Be careful when you follow the masses, sometimes the ‘m’ is silent

Pack mentality, groupthink, hivemind, the wisdom of crowds, influencing … call it what you will, it’s a big talking point in horse racing. What drove jockeys riding in recent races at Kenilworth to crowd closely together on the outside rail after they’d rounded the bend and were headed for the wire?

It was a departure from the common practice of decades, when taking the shortest route home was common sense.

Quickest way home

The new herd behaviour led to overcrowding, blocking and bumping in race after race. The stipes’ post-race reports were full of comment about the argy-bargy and not a few punters and connections fumed that their runners had been denied victory.

There was a common perception in the jock’s minds that the narrow strip of turf along the outside rail was the quickest way home – flatter and harder ground accounting for a milli-second advantage.

The course curator insisted the going across the full width of the track was consistent. Stipes spoke sternly to jockeys and told them to spread out, trainer Candice Bass-Robinson described the melee as “unpleasant racing” and a leading jockey referred to his colleagues as “the sheep”.

But the beeline for the course extremity continued. It was a lone discordant note in an otherwise marvellous Cape summer season.

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King’s Plate and Met

It didn’t help that long-shot Al Muthana had flashed up the outside rail to nab hot favourite Charles Dickens on the line in the L’Ormarins King’s Plate – with the latter galloping up the inside-to-middle of the track. Charles Dickens’s rider Richard Fourie got pelters for not following the crowd.

And when Jet Dark, ridden by Fourie, took the wide road to pip middle-of-the-road Kommetdieding in the WSB Cape Town Met it seemed an alternative version of the truth about Kenilworth had emerged.

The inside rail had been the chosen path for hundreds of Met victors, yet this outside rail syndrome seemed here to plague us.

But, lo and behold, on the Monday after the Met, in races around the Kenilworth turn, the fields stuck to the inside rail. It happened again at the next Kenilworth meeting, on Tuesday this week – no runners came anywhere near the grandstand.

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Best chance

Racing is full of puzzles, but this one was quickly solved when jockey Aldo Domeyer posted on the Sporting Post Facebook page: “We all simply agreed to stay in. To over ride any instruction to even consider going out. Made for beautiful days racing.”

This makes a few of us a bit uneasy, as we tend to defend racing against accusations of “fixing” by asserting that no-one in the game – least of all jockeys – can ever agree on anything. But I suppose cooperation and reason, for the overall betterment of the game, is a good thing. Giving all runners the best possible chance has got to be the right thing.

Nonetheless, there will surely to be a bright spark or three trying the outside gambit for a while yet – especially in big-money races.

Herd mentality is a fascinating thing. Science boffins say it evolved as a protection mechanism, with early humanoids clustering together to fight off other scary beings.

That’s the good side of it. As is wisdom of crowds, with the best ideas of multiple minds combining to solve complex problems.

Then there’s the bad, like social media mass delusions, or stock-market panic selloffs with the herd’s behaviour causing financial damage to each of its individuals.

It’s essentially a majority following a minority – or even an individual – who started the trend and could be dead right or dead evil.

Psychologists say it arises from fear of standing alone or missing out on something.

In racing, fear of missing out on a couple of tenths of a second, and hence victory, because of softer ground or longer grass, is a very real fear indeed.