Doomed

So you are arguing that the provincial growth fund was happy to fund a track in the middle of ChCh as that would enable NZTR to close down racing in Timaru, Banks Pen, Rangiora, Waimate and Marlborough? Those provincial areas would presumably be much better off not having to maintain a local racetrack and they would be delighted to be able to sell their tracks so the funds realised could be used to support Riccarton, Trentham and Ellerslie. That philanthropic gesture would do wonders for the mental wellbeing of all those provincial centres. The next logical step based on that precedent is to sell the main rugby grounds in Timaru, Ashburton, Rangiora, Blenheim and a few other assorted country towns and use those funds to fund Christchurch's new covered stadium. Once the PGF sees those smaller centres are totally in favour of that approach the PGF would almost certainly come to the party and throw money into the ChCh stadium as well.

Do you never read back over your posts and realise most don't make any sense at all? In an attempt to be helpful, you're means you are. If you are trying to say anything other than you are you should use your. If you want to interact with people you should make an effort to comply with normal grammatical conventions. I suggest you try posting in your main language and leave it up to people to translate it. I'm not even sure what your main language is. It doesn't sound like any European or even Asian language as you don't make the usual errors those speakers do when writing English.

Look, I have to be honest, Gospel's appalling grammar always makes me think he is a bit simple minded and I never take much notice at all of his postings. And yet in a recent post he claimed to have a university degree. I assume he has English as a second language, so full credit for that, most of us on here struggle with the one language. If he would only read over his posts before sending them to tidy up any errors he might find people take more notice of what he says.

Come on curious. It takes literally 10 seconds of googling to find numerous articles where abandoned meetings were used as the major justification for the spend on AWTs. https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/101002951/allweather-racing-track-promised-by-winston-peters Meetings that were cancelled due to wet weather in and near those regions could be transferred to an all-weather track,

I watched some races at Te Rapa and Trentham yesterday. When the camera panned over the grandstands you would have thought we were racing in covid times, hardly a soul to be seen. It made me think Riccarton is propably right not wanting a public grandstand. Compare that to the massive crowds at Ipswich yesterday, a city with a similar population to Hamilton and Wgtn. We really have lost our way, and it is the big city tracks that have lost their way the most. As Reefton says, the very tracks that are getting all the money poured into them. Any other industry would consolidate outside of the loss leading white elephants.

I initially thought you were saying my argument was illogical, but I see you mean their usefulness for preventing abandoned meetings is illogical, and I agree totally. Sadly, we all know that was one of the big justifications when they were first promoted. Still, at least it won't be the first, or last, time NZTR get things wrong.

I'm sure it is a great surface, as it should be for $15m, and no one would argue it's not a nice thing to have. The trouble comes when it is promoted as the answer to all of racing's problems and funded at the expense of other tracks and facilities that many consider just as important. I'm still waiting for the AWTs to prevent the first abandoned meeting: that was their big selling point by Winston.

I was there for Lord Module's Allan Matson. World record at the time wasn't it? Just look at the depth in that field. When would be the last time we saw a field with that much depth. Superior Chance was a free legged pacer wasn't he? Something else I don't think we see any more. A pity we no longer use the historical names for some of the long established races. My own favourite horse of that era was Locarno; a very flashy animal. We were lucky to be at Addington in the late 70s and 80s. No Response's Interdominion, Scotch Tar racing against the pacers. Matai Dreamer a briliant horse we probably never saw the best of. You do wonder where it all went wrong.

Surely any well run industry body is going to be big enough to stand up and say "look, we got that one wrong." Especially in the face of overwheming evidence. Even Cindy eventually said 'look, we got that one wrong" when it came to Potu.

I'm struggling to think of an NZTR decision over recent years that has been reversed after widespread opposition from industry participants. I'm sure there must have been something, but nothing springs to mind. I'm sure even NZTR wouldn't be so blinkered and bloody minded in their decison making that they won't see the contrasting support for Timaru and Riccarton this week and be big enough to come out and say perhaps we got that one wrong. Even Mills surely will admit that they need to readdress the allocation of dates given experiences to date.

I just had a quick check of upcoming programmes and I see there is no grass track "industry" meeting in Canterbury right through August and September. It's a funny old world isn't it? So "Saturday" horses have to perform on the grass whereas lower tier horses have to use the AWT. If you are a trainer with a really promising maiden who hates the AWT what do you do? You do have to feel sorry for trainers in Canterbury trying to place a horse. I suppose since none of them seem to complain they must be reasonably happy.

I see they have just appointed a new COO so I imagine he will be all over this sort of thing and they will respond accordingly.

Interesting to note only 7 smallish fields with no ballots at Riccarