Basil

I have the utmost respect for Mark Purdon as a trainer, driver, yearling selector, or indeed anything to do with horsemanship. But, let's be honest, he's not exactly a disinterested party here, is he? Indeed, his argument appears to be a variant of the "two wrongs make a right" fallacy — because the media doesn't always do its job in identifying shortcomings of other industries, it shouldn't report bad news about harness either. I hardly think that's likely to convince any independent observer. Sorry, but while Mark Purdon is perfectly entitled to air his views, and in fact I commend him for doing so (it would be so much easier in his position just to keep quiet), let's not pretend he's offering up the definitive opinion on the matter.

Totally agree. Castigating the media for revealing the facts is the sort of behaviour one normally associates with banana republics (and Trumpian America!) Regardless of the preciousness of one judge about the sanctity of "his" courtroom, the very best thing all media organisations can do is attempt to keep us all as informed as possible. And one of the worst things they can do is not report news in order to protect certain people's "feelings". If a newspaper doesn't stand for these two principles, what use is it?

Well, kind of.? On the one hand, wearing my taxpayer hat, I sort of agree with Brodie — if all an 18 month police investigation (undercover to boot) has managed to throw up is a few piddly $1K collects and some recreational drug use/supply, that's not a great use of taxpayer money. Innocent industry participants whose livelihoods are threatened by the fallout are likely to be even less impressed. On the other hand, regardless of whether the dodgy collects are $10 or $1mill, it's corruption pure and simple. And as soon as you start down that path, it's "Hullo third world, here we come". So wearing my idealist hat, I sort of agree with everyone but Brodie. In other words, I can't even agree with myself on this one! So I'm going to shut up until all the facts are in.

Yes, I saw that and found myself wondering if The Brodster was in fact the NZMTC CEO. Banning media from an event because they might say something critical is complete and utter madness. At best, it guarantees that they'll write something even less palatable (which is precisely what happened). Plus it just looks petty, gives the appearance of a siege mentality, and suggests there's plenty more to hide. A textbook example of how *not* to respond to a crisis.

Brodie, the media don't exist for the sole purpose of writing feel-good stories about matters you happen to approve of (just as the TAB doesn't exist in order to fund your preferred lifestyle). Here's how this will have played out. The editor will have said "Matt, you're our racing writer. Give me 500 words on how this race fixing thing works so that our average reader can understand." And that's what he's done. Personally, I think it's appropriate and even-handed, as he goes to great pains to spell out how what looks like race-fixing may not be at all. Shooting the messenger is always a dumb idea. Contrary to popular opinion, all it does is encourage more messengers, some of whom will carry even less welcome messages!

Pretty impressive performance by McWicked though — he just went "whoosh" at the 200. Nobody's ever done anything like that to Lazarus before.

That's a good one alright, but it pays to keep in mind that was back in the era when it was received wisdom that you had to be racing in August to be a Cup Day contender. That sort of thinking no longer applies. Here's the field from 1998 — take out Cullen, and would you really say this field is any better (or even as good) as last night's? (01/09/2018@16:39) NZ Metropolitan Trotting Club Inc Saturday 22nd August 1998 Results Enquiry Race 8 Centra Auckland Hotel Handicap Pace, $14,000, C7 & FASTER DISCRETIONARY, 2600m For horses assessed at C7 and faster. Weather: Fine Track: Fast Plc Bk Horse Barrier Hcap Stakes Fav Time Margin Driver Trainer 1 9 Christian Cullen 1 30m 8,750.00 1/1 3-18.8 D P Campbell B A O'Meara 2 4 Good Mate 4 fr 2,800.00 2/2 3-21.6 2.30 J P Versteeg J P Versteeg 3 3 Shantahlia's Payson 3 fr 1,400.00 7/6 3-21.7 2.80 J Herbert G R Lamb 4 8 Roymark 2 20m 700.00 3/4 3-20.1 3.20 J C Hay W F Fletcher 5 7 Silk Brocade 1 20m 350.00 5/5 3.40 B J Borcoskie B Borcoskie 6 2 Tact Halsey 2 fr 0.00 4/3 3.50 P G O'Reilly P G O'Reilly 7 5 Swan Creek 5 fr 0.00 6/7 4.80 M A Butt T G Butt 8 1 Red Danny 1 fr 0.00 8/8 15.10 P J Davis P J Davis $14,000.00

Your question has been clearly (and spectacularly) answered — No! There are dozens of references to 'thoroughbred' in the report, but not a single one to 'standardbred'. A single sentence on p64 sums it up quite nicely: "Overall, we are confident that our proposals ... are in the best interests of the New Zealand thoroughbred racing industry." (emphasis added) Who cares about the rest of you!?

