Doomed

Must be hard for the poor buggers to keep motivated, especially in the South. With only one SI jockey riding a winner at Riccarton last week and about 10 of the top northern jockeys in attendance I often wonder why some of them bother at all.

Surely not. Next you will be suggesting that with only one horse trained south of ChCh in the rating 75 1,200m perhaps they need more grass track meetings in Canty at this time of year.

With Auckland, Wellington and ChCh all currently out of action for jumps racing of any scale, it is becoming pretty much a country based format.

We all know what will happen if the activists and the compliant media are successful in getting the greyhounds banned. Next up will be jumps racing, then all horse racing. I'm amazed they don't turn their attention to rugby, which has horrendous injury stats and deaths every year. People often seem more concerned about injuries to animals than to humans.

This from NZTR today about the upcoming Otago meeting. "NZTR in conjunction with the club MAY look to divide the R65 1600m provided there are sufficient entries at withdrawal time." 35 noms for the race. They must be expecting a high attrition rate if they don't think they will end up with enough horses to split it. They should really be splitting it into three races. And they should be asking themselves if perhaps they have a programming problem if they get 35 noms for a $17,000 race, especially since they have just had a meeting at Riccarton with much higher stakes a few days ago.

As I'm sure we all know, precedents are important. Sadly, "dumb" is now well established.

I thought that since the "flash" racing is virtually all done for the season it might be worth considering which of the stakes type innovations proved successful, and which ones weren't quite so successful. I must say, I thought the SI $350,000 gimmick race was probably the best of the lot. It attracted a really good field, turned into a very competitive race and provided a worthy reward for southern trained horses. If you were to offer me $350,000 to name one horse who raced in the other 3 gimmick races in the north I wouldn't be able to name a single horse, let alone the winners of any of the races. As to the biggest waste of money, and there were several contenders, I would suggest the $650,000 in bonuses for horses who placed in 3 or 4 nominated races. Legarto won the bulk of it running 2nd in the last event. I am really not sure what it achieved at all. Legarto proved uncompetitive in its two Aussie starts during the season so was probably always going to target those NZ races regardless of bonuses. Campionessa and Desert Lightning decided to head off to Aussie anyhow, despite earning enough points early on to be contenders. The last two races only attracted fields of 10 and 11, so hardly capacity considering the total stakes on offer. It will be interesting to see if NZTR analyse the success or otherwise of all the initiatives, and decide to abandon or revamp any that didn't work so well. Although I think they are just rolling them all over to next season as is. Obviously they consider everything they did was 100% successful. Certainly an impressive result for any business.

Very interesting. I can remember living in ChCh in the late 70s and having to move to the car during the night to listen to the Auckland trots. Who would bother going to that trouble these days. Listening to the Auckland trots, let alone having to sit in the car in the middle of the night to do so.

Yes, reducing basic stakes for about 5 months of the year just because they don't have of any of their over hyped $1m races during that period is a disgrace. I'm not sure if people realise, but if they had run those stupid twilight meetings at the normal $18,500 rather than $25,000 per race there would have been enough money available to retain the $18,500 minimum all year round. In face they could have run winter races for a $20,000 minimum with the money saved. Nobody has explained the rationale behind those twilight meetings. Basically, an extra $52,000 to $58,500 per meeting for exactly the same fields as you get for a $18,500 meeting, just because they start an hour later than normal. Weird.

I do recall several of Reon's "fog calls" at Addington, but I also there for one of the great fog races when Hands Down won the last race at Ashburton one day on the old grass track. That track must have been at least 2,200 metres around so there wasn't much to see for an awfully long time until they appeared out of the fog with about 150m to go.

I suppose Hororata must have moved to Riccarton at around the same time. Interestingly, the only club that ever "willingly" moved to Riccarton until all the forced moves of Rangiora, Bank Pen etc many years later.

You only have to look at the crowd sizes at some of the Aussie country meetings and ask yourself why we don't want crowds like that here.

Interesting to see a couple of decent horses out of their class in the rating 75 1,400m, including a Te Akau horse. I presume they were moved there. I can't imagine Te Akau sent a decent horse down to run in a 75 carrying 70 odd kilos.

Surely an explanation would be forthcoming if they have run a race at NP with 4 starters and scraped a race in the SI with 7 noms? Sets a hell of a precedent. It is one area in which NZTR are very poor, never offering explanations for some of their decisions. It reeks of arrogance and contempt for those at the grass roots level. I do put a lot of their poorer decisions down to incompetence, but sometimes you do wonder.

Surely they didn't scrap a race with 7 noms? They run 5 and 6 horse fields regularly in the NI. Just last Saturday they happily ran a $40,000 race at New Plymouth with 5 acceptors and 4 starters. Surely the local trainers would kick up a hell of a stink if they saw a race with 7 original noms dumped without even waiting to see if there were any extras forthcoming.

There is a reserves bench. Murray could sit on that if he keeps up his high standards.

Yes, trifectas all used to be $1 units, can't remember when they introduced the 50c option. My best return was $4,500. Got quite a few between $1,000-$2,000. Haven't taken one for quite a few years now, easy to get out of the habit.

I suppose if the horse has gone through a Karaka sale for $500,000 and turned out to be not much good, then goes through gavelhouse for $5,000 it still has a show. I'm not sure if it is a one off payment to be eligible.

They certainly do have an interesting business model. I have no idea where the profit aspect of their current NZ investment kicks in. At least NZTR and Auckland racing have the mythical Avondale goldmine at the end of their rainbow.

You are making a concerted effort to join the so called tight 5 Jess. I wonder if someone else has to be relegated to fit you in or whether it will just be expanded to a tight 6.

I would never join any club that would have me as a member.

We did see the ludicrous situation last year where the winner of a restricted entry sales race was voted 2yo of the year. Then didn't fire a shot as a 3yo. So the traditional Pattern is already well and truly skewed.

I can't imagine they would be all that bothered really.

Surely you are going back a few years there TAB.

Surely everyone talks of Timaru glowingly?