Doomed

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.

I can recall the Sapling Stks on the big grass track at Ashburton being one of the big 2yo races. Not sure if it still exists but it certainly isn't as prominent.

That was weird as well. Many years ago the trots would have kicked up a hell of a stink if the gallops tried to intrude like that. The gallops decided to abandon Sundays several years ago when some half-wit was in charge, in favour initially of the gold mine that would be Monday racing. That didn't end well. Now suddenly the gallops have decided they would like to have another go on Sundays. By my estimate, trots turnovers on Sundays will halve. Even gallops turnovers will drop. A gallops meeting coming off a Friday afternoon racing by themselves to a Sunday competing with three other clubs will see a significant drop in turnover. I presume this has all been pushed Entain who have some great plan in place. I can only imagine the codes have been told to leave Saturdays clear for Aussie racing and told they will all benefit. But, I thought the codes only benefited from betting on overseas races of their own code. So I don't see how the trots benefit from betting on Aussie gallops. I don't recall seeing a single press release from NZTR or HRNZ, or even Entain, explaining why they have made this sudden change to the dates structure. It could be an expensive mistake if it doesn't work. I can only assume they have seen a dramatic drop off in people with strong religious beliefs and feel they want to rush in and fill this gap in the market.

One bit I don't quite understand is that the trots are still running $8,000 and $10,000 races, and they are about to introduce heaps of unsustainable new meetings in areas where there are no horses and no interest. Other than things like $100,000 Invercargill Cups and a few other high staked group races with six horse fields the trots don't seem to have benefited from Entain's largesse. The gallops meanwhile run $50,000 open races with six horse fields which in no way can be self funding. So the gallops apparently are getting heaps more from Entain than the trots. I have no idea about the dogs. Is this because Entain sees the gallops as providing product for their overseas markets? The whole thing seems hard to analyse at the moment. Certainly nothing like the 80s and 90s when stakes were directly related to turnovers.

All that has really happened is that stakes have gone up because Entain stuck their hand in their pocket and said "here have this." There is no sign that anything significant about the structure of NZ racing has changed other than stakes. And there is no indication that the stakes increases are sustainable. Fields seem to be no better and the little information we get about turnovers doesn't indicate any uplift. Sponsors now appear to be virtually non-existent with Entain and the TAB sponsoring most things. As someone said, smoke and mirrors.

I have never actually watched it. Don't even know when its on. Is it more of a PR exercise or an expert analysis show?