My thoughts exactly. Which means you should be worried!?

This. A few of us will be making the trip down SH77 via Hororata for the mid-Sept meeting. Also the mid-Oct meeting, which doubles as a heat for the Kiwi Punter's Championship (Brodie: I will be looking for a few tips from you to put me in good stead for that.?)

That, of course, is the $64K question. And, at the risk of stating the obvious, the answer is clear — increase betting turnover. But how to do that is by no means clear. Brodie keeps pushing a couple of ideas: (i) get rid of any restrictions on drivers whipping horses and (ii) get rid of any restrictions on Brodie's betting activities — but most are unconvinced either of these will make much difference.? A reduction in the tax percentage would make betting more attractive to everybody and so could have a positive effect, but in these neo-puritan days there's more chance of the dog learning to speak Norwegian. So it's possible the turnover boat may have sailed, and is unlikely to return to port any time soon. Other industries facing declining revenues quickly learn to cut administrative costs in order to survive. It's by no means clear to me that the racing industry has absorbed this lesson.

Brodie, stop digging. You made a claim that you couldn't back up, that I knew to be false, and that others have shown to be blatantly wrong. Unless the rules of the English language have changed in the last 24 hours, that is the very definition of "making it up". Your recollection of what you now claim to have heard/read is faulty — what was actually said is that harness whip use is not currently high on SAFE's list of priorities. As I said in my previous post. And as Happy has subsequently confirmed from the SAFE website. I have repeatedly explained to you that there is a simple solution to your concerns about the 10-hit rule — get rid of the whip altogether. For some reason known only to yourself, you refuse to consider this as an option.

As somebody who has close links with SAFE, I can confirm that Brodie is indeed making this up. What is true though is that harness whip use is not (yet) their number one priority. Acting preemptively is a concept Brodie often has trouble with.?

Interestingly though, the C1 races on the same programme 30 years ago were only worth $5000, which is slightly under $9700 in today's money. This week they're racing for $10,000, i.e., have kept ahead of inflation. So the fall in stakes isn't across the board. Instead there seems to have been a compression of the stakes distribution. Whether this is a good policy is unknown (to me).

Here are the facts. Between 2014 and 2017, harness turnover rose by approximately 0.5%, i.e., it fell in real terms. During the same period, gallops and greyhounds turnover rose by 7% and 32% respectively. So harness has unquestionably been losing market share. Also between 2014 and 2017, gross margin (gross revenue/turnover) fell in all codes, coinciding with a big shift from tote to fixed-odds betting (78:22 in 2014 to 60:40 in 2017), but the falls were similar across all codes and the harness margin was the lowest throughout (17.1% falling to 16.2%, compared with 18.3-17.6 in gallops and 18.0-17.2 in dogs). These facts are partly consistent with your story: faced with a greater proportion of losing bets on harness, the TAB tightened up its offerings on that code, which in turn saw more turnover diverted to the other codes (although one would also then have expected the fall in gross margin to have been less pronounced in harness). But they're also consistent with another story: due to a perception that harness punting was "less fair" (as reflected in the lower gross margin), the TAB tightened up its harness offerings and punters switched to other codes. That is, rather than TAB actions causing the relative fall in harness turnover, both were simultaneous reactions to a single underlying cause. This is a classic endogeneity problem. Without additional data, there's no way to determine which story is correct. One thing is obvious though — whatever the cause, a loss of market share of this magnitude is definitely not good news for harness!

