Doomed

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.

You are going to feel so silly one day Reefton when you get an email from the WRC saying they would like to come on a fact finding visit to the Coast to learn how better to connect to the public, how to attract people to their meetings, how to attract sponsors, how to prepare a track properly and how to run a race meeting at a profit. One word of advice though, don't be so overcome with excitement that you automatically say yes when they ask if you would like to run a charity race-meeting on the Coast to help raise funds for the Trentham refurbisment. That largesse didn't work out too good for Nelson and Avondale.

You don't seem to understand that some clubs are "Special". To be fair, I don't know whether the WRC have spent hand over fist for years, if so they don't have much to show for it. I think the WRC's problem for many years has been that they are just a bit boring with no enthusiasm or excitement about them. They have lost generations of support locally. Most of their feature races have been abandoned or left to run down, and they haven't added anything new except for the Levin Classic, which they stole off Levin in a bizarre swap arrangement. You just know they will cock up this property development idea. You just hope they don't take down too much industry money or assets with them.

Which viable racing club do you refer to?

It's probably a matter of which 300 jobs go. If its the inflated management structure that does stuff all there's a massive saving right there, but if it's the people who actually do the work it's a worry. Presumably the $1m man who runs the show will no longer be needed.

An article in stuff saying the outsourcing is close. https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/131347592/tab-believed-to-be-close-to-outsourcing-deal-that-could-cost-hundreds-of-jobs

I notice Art De Triomphe is in. I always thought they stuffed her by sending her to the Cambridge Breeders Stakes when she was totally out of her depth. I always find it so sad that there is no proper pattern of racing in the South. Nothing for 3yo sprinters or stayers. So many Southerners with a bit of ambition end up going north at great expense to contest decent races without suitable lead up racing, and usually return shattered after the experience.

Generally no idea about racing is considered an ideal qualification for most racing roles.

I don't think bickering over semantics is doing anyone any good. This industry is in a death dive and there is little point those few with some interest in trying to halt the dive arguing about minor details. It is becoming pretty obvious that there are only a few people out there who seem to realise the seriousness of the situation and who have any ideas about how to possibly mitigate the crash when it happens. There was a perfect case study into the industry's biggest problem with the Auckland trots. A CEO with no industry knowledge comes in, loses about $100m and pisses off without a care in the world. This example is replicated many times over throughout the rest of the industry at all levels. We are probably wasting over $10m a year just in salaries to useless administrators. And that is just their salaries, who knows how many hundreds of millions of damage they are doing. They will all just piss off without a care in the world when they are finished having their bit of fun. Probably never to earn such salaries again if previous experience is any indication, but they all managed to build up their own personal nest eggs for a few years.

A similar sized team to Pam and buying at similar prices so it will make for an interesting comparison.

I notice yesterday's Riccarton trials were cancelled. Is that because of just a general lack of horses or an unwillingness to use the AWT. Either way, it is a bit of a worry.

Most international punters can't access the NZ TAB from their own countries. Increasing profits by lower take out rates assumes we have a large punter base ready to increase their betting. Sadly we are not a big gambling country like Australia. A lot of people are still betting the same amounts they were 30 years ago.

Hard to argue with any of that.

Quite amazing if you find your way through their website and have a look at some of the jobs on offer at the TAB, mostly totally unnecessary, and I hate to think how much they get paid.

I don't think anyone has commented on Brian de Lore's latest piece. I assume people have given up caring. It's all a sad and sorry situation. Virtually criminal it has been allowed to happen. http://www.theoptimist.co.nz/

Sadly, we have to make do with the jockeys we have. It is not really an attractive profession anymore. You can probably draw parallels with the NZ women's cricket team. They are not flash, but they are all we have. I know nothing about riding horses, but I imagine it is something you either have a natural talent for or you don't. If someone can't judge pace and can't react quickly to changing circumstances they is probably unlikely in most cases to be able to learn those skills. As an amateur observer I would have said that was an awful ride on the 3yo that won the Dyke on the weekend, but it won easily, so what do I know. It's a pretty inexact science.

I never knew Pat Corby had anything to do with pacers. The other horse of his I remember was Clipper Run, a very good mare who had a great record at Riccarton if I recall correctly. I think she came along after Grey Way.

I was lucky enough to see his last four wins. Strangely enough the one I remember best was his last win at Rangiora when he beat Gretna Green. He was giving her a truck load of weight and she went up outside him and looked like winning easily when he switched into an extra gear as Muzenza mentioned. His Timaru Cup was also memorable. Great crowd response despite him paying one of his biggest ever winning divis.

Obviously you would like Philippa as Philippa means lover of horses, so she is clearly in the ideal career.

I was out of action all day Saturday so didn't see any races, but I thought I should watch some of the Riccarton races to see what Newmarket was talking about. I watched about 7 of the races and didn't see anything wrong at all, he must have made a mistake in one of the other 3 races that I didn't watch. I think Craig Rail does a great job, we are lucky to have him. He seems to be very accurate and looks like a good race analyst. He seems to spot which horses are going well during the race, which some can't. Surely the biggest mystery of the day was how Light Up could pay $9.50 a place. I thought he went massive last start. One of the great quinellas, just when I have a day off.

Yes, they have got it badly wrong in Canty. Quite a few Riccarton meetings there is no race further than 1,800m. Canty stayers have never been weaker and there is nothing coming through. They are lucky there are half a doz stayers in Southland who go around most weeks and occasionally top up Canty fields. People complain about stakes, but when you look at the quality of fields going around in races like the Marlborough Cup for $60,000 those owners have probably never had it better. It starts with 3yo racing. No race in the SI for 3yo males further than 1,600m, so never any SI noms for the Derby. Back in the days when the Derby used to be on Boxing Day there used to be SI contestants, but now it is in March they are never sighted. Southerners used to win the Oaks regularly, but that never happens anymore.

You do wonder how they could go two months without a single race for a certain type of horse in all of Canty. And then all the experts at head office will be saying "no horses coming through to rating 65 stayers races, no idea what's causing that." Then they will probably decide to scrap stayers races altogether. Riccarton would love that. I don't think the stayers ranks have ever been poorer in Canty. I do notice that virtually every week in the NI they suddenly discover they have stuffed up their programming and happily throw in extra races, usually $30,000 races. Never happens in the SI. This weekend at Riccarton 32 noms for the 65 mile, so 14 will miss a start. All good though there is another opportunity for that class and distance in a month's time, albeit for $14,000 next time.