Heartening words on the current stramash about gambling harm from racing's favourite anthropologist

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I've been a fan of the anthropologist Kate Fox since reading her 1999 book The Racing Tribe: Watching the Horsewatchers, which seems to get a good reception from any other racing fans who stumble across it. Now a reader gets in touch to point out that, among her many astute observations on behaviour at the races, Fox anticipated the current stramash about gambling harm. 

"Big gamblers are only a tiny, unrepresentative, atypical minority of the racegoing public," Fox wrote in a section on 'Betting etiquette'. "Those for whom such gambling constitutes a social or psychological 'problem' are an even smaller fraction of the racing crowd, and I feel no compulsion to focus on them just because that is what social scientists are normally expected to do. 

"Any pleasurable human activity will always attract a small minority of people with a propensity to over-indulge or lose their self-control. Eating, drinking, betting, sex, even shopping and now Internet-surfing all have their attendant disorders and dysfunctional behaviours. You name it and someone, somewhere will manage to become addicted to it; then go into 'denial'; then require a twelve-step 'rehabilitation' programme; then pour his or her heart out on a daytime chat show; and finally set up a noisy charity to gather in others with the same tragic affliction. 

"And there will always be several dozen social scientists eager to milk the latest 'problem' for journal articles and monographs. Which leaves me free to write about the neglected vast majority of the population who manage to eat, drink, bet, shop, email etc without ending up on daytime television or featuring as a statistic in the Journal of Addictive Behaviours." 

I hope you enjoyed reading those paragraphs as much as I did. It's lovely to hear from a professional observer of human behaviour, asserting that the risk of addiction is a general one that exists in many different places and that our hobby is not actually out of line with many others that people are allowed to pursue without undue regulatory interference. 

This, I feel, is the kind of calm context which gets completely overlooked in most public discussions of gambling and its attendant dangers. The reason that happens, I think, is that most people doing the talking have never had a bet and never will do, so they see no value in it. 

That's where betting differs from eating, drinking, shopping or doom-scrolling, a phrase that didn't exist at the time of Fox's book but which I bet she now uses all the time. Pretty much everyone does those things and even those individuals who don't enjoy them are aware that many others do. 

But most people float through their lives without much contact with the betting world. So, when they hear about some people suffering harm from it, they're much more willing to think the whole enterprise should just be knocked on the head. 

Kate Fox author of The Racing Tribe: Watching the HorsewatchersCredit: John Grossick

They need to be reminded that a huge number of people derive pleasure from betting without negative consequences, and that their pastime is not less legitimate merely because it is a minority interest. There would be no fairness in regulating betting towards oblivion, even if doing so would make a (tiny) reduction in the amount of risk in the world. 

After The Racing Tribe, Fox published a much more widely-read book called Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour. She is an associate member at the University of Oxford's Sociology department. 

I don't suppose she feels like wading into the whole gambling brouhaha but the words she wrote almost a quarter of a century ago have given some comfort to me now and, I hope, to you. 

Tangentially, one bit of her book that stayed with me and still strikes me as true was where Fox described trainers as being the "shaman" or witch-doctors of the racing tribe. "You will soon become aware of the tribe's belief in the magical powers of trainers," she wrote. 

"Trainers are regularly credited with performing miracles when they are successful, but very rarely blamed when they are unsuccessful ... When a horse loses, even when it is an odds-on favourite with no convincing excuses, you will never, ever hear any commentator say: 'Bad judgement by Martin Pipe, who should have known this horse wouldn't stay three miles...'" 

In fairness to those of us who genuflect before the top trainers, Fox goes on to acknowledge she was also intimidated by "the aura of mystique and prestige that surrounds them". 

On one occasion, when the clerk of the scales at Chepstow said something that set Fox giggling, Jenny Pitman's attention was caught. "She turned and boomed at me across the weighing room: 'ARE YOU ENJOYING YOURSELF, YOUNG LADY?' 

"Her tone suggested that I shouldn't be - that I was distracting officials with frivolous chat. It may in fact have been a friendly inquiry but I was petrified."

If you haven't read Fox's book, I recommend it. She's full of insights and good humour.

Monday's picks, by Richard Birch

Sometimes a punter can look at a race for the first time and instinctively know which horse will prove to be the selection.

While it is possible to argue a case from a handicapping perspective for Prince Cleni, Ya Know Yaseff and Janeslittlevoice in the four-runner attheraces.com Conditional Jockeys’ Handicap Chase (2.40) at Newton Abbot, I will be shocked if Sharp Note doesn’t comprehensively outclass them.

Sharp Note left the Devon bookmakers reeling when landing a significant gamble over course and distance in June. Stepping up significantly in trip on only her second start over fences, the six-year-old moved like the winner throughout before storming clear.

She won off a basement mark of 81 that day, but left the distinct impression she could develop into a 100+ sort. Sharp Note gets into this race off just 5lb higher, following two defeats at Southwell and Stratford.

I have no explanation for her rather tame capitulation when 2-1 favourite on the first occasion, but she encountered more trouble than a city-based motorist down a narrow Devon country lane when fifth of 12 to Call Of The Loon at Stratford.

Hampered by a faller at the first, the Seamus Mullins-trained runner appeared to have plenty in the tank when she again suffered interference three out.

I’ve a hunch she would have gone very close with any sort of luck in running and the form of that race was advertised on Saturday when the runner-up, O’Faolains Lad, ran a bold second to Steel Wave over an inadequate trip at Stratford.

'She would have gone very close with any luck in running' - our Monday tipster has four fancies  

Three things to look out for on Monday

1. The Flat - jumps handover is starting to creep into view and it's pleasing to see some familiar names in the Deacy Gilligan Hurdle, Galway's feature race. Chief among them is Seddon, who won four in a row last season, including the Magners Plate at the Cheltenham Festival and a handicap hurdle at Punchestown the next month. He put in a fair effort at Killarney last month on his first ever Flat start, which ought to help his fitness levels here, though obviously there are bigger targets to come. Among his rivals is fellow Festival hero Jeff Kidder, who caused a huge shock in the Fred Winter a couple of years ago. Gordon Elliott takes them both on with the progressive An Mhi, a half-brother to Slate House. 

2. It's been a slowish year for Charlie Fellowes but things appear to be picking up with four winners in the first ten days of this month, including three from his last six runners. At this rate, it'll surely be his most productive September yet. His only runner today is Reflex, who takes on five rivals in a Brighton handicap for horses that haven't won this year. The grey is no star but he's run above his rating in defeat in his first two handicaps and kept on last time in a way that suggested this return to 1m2f should be a big help. 

3. Our Signposts feature has a 'Dropping down' section which flags up horses now on a rating much lower than one they've won from in the past year. It can sometimes be a sign of irreversible regression but I don't think that applies to that commentator's friend Lupset Flossy Pop. The three-year-old runs at Newcastle tonight from a rating 11lb below the one from which she won over the course and distance in October. She ran on well to be a close third at Southwell last time. 

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The Front Runner is our unmissable email newsletter available exclusively to Members' Club Ultimate subscribers. Chris Cook, a four-time Racing Reporter of the Year award winner, provides his take on the day's biggest stories and tips for the upcoming racing every morning from Monday to Friday. Not a Members' Club Ultimate subscriber? Click here to join today and also receive our Ultimate Daily emails plus our full range of fantastic website and newspaper content.