Doomed

Their argument of course will be that if they had sold Waipuk and poured all the proceeds into Hastings and sold Woodville and poured all the proceeds into Awapuni then we would have two great state of the art tracks. Conversely of course one could argue that if that didn't work then the industry would have no further options. Unfortunately for those pushing the centralisation mantra, the only example that I can think of where a track has actually been sold and millions poured into another venue is Fielding being sold to fund Awapuni, and that hasn't really worked out all that well. I'm sure it is devastating to NZTR that they can't race around the country saying "You too could have your very own Awapuni if you just follow our advice."

That would be me.

Messara's report was rubbish. The man knew nothing about NZ Racing and made so many errors that the whole report must be suspect.

It's basically to make them look as if they are doing something, and closing tracks is the only thing they can think of. It doesn't require any intelligence, racing knowledge, creativeness or passion. A total outsider with no passion for the industry and no sense of history can't come out and say they are going to totally reorganise the pattern of racing in NZ, change the handicapping system and inspire everyone with their ideas and enthusiasm, but they can say we are going to sell off 30% of the tracks and try to bank a few million. That doesn't require any skill at all, and if it doesn't work they just bugger off leaving a mess behind them.

I thought that sounded strange but now they have just done the same to me. Tried to put the same bet on 3 times because they kept saying it didn't work, then the money disappeared for two of the bets but no sign of it in my transactions. Think I will give up for the day.

TAB form guide is all over it. Great analysis. 'Normally races well at this distance. One of the major players."

I meant both of this week's CD meetings nearly scrapped due to lack of horses.

Do the trainers and administrators all sit down together regularly to discuss such things and provide feedback about why certainly things aren't working? Just as I imagine they will do something similar in the CD after this week's debacle.

I think he was placed in both the Wgtn and NZ Cups. Don't think he won either.

Was he the Thomas who trained Bonsai Pipleine and bred several good horses out of Shock Attack?

I certainly can't recall any gallopers trained there.

It's not a good look. No matter whether there are a multitude of reasons why trainers don't want to trial this week, the impression given is that they are trying to force trainers to use the AWT throughout the year and the trainers are saying piss off. The AWT was always promoted as a handy thing to have for training and occasionally racing purposes during the wet winter months. Unfortunately, NZTR and the CJC always saw it as a way to eliminate all of the despised country tracks around Canterbury and North Otago. They have never accepted that it is Riccarton that needs the AWT and not Canty and SI racing as a whole, because Christchurch and the Riccarton track gets much wetter than the rest of Canty during the winter months. When they inevitably have to close Riccarton down for a year or two to totally renovate the grass track I imagine they will want to race on the AWT all year round as there will be no other options. I imagine this is the reason they are trying to get trainers used to racing on it in mid summer at the moment.

I will be interested to hear from Pam what the trainers attitude is towards 2yos in the south. My own totally removed feeling is that it is a chicken and egg situation. Because there aren't many races the trainers don't bother, and because the trainers don't bother races have small fields or have to be scrapped. I do feel that the pattern whereby virtually the only 2yo races are $40,000 races at Riccarton scares many trainers off. They can't see the point of taking on a couple of Te Akau horses down the big Riccarton straight with a horse that they don't think would be competitive. I do wonder whether some $18,500 maiden 2yo races away from Riccarton might help. Interestingly, many years ago Wingatui used to have a Sept 2yo race, variously called the McLean Stakes or Kindergarten Stakes, and then the Champagne Stakes on Boxing day. And they used to get decent fields. These days, from memory, I think there is one 2yo race all season in Otago and just the one Southland 2yo race at Riverton. And of course Riccarton has long since scrapped their only race for 2yo fillies. And the Welcome Stakes has now moved from Nov, probably rightly so. I imagine that will gradually kill off spring 2yo racing in the South. With the move towards breeding more precious youngsters, the popularity of big syndicates who want early goers, and liberal watering of tracks so they don't have to race on rock hard surfaces I would have thought this would be the ideal time to encourage 2yo racing. Afterall, trainers no longer have to give a horse lots of time with the aim to have a jumper in 6 years. I wonder if there is a plan? I wonder if the CJC is taking a leadership role, or will they leave it all to Entain for now?

interestingly, the exact same thing happened last year. 2yo race scrapped at the Jan meeting, 5 runners at the Feb meeting. You presume they sat down after those meetings and said "what must we do to ensure the exact same thing doesn't happen again?". Lo and behold the exact same thing happens again. One presumes they will sit down after these meetings and say "we must make sure this doesn't happen again". Their normal approach to such things is to restrict opportunities even more to try and force trainers to support the few races that remain. That doesn't really seem to be working.

But this one has $40,000 rating 65s and not $25,000, which makes it quite unique.

Surely they had no choice? They scrapped the last 2yo race. There are only a few 2yos in work because the programming is so bad, if they dumped this race as well they would have no 2yos in work before long. Meanwhile Taranaki runs what must surely be the weakest Group 3 of the season so far for $80,000 and about 7 runners from memory.

Same thing happened in the South last year from memory. They have relatively high staked open stayers races every week for a couple of months. There just aren't enough horses to go around. The $70,000 Marlborough Cup had only 6 noms but they left it open and got a decent field of 11. They just don't quite get the concept of tiered racing.

What sort of meeting is Tauranga this Sunday? I see it has the $40,000 stakes and $25,000 maiden stakes associated with a feature meeting but the races are all maidens and 65s, other than one 75 race. Feature meetings with feature stakes usually have an open race or some sort of feature race. Is this the only meeting of its type for the season?

Any idea why the normal maiden at Wanganui on Friday races for $25,000 while the maiden 3yos race for $18,500? Seems strange.

The big thing is that 40 years ago in the CD, just as an example, they had tracks at Opaki, Levin, Fielding, Waipuk, Foxton, even Bulls, Marton, Ashhurst etc a few years before that, Now most of that racing has been concentrated on Awapuni and Trentham, and those two tracks just aren't up to it. Even Hastings has inherited meetings from all over. I see it is intended to use Awapuni only sparingly next summer, so god knows what will happen then. And bizarrely those smaller tracks have been partially replaced with a tight little AWT. A similar thing has happened in Canty.

You seem fascinated by me TAB. I'm not gay. Not even ambidextrous. Mikey does have a good point. I was surprised trackside kept showing video of the totally empty stands. I would have thought they would have instructions to try and show there was someone there somewhere.

I'm fascinated by Wingatui turnovers. They get given feature meeting after feature meeting. There hardly seemed to be anyone there today despite massive stakes. It wouldn't surprise me if Reefton's oncourse turnover topped today at Wingatui.

Also, there is only one gallops day during a five day period. Punters were promised four days off after the excitement of Karaka.

Taupo?

Yes, great pity about Master Fay, looked quite impressive. When they do the two racedays next year will it be two six race cards? Be interesting to compare the costs and returns of two days with Cup Day at Riccarton when they hold 12 races on the one day.