Doomed

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?

Certainly a big year next year. The Warriors and Ellerslie both doing their thing.

Arguably the best track we have seen in the country over the last few weeks has been Timaru. And yet they are a totally despised club, only just hanging in there while some of the greatest intellects the game has ever seen are desperate to move all their meetings to the Riccarton AWT. Strange old world.

Back in the 70s and 80s the "Cup" races at the likes of Methven, Ashburton. Timaru. Rangiora, Orari etc were class 4, 5 or 6 fronts, and they provided great racing as horses strived to get through to open class. That class of horse hardly seems to exist these days, and anyone can race in so called open class races. I'm not involved enough with harness racing these days to know whether it is a handicapping problem or something else. As a casual observer I do wonder whether the trots might be better served by reverting to a wins based structure so the general public know what's going on. For example, perhaps have 3 win fronts with conditions, so horses can still drop back a bit but the public can still understand it. Obviously the 2yo approach hasn't really worked. The real problem seems to be the lack of depth in the open class ranks. The days of having the likes of Bonnies Chance, Armalight, Locarno, Hands Down, Sapling, Lord Module etc regularly racing against each other are long gone. Ironically they didn't keep going year after year because of massive stakes but more because their owners enjoyed the challenge and the thrill of it. We really do seem to have lost our way. I know I no-longer find harness racing interesting at all, which is sad. The only really "innovative" thing that has happened in harness racing in recent years is the return to grass track racing. Perhaps they need to revert to some of the other "old" ways as well.

That is something I keep meaning to ask. Someone must know. Who is pushing this strategy? Is it Entain? And has NZTR just rolled over and said "It's your money, do what you like." Or is it NZTR, and if so who? There must be an architect. Perhaps its the breeders. Perhaps it's the trainers assoc. Perhaps the owners. We know it isn't the jockeys because 6 of the northerners were happy enough to head down to Riccarton today to race in small $17,000 races. Some of them for only a couple of mounts, so obviously stakes don't really matter to the jockeys. I have always assumed it must be one influential person at NZTR and the board with no racing knowledge are stupid enough to go along with it, knowing, as mentioned above, that most of them will be long gone when it all goes belly up. Unless it goes belly up even quicker than we expect.

Vichyssoise TAB, very trendy.

Purely my opinion, but I think they are totally deluded. Those stakes increases are something you do when the industry as a whole is trucking along really well and you think what can we do to make it even better. I don't actually think the industry as a whole is going all that well and I don't think those increases will help most participants at all. It would be interesting to know what all those racing for $17,000 this week think of those increases. Is Michael Pitman for instance overcome with excitement about all those massive stakes at Ellerslie. But, as I said, there will be a lot of people who are ecstatic about the proposals and who think it means the industry is booming. I suppose we will have to wait five years to find out one way or another.