Doomed

Just found an old Turf Register. The Riccarton Turf Club raced at Riccarton on Thursday 18 February 1982. Nine races, all worth $1,000. On course turnover of $115,922.

That may have been the original intention, but the equalisator meetings morphed into an oncourse only meeting. I think it was the only one in the SI, but there were several around the Waikato. It came about believe it or not because there were so many horses about and the TAB didn't open Thursdays and Sundays so there needed to be some extra opportunities in certain areas at certain times. A totalisator club couldn't hold both types of licences so the oncourse only meetings were given to clubs like Riccarton TC. In the Waikato it would have been clubs like South Waikato. They would have also been good earners for the organisations whose day job was running many of the trial meetings. I don't have any records of any of this so I'm relying on memory. Others more intimately involved than I will know much more about it. Sad that the Racing industry doesn't seem to have recorded history like this very well, at least nothing you can google.

If you look at the CJC annual reports you will see they have ward committees for Amberley, Hororata, North Canterbury and Riccarton Turf. I often struggle to remember what I did yesterday but I am quite certain that NZ used to have on course betting only race-meetings and Riccarton Turf was one of them. They possibly ended late 70s, early 80s. I can specifically remember a very big divi one day when there was only one live ticket on a quinella or double. Equalisator betting was quite a different thing.

It would only take about 5 years to stuff NZ racing, so probably not much difference between a 5 year or 25 year deal. We won't last 25 if they cock it up.

An on course tote just wouldn't work given the small number of attendees and the tiny pools. Back in the days of on course only meetings the Riccarton Turf Club would do about $250,000 on course. These days the CJC would think they were doing well to turn over $50,000 on course.

I think Nelson would have closed late 80s. As you say, there used to be a lot of owners and enthusiasts around the top of the South, but largely all gone now. And sadly not being replaced by an upsurge of new involvement in the big cities excited by the prospect of AWT racing rather than country track racing.

The industry has lost more than 25 galloping tracks, plus several trotting tracks, over the last 30 years, largely through natural attrition. Suddenly that isn't good enough and NZTR wants to pick and choose which other clubs to eliminate. Ironically, some of the clubs the industry has tried to eliminate in the past are still ticking away quite well, Kumara being a classic example. We now have the most perfect case studies to show how closing tracks can benefit the industry in Banks Peninsula, Waikouaiti, Blenheim, Wairoa etc. There must be so much information, financial, attendance figures etc, gained from those clubs that could be used to justify further closures. I do not understand why NZTR doesn't come out with a detailed analysis of all the benefits and the financial goldmine from shutting down the tracks listed above. I'm sure it would be enough to sway some of us who are still a bit dubious about the current approach. I can even imagine Reefton saying "wow, you're convinced me, I'm a convert." Why do they not do this?

Pointless having an income stream for the future if the industry can't survive the next few years. The Auckland trots are a good example of making one cock up and seeing everything implode pretty quickly. The rest of the industry needs to learn from that.

Jumping out of a plane is an exciting prospect, until you realise you have forgotten your parachute.

The trouble is that the "favoured few" clubs like Auckland and Riccarton are totally in the pockets of NZTR as they benefit from a lot of the decisions. Even big players like Te Akau do well out of it as there are plenty of group and listed races to target and still enough open class races for decent enough stakes scattered around the country to make their model work. Even the top Waikato based trainers do well enough out of it. Any innovative clubs and individuals have had the stuffing knocked out of them. Riverton would be one of the few clubs that put some extra money into their stakes, and they are a club the "brains trust" are trying to close down. Look how boring the Riccarton programmes are over the next three meetings, and all for minimum stakes. Unfortunately we have decided to settle for mediocrity.

Very few people understand how the whole industry works, all the intricacies of funding etc. I'm totally out of touch myself. I don't really know any of the major players anymore. I just assume most of them are useless. Who knows, one or two of them could be quite competent. Surely we must fluke someone decent occasionally. The plan is basically to divide and conquer, confuse people, bore them and hope anyone who might be a nuisance eventually gives up and goes away. I think most of those who do have an idea what is going on have basically given up as they realise there is nothing they can say or do that will make any difference. Off the top of my head I can't think of a single innovative club out there, or an enlightened administrator, so there is really no one in authority who can stand up and say this not right.

