Doomed

Yes indeed, they are the problem. They are too complicit in everything that has happened to expect them to resolve anything.

We do deserve to be told what the withheld funding consists of. I have absolutely no idea what it might be.

I see they had a massive crowd at Invercargill today, probably their biggest day of the year I suppose. I wondered why they only wanted to run 8 races with all those people there? All over by 4.30. The Addington trots run 13 or 14 races during cup week when they have a big crowd. I see the southland dogs run 16 tomorrow. Surely they could have programmed an extra maiden race or, god forbid, even a 3yo race like they have up north. I suppose they were thinking the crowd would hang around and bet on Awapuni.

No need. Winston assured us the AWTs would solve the problem of abandoned meetings.

It is looking like the AWT locations just need to concentrate on that. That is already the case at Cambridge, probably needs to happen at the other two as well. Let them concentrate on what they are "good"at. Quite a few decent turf tracks within a couple of hours of both locations

At least they will have stopped anything similar happening again.

"A significant level of funding has been withheld". What exactly does that mean? Will their next feature meeting be an industry meeting instead? Will NZTR not fund their Xmas parties? Have the CEOs had their annual bonus cut?

I don't know whether there is a lot to be gained by dragging up old stories like that. There are a lot of people who have done more long lasting damage to the industry who seldom get a mention.

If they were down over $3m profit in Oct, extrapolated out over another 9 months that could be a $27m short fall if that trend continues. I wonder if the codes have noticed that? Should someone tell them? They haven't noticed such things in the past, so perhaps we should tell them.

That's a bit harsh. They do run a good piss up, and this year they discovered it goes even more smoothly, and is more popular, if you don't let races get in the way. I imagine that is a lesson they will take heed of going forward. Who knows, what looked like being a disaster initially could end up being a valuable discovery.

We couldn't afford the investigation in NZ. It would send the RIU broke.

About 30 years ago the TAB was just a service organisation who did what they were told and there was no integrity unit, the codes just had a few stipes. These days it is heaps of non racing people taking a massive wage for non essential roles. I thought the incompetent recruiting might have come to an end when Allen and all his post office and foreign affaires cronies got the boot, but it has bloody well got worse. Now we have heaps of ex cops, amongst others. It's insane.

Not sure they would know how to find the life boats.

Does anyone know if the Jockeys, trainers, owners, breeders etc have noticed that things aren't going that well? Do you think any of their governing bodies might want to have some input?

I must say, the half doz or so regular contributors on here who have been pointing out he problems facing the industry for the last few years have, sadly, been proven correct in just about everything they have said. All that time I'm sure NZTR has probably just thought they were a bunch of whinging stirrers. The sad thing is, none of us are brain surgeons, and yet we managed to spot things weren't quite right. So how the hell could people on over $250,000 a year not notice that the industry was in a spot of bother?

It does tend to make them look pretty stupid. As I often say, arrogance, ignorance or incompetence. I seriously don't know which. My god, if the late Jack Bennet was still running things he would be saying "how the fuck did you not see that coming?" and "What are we going to do about it". Geez, even the trots, who to quote the classic saying, wouldn't know the postman was up them until he blew his whistle, at least came in and worked over the weekend. Sharrock and George had no intention of working the weekend. They will "revisit" the situation at the end of the season. Probably be far too late by then. Surely it is time for the clubs, trainers, owners and jockeys, even the breeders, to get together and decide the industry is being run by incompetents and do something about it. I don't think the industry has ever been so badly run, and at the worst possible time. Although it is possibly the worst possible time because it has been so badly run for so long. Surely George and Sharrock must go? If they keep them on the industry deserves everything it gets.

They certainly have to do something. It has got totally out of hand.

It's a bloody sweepstake. You would expect virtually the lot to come from owner payments and perhaps $20,000 or so from the sponsor. If there is a short fall just increase the nom and acceptance payments.

The Dyke certainly has a bigger club input at $120,000 than most of the other "special" races. But still costs the industry $330,000. Trentham seems to be treated as a favoured child and they toss in very little of their own money to any of their feature races: $40,000 to the Oaks and Levin Classic, $30,000 the Wgtn Cup and $20,000 the Telegraph. So the Oaks costs NZTR $440,000. At least the CJC contributes $175,000 to the 2,000 Guineas. As Nomates says, the two million races cost the industry $500,000 which is crazy for a couple of sweepstakes. They obviously don't understand the meaning of sweepstakes. Perhaps we should have a sweepstake to pick when NZTR finally realises things may be going wrong?

I just happened to notice the stakes for some races closing soon. Dyke $450,000, Telegraph $330,000, Oaks $480,000, Levin Classic $350,000. Does anyone think those stakes will attract better fields than $400,000, $300,000, $400,000, $300,000 respectively? That's at least $210,000 being pissed away to achieve nothing. What planet do these people live on? How the hell did they come up with $480,000 for the Oaks? Could it be that they are delaying any move until after noms have closed for a lot of these feature races? Do they want to be able to say "we have to reduce stakes, but we can't reduce the Oaks etc because noms have already closed, so it will have to come off the $14,000 races." Look at the two $40,000 races at Invercargill this weekend. Hardly flash. They would have got identical fields for $30,000.

Marton, with their $228 in cash, could consider putting in an offer for Awapuni. They would probably get it for a knock down price. They could sell the whole lot up and move racing back to Marton.

Fielding and Marton have been their only success stories for years, but you do wonder how those two are going these days with RACE having wasted a lot of their money. It would probably be more interesting to hear how Wairoa, Gisborne, Waipukurau, Masterton, Levin, Paeroa, Te Awamutu, Te Teko, Marlborough, Nelson, Westport, Hokitika, Banks Pen, Rangiora, Amberley, Hororata, Waimate, Geraldine, Waikouaiti, Tapanui, Beaumont, Winton, Omakau, Wyndham etc etc are finding it these days. Do their members and supporters still enjoy their day out in the big city? Do those clubs put on a fleet of buses to take the locals to Riccarton or Hastings etc?

I don't know whether anyone noticed or not, but the four class jockeys cleaned up the whole card at Trentham yesterday. Good to see the cream rise to the top. Some great prices for the South Island's best. And further North the South African cleaned up. Despite all the pessimism we might actually have one of the best sets of jockeys we have seen in this country for a while. I know one of them was only making a fleeting visit.

The other thing to remember is that trainers and jockeys need a certain number of opportunities to remain viable. Some SI jockeys might only get 3 or 4 opportunities a week and they often have to make a 10 hour round trip to get those few opportunities to race in $14,000 races.

My natural inclination is to disagree with parts of that, especially the bit about fewer race-days equals higher stakes. But I can't comment with any confidence because I don't have crucial information. Obviously a 10 race card with $14,000 races costs $140,000 to run. If that meeting was generating $1.4m in turnover and if 10% of that turnover was allocated to funding stakes then that industry meeting breaks even; roughly, I know there are other costs. But I don't have access to any information like that so I can't make an informed comment. Yesterday's Trentham meeting cost almost $800,000 in stakes money, so on my unscientific 10% commission figure that would require $8m in turnover to fund. I'm not aware whether it got to close to $8m in turnover or not, but I would be slightly surprised if it did.