Very interesting. I've checked his calculations and there doesn't appear to be any problem there. The point he's making reflects the very different code shares for NZ vs overseas racing turnover. For example, harness provides 28% of NZ turnover, but only 14% of overseas turnover; whereas for greyhounds the corresponding figures are 19% and 23% respectively. I must live a very sheltered existence — I don't know a single person who bets on the Aussie dogs! Who are they all?? The other interesting point is that the harness gross revenue share is lower than its turnover share while the reverse is true for gallops. The Brodies of the harness world must be taking the TAB bookies to the cleaners more often than their galloping counterparts!

Before my time I'm afraid Happy, but I too have always wondered why False Step seemed to be relatively under-rated by posterity, compared to horses who, at least on the face of it, would seem to have inferior records. Perhaps he just got overshadowed, and hence subsequently overlooked, by Lordship and Cardigan Bay arriving on the scene shortly after him (history and Lazarus may yet deal the same cruel hand to TTL). But that's only a guess (and not an informed one at that!), I don't really know.

Mea culpa. Now that I bother looking up the records, I see you're absolutely right. Although in HD's case it was one campaign of 3 starts for 3 ducks-eggs. LM did have more goes over a couple of campaigns and even won a couple of races in the process. Nothing of much note though, so I'd argue the substance of my previous post remains.?

Didn't quite win, but a close 2nd against a pretty good field (including a Cup winner and a Miracle Mile winner)

These kinds of discussions are always fun because one can never be proved wrong.? So I'll bite. Would you really say Smolda, Tiger Tara, Heaven Rocks, Dream About Me, Christen Me, and Franco Nelson were really not 'serious competition'? Perhaps not in the sense they were, with the benefit of hindsight, ever likely to actually beat Lazarus, but that just reflects the extraordinary magnitude of his dominance, not any lack of quality on their part. The other thing that (for me) makes Lazarus stand apart is that he could win away from home. Lord Module hardly ever raced outside the SI, while Hands Down was a shadow of himself away from Addington. Neither even tried to beat the Aussies on their home soil, and nor did Armalight or Bonnie's Chance. By contrast, Lazarus went, saw, and conquered. On multiple occasions.

I'd almost be the same, but would probably prefer Elsu or possibly Christen Me or Just An Excuse to Courage Under Fire. The latter was an incomparably great 2 and 3yo, but was shaded by some of the others as an open class horse. Actually, thinking about it a little more, maybe I'd go for Yulestar. He's the only one apart from Lazarus to have won both a Cup and an ID Grand Final. Not only that, but he was the first, and only for quite some time, Cup winner to run under 4.00, and his ID win was in Oz. Yep, I'll put Yulestar in instead of CUF.

My dad's too. He always liked to tell the story of how, on coming up from Southland for the 1947 Cup, he proceeded to 'invest' the equivalent of a month's wages on HF's nose. The (fortunately temporary) sick feeling he experienced when the horse galloped hopelessly at the start, leaving him wondering how he was going to get back to Winton, convinced him to only be a small punter ever after. Or so he said... However, he also said, much later in life, that although he'd for a long time been certain that Highland Fling was the best pacer he'd ever seen, he eventually became convinced that Cardigan Bay was better. A 'more professional' horse was how he described the latter.

Lazarus admittedly had a good run, but in order to get it showed really encouraging gate speed. And great effort to find and post the video!

Er, Brodie asked me what I would think if Munro Jr were my child, and I told him. If Munro Sr were to ask me the same question, I would give him precisely the same answer. I assume his response would be considerably more mature than yours. I hope that's clear enough. Anyway, the wagons seem to be circling round this discussion, so I'll just make one final observation: trying to sweep bad news under the carpet inevitably ends in disaster. Sunlight is always the best disinfectant.

Brodie, as you well know, having received valuable advice from me on many occasions, Basil is never incorrect!? In this case, you seem to think I'm incorrect about something I never said while agreeing that I'm correct about something I did. This is a whole new meaning of "totally incorrect on several scores". As my old science teacher used to say (in my case, frequently!), "Use your swede boy!"? And I'm still waiting to hear what these "undulating (sic) circumstances" might be.