Hard to argue with any of that. Incredible that the people who make those decisions just can't see it. Although to be fair, the people who who make those decisions have never actually been to Geraldine or Waimate so you can't expect them to know. Interestingly, the only racetrack on state highway 1 that they are desperate to close down is Timaru. Some other centres off the beaten track might need to be wary.

It's a strange old leader-board isn't it? The leader has more than twice as many winners as the 2nd place-getter and that 2nd trainer has twice as many winners as the third person. Short odds on the exactor, hint of value in the first four.

It is worth remembering that British racing has always struggled because bookmakers have dominated and they return very little to the industry. NZ racing always did well because we were the first in the world to have the totalisator, and the tote returns much more to the industry. You do wonder whether this emphasis on fixed odds betting, with expensive gimmicks like no deductions for scratchings, no deductions for dead-heats and paying out on horses that get relegated, seems to have coincided with much poorer returns to the industry. Perhaps we should return to the days when the tote dominated, when there was no problem with how much someone wanted to bet, or how much they won, and the industry did well. There have always been people who have claimed that NZ racing would do well if we had bookmakers. Doesn't really seem to have worked from what I have seen.

It's not a subject I know much about, but I do know that matiriki can float all over the place throughout the winter, its worse than Easter. I have no idea how far in advance they know where it will fall in a given year.

It's all to do with having a Maori racing club racing on matiriki. And we only have one such club and its not the CJC.

On the subject of Aussie racing, it did appear to me that handy to the lead and on the rails seemed to be the place to be in Sydney and Melbourne last Saturday. We saw a few lead all the way, even at Flemington, and others stuck to the rails to make their winning runs. Different to many NZ meetings where heading out wide seemed to be the favoured option.

Based on precedents here, I doubt very much whether Gentleman Roy would have been relegated in NZ. I have no idea what the thoughts were in Australia after than one, whether pundits thought it was the correct decision or not.

I've got no idea if that is what they are talking about. They are obviously promoting female racing people somehow but I know nothing about it. Perhaps someone could explain what is going on that has upset people.

Perhaps someone could explain to me what this is all about? I'm always very impressed when I see some of the very well spoken female trainers and jockeys on trackside and I often think we should make much more use of them to promote the industry.

I actually think it was a pretty calm ride. A lesser jockey could easily have been tempted to drag the horse sideways for a clear run at them and lost a lot of ground. As it was, he just waited for a gap and luckily it came.

I wish someone would tell George to describe what is actually happening, rather than anticipating what he thinks might happen. In the first he had the fav out wide leading virtually all the way down the straight only to suddenly realise it had never actually headed the three horses inside it when they hit the line. Same in the second to last race. Had the fav out wide leading down the straight when it had never actually headed the two inside it. I don't know if there is racing on the radio anymore, but if so they get a very misleading picture. Even people watching live or on TV must get very confused if they don't know the colours.

That was impressive. Best NZ win in Aussie for a while. Very cool ride. No way was it going to win, or even place, 150m out.

I have been thinking, are we past the era now where clubs look for sponsors for races? Is it just too hard to get sponsors, do club's no longer employ anyone to do the job, are sponsors no longer interested? I notice the Derby today doesn't have a sponsor and the Avondale Cup and Guineas a couple of weeks ago didn't have sponsors. I can understand it in NZ as racing no longer has any commercial appeal or value, but even in Australia today the Australian Guineas doesn't have a sponsor. I suspect in Australia the stakes are just getting so high that to ask a sponsor for say 10% of the stake for naming rights is beyond the means of many. And the old model used to be that the sponsor of a really big race would spend about double the sponsorship amount entertaining guests on the day, which is not viable for many. Also Australia has so many new feature races all the time and there just aren't enough sponsorships to go around. I do find it a bit sad, I am sure many of us can remember some of the great sponsorships from years past, The Bayer Classic, usually rated the king of them all, but also the Air NZ Stakes, the Nescafe Northern, the Lion Brown Sprint, the George Adams, the Benson and Hedges. Several of those races were only known by the sponsors name and usually didn't have any other name. I struggle to think of too many races today that are only known by the sponsors name, the White Robe Lodge and Couplands mile certainly two of the obvious ones.

And you are going to feel even sillier when they offer you an exceedingly generous consultancy fee for your input, because that's the way it's done in the big city.