’s Hall of Fame at the first time of asking.
As for other possibilities, it is perhaps 10-1 that Pendleton makes the frame, and 6-4 that she is plucky but unplaced. Never competitive at any stage, falls off or both is the same sort of price. And then there is the other outsider: a serious injury to horse or rider, at 33-1.
All but the last of those would be a PR triumph for racing at best, and no more than a marginal negative at worst. But let’s be clear. If something goes badly wrong for Pendleton or her mount on 18 March, or for another jockey or horse as a result of her inexperience, the storm of negative publicity for Cheltenham and racing will obliterate all the many positives of the last few months.
Questions will include: why was such an inexperienced rider allowed to take her chance? Was she on a bonus for lining up? Why did no one listen to Francome and Steve Smith-Eccles, the British Racing School’s jockey coach, who suggested that she should put off her Cheltenham attempt until 2017? Who convinced her that she was ready for the challenge, and how much were they getting paid? And why did Cheltenham allow it to happen?
Pendleton’s success at Wincanton was a big improvement on her soft unseat at Fakenham 12 days earlier, when the gap in riding experience between Pendleton and her rivals, several of whom had been on a horse almost since birth, was obvious long before she fell off at the seventh. Saturday’s mishap in a point-to-point, when she lost an iron and slid off on the flat, was another reminder that as a rider, never mind a jockey, she is still very much towards the bottom of the learning curve.
Were Pendleton to wait another year and maintain her clear dedication to the cause, the odds against a top-four finish next week would shorten considerably. The chance of an embarrassment – or worse – would diminish too. But her sponsors, quite naturally, are eager to get their payback now, wrap up and move on.
Victoria Pendleton: ‘You don’t get on a horse and jump a fence for a publicity stunt’
There is still every chance that all concerned will enjoy a suitably rewarding conclusion to the story. And for the most part, that is down to Pendleton herself, and her dedication to the cause. The world seems full of low-rent celebrities with time on their hands and a willingness to try anything for cash and attention. Pendleton has been the antidote: a genuinely popular, high-achieving athlete who has shown total commitment to the project, and made it clear all the while that she is loving every minute of it.
Betfair got lucky – very, very lucky – when they found her. A second attempt at a similar project might not be so fortunate. It will be a surprise if, at the very least, Cheltenham does not attempt some celeb-proofing next year, and make the Foxhunter a race for “category B” amateurs, with similar requirements in terms of experience as its Aintree equivalent over the Grand National fences.
Cheltenham may also take a long look at how a betting firm that does not even sponsor at the Festival managed to hijack the track’s biggest day of the year. Pendleton has not sold a single extra ticket for Gold Cup day, because it was always going to be a sell-out anyway, yet one of the most eagerly awaited renewals for many years will now be staged in her shadow.
But there is very little to be done about that now. Instead, we can only watch as Pendleton joins dozens of brave and dedicated riders, both amateur and professional, in the Cheltenham cauldron next week. Watch, and hope for the best.
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