Doomed

When those Trentham group races went north noms were reopened, same with the HB features that went north.

Geez Joe, that's possibly the best thing you have written. I suspect they hate associating racing with wine, both Gisborne and Marlborough had race tracks surrounded by grapevines, now both gone. I think the Clare Valley track is surrounded by vines as well. Lucky they aren't in NZ, they would be shut down years ago.

And at the same time its the cost of servicing that is used as the reason for eliminating the likes of Waimate, Gisborne and Wairoa. I note the Ashburton meeting that has ridden to the rescue of Riccarton in January is restricted to only 8 races for servicing reasons. So tough luck if there are heaps of noms. I can see Ashburton being the next track in trouble if it has to keep covering for Riccarton. Nowhere to hide if Ashburton goes out of action for any reason. Used to be 5 or 6 tracks within a couple of hours of Riccarton, now just the one option.

At least he would have some insight into what the problem is.

They wouldn't have liked that Reefton, you almost sound as if you know what you're talking about. They won't be wanting to introduce common sense and logic into the dates setting process. The Waikouaiti and Banks Pen situations are fascinating. They created two extra feature race-meetings with massive stakes increases to encourage them to move. My guess is that the turnovers at both meetings are less now than on their original dates, on course certainly. If money was no object I don't see why they didn't give them a few thousand each and leave them on their original dates. In an ideal world Timaru would have been given a feature meeting to race on New Years day. That would have encouraged quite a few Boxing Day Wingatui horses to back up a week later, and provided a reasonably close opportunity for Canterbury horses. As it is, many horses only race once and then wait for the feature meetings down South a month or so later. Also in an ideal world, the Coast would be given four meetings and a decent spread of dates. I'm not sure if I should be holding my breath for this ideal world.

That's what Taranaki is doing, and Southland did it a few years ago. I can't imagine Awapuni would be too bothered.

While doing some research into the amount of funding withheld from Awapuni, I noticed with interest the way these Dunstan races are funded. These races are all worth $5,000 more than the norm and I always assumed the sponsor tossed in the extra. This isn't the case at all. I see NZTR actually contributes the extra $5,000 to each race, so $85,000 over the 17 heats. For the final, NZTR contributes $70,000 as normal funding, plus an extra $10,000, and the club, presumably with sponsorship included, contributes $40,000. I'm sure the sponsor does contribute some money to the clubs holding the heats, but none of it goes towards the stakes. NZTR contributes an extra $95,000 to this series. I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing, I just find it interesting all the extra funding NZTR tosses into random races, usually hosted by the favoured clubs.

I see all race-day club funding is withheld from Awapuni. I wondered what exactly this might be so I had a quick look. I presume they would have paid out the $15,000 stake from the race that was held, but the other funding could come to as much as $38,500. This is potentially made up of $5,000 tier 5 funding, $9,000 feature race-day funding, $7,000 compliance funding, $17,500 strategic venue funding. So it could be an expensive day for RACE.

I don't think the CJC sees themselves as having any responsibility for SI racing. I think they feel they have made their contribution by hosting an AWT and the rest of the Island should be grateful to them.

Is this season the tightest the whole circuit has been compressed? You wouldn't think too many horses would race 3 times.

It is 100% obvious that NZTR had no idea HB and Otaki were both running appropriately spaced $19,000 rating 65, Dunstan staying races when they mucked around with the Otaki race. Its another cockup that went unnoticed amongst all the other cockups.

The Eulogy must be a bit tricky, takes extra time.

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.