Jockey Davy Russell believes that the betting culture around horse racing is in danger of undermining the what he thinks is “the most outstanding sport”
The Corkman joined Joe and Kev ahead of this Saturday’s Grand National at Aintree.
“I actually don’t like it myself. I, personally, really enjoy horses – I can be a little bit boring because I speak about pedigrees and their background and sometimes we treat horses like humans because the people who work with them get very close to them. I have no interest in betting. I don’t regard it as it having any bearing on anything to do with racing. Only for some reason over the past ten to twelve years it is all betting.
“It creates rumours that start to go around. I don’t know what it is about horse racing and betting but it takes a little bit away from what is the most outstanding sport for me, personally. I’m from the ground roots, we breed a lot of horses and I’ve grown up around breeding horses. But it gets back to always trying to beat the bookies and I’ve never seen a bookie riding a bike!
“The bookies are creating their own advertisement the whole time generated by television and I would much rather they analysed things a little bit better. There’s any other amount of things that you can speak about, other than betting and I do think they do emphasise too much on betting.”
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