Basil

Thought I'd take a quick look to see what 'informed' comment here had to say about this matter. As expected, the usual suspects – those who always deny any criticism of racing participants, except for those they don't like – have precisely nothing to say. It must be embarrassing to be so consistently and badly wrong. Kudos to Newmarket and Galah for picking it up. That they're on their own speaks volumes...

One thing that's changed is that most people (well, most I know, and certainly the ones that punt a lot) place their bets on their TAB accounts via their phones rather than at the on-course tote windows. So trying to compare current on-course turnovers with historic ones is likely to be misleading and things may not be (quite) as bad as those on-course figures indicate.

While Newmarket may have used rather intemperate language, his point is an extremely valid one. Even Stevie Wonder could have seen the grass was far too long, and the comparison with Oamaru a few weeks earlier stood out like balls on a gelding. As for addressing committees, all-volunteer maintenance etc, these are just deflecting the issue — when you're looking to get people to punt their money, potentially lots of it, they have the right to expect management of a professional quality.

Oh well, of course, that makes it alright then. Having an unacceptable "attitude" justifies anything (I must remember this next time the missus gives me some lip or the dog doesn't do what he's told...) Why? After all, you're adamant it's a non-event, so wouldn't the public be able to work that out for themselves? Or are you worried they might put two and two together and start thinking along the lines of "Smeg me. If they do that in public, what are they doing at home?" Or that these incidents are just the latest in a long and sorry litany of disgraceful behaviour that will convince yet more people that something is very rotten in the state of harness racing? Speaking of silence, the absence of any mention of this is remarkable even by the see-no-evil-hear-no-evil standards of this site. I think I know why though. Burrows' remarkable claim that “It seems honesty and integrity is not the best policy.” would, I suspect, leave even enthusiastic horse-bashing apologists like Brodie, Long Owner and Chief a bit red-faced, so best to remain mum and just pretend it never happened. Would this be the same RIB that insists it can find no evidence of wrongdoing by the Telfers in the disgraceful racetrack deaths of three of their horses, despite there being about a 1-in-7 million chance of that being true? 'Overzealous' would be just about the last word that could be used to describe them. Long Owner old son, it's time to come down off your 19th century pedestal. Believe it or not, women now have the vote, slavery is now illegal, Marx has been completely and utterly discredited, and horse-bashing is no longer acceptable.

It's a much bigger shame that horses can have no confidence in it at all.

The title of this thread should be changed to "Brodie is an Ass! Who we know by now will never wake up!" In Brodie-world, speed limits and road rules are clearly not working, so we should get rid of them. Ditto murder. The concept of the counter-factual is a complete mystery to Brodie. If drivers are too thick to get their heads round the whip rules, then the only logical step is to get rid of whips. Of course, that would deprive Brodie and the Chief of their simple horse-bashing pleasures, hence their rabid opposition.

It's almost certain that at least some of these deaths were not 'clean', i.e., not an accident. I also suspect at least some of the data come from thoroughbreds. So the Telfer situation is even more of an outlier than the evidence you cite suggests. But you surely know by now that facts are irrelevant when it comes to the Chief and horse welfare.

250 meetings a season with an average of 100 horses per meeting (probably on the low side), so that's 25000 horse-starts per season. I can only remember one other standardbred dropping dead like the Telfer-3 in 45+ years, but let's be really conservative and say it's actually 1 per season. So that's a 1 in 25000 chance. Let's be generous and reduce it a bit on the grounds that the Telfer stable has 2.5 times as many horses as the mean stable. So that leaves a 1-season probability of a horse dropping dead in a race conditional on being from a stable the size of the Telfers equal to 1 in 10000, i.e., 0.0001. The probability of this happening to three horses from the same stable in the same season is therefore (0.0001)^3 = 0. Even if the 1-horse estimate of 0.0001 is out by an order of magnitude, the 3-horse probability is still 1 in 1 billion! The tyranny of mathematics trumps delusional denial.

Being conservative, I'd estimate the number of standardbred sudden deaths while racing is about 1 in 10000 (at worst). So work out what the probability of 'three unrelated sudden medical events' is and start with that.

True, but one is supposed to learn from one's errors.

Not at all. The Chief will soon be along to reassure us that this is just another example of over-reaction by vets and MPI, and that the trainer in question is really a kind, salt-of-the-earth, type whose only fault was to be so soft-hearted that he couldn't bear to see any of his horses go to other owners. That some of them were a bit on the skinny side is misinformation revealing the media's inability to understand his unique training programme and symptomatic of their ongoing crusade against harness racing.

Don't sweat it G — Long Owner and HTP can't help themselves. Like Chief, they truly and sincerely (if irrationally and counter-factually) believe no trainer and driver has ever been guilty of anything more than pocketing the odd sausage roll at a Sunday gymkhana. They're like union officials for harness. In this particular case, Chief is right that much of the reaction to a limited involvement for McGrath has been hysterical and OTT, but most of the time he's just in denial (as are the other two).

That's a really good question. Although it has been reported a bit, I suspect the 'high turnover' story hasn't been pushed more because it contained a fair bit of poetic license. First, according to the TAB media release https://www.tabnz.org/nz-trotting-cup-day-hits-new-mark-tab-nz 2022 nominal turnover was 13.6% greater than in 2020. But inflation over the same period was 13%, so treading water in real terms. More worryingly, the same report cites a nominal increase of only 5.6% over 2007, compared to corresponding inflation of 42%, i.e., a drop of more than 36% in real terms. Similarly, the 2020 TAB media release https://www.tabnz.org/irt-new-zealand-trotting-cup-delivers-record-betting reveals that this year's turnover is only 12% up on 2014, compared to inflation of 21%, i.e., a 9% drop in real terms. In other words, it would seem the very positive picture painted about Cup Day is considerably less rosy once one digs into the numbers and makes a fundamental adjustment. This is consistent with the very small crowd of 15000 which, covid years aside, must be the smallest attendance in a long time, probably decades ((although it actually made the day bearable for those of us who went).

Yes, those three should obviously be added, as should Sir Castleton. And of course the great Aussie trotters Scotch Notch and La Coocharacha (and Maoris Idol as well, although he was never seen in NZ).

It's good, if somewhat surprising, to see this forum engaging in positive comment about an out-and-out champion. There have been a good number of top-notch NZ trotters in the 45-odd years I've been watching — Monbet, Stig, Icandoosit, Take A Moment, Lyell Creek, Basil Dean, Scotch Tar and Nigel Craig are some who come immediately to mind — but Sundees Son must surely be in the top-2. Lyell probably had the best all-round game, and could rough it in a way most of the others couldn't, but the top-end cruising speed of Sundees is something unique. If I needed a trotter to race 2 miles for my life, he'd get the nod 10 times out of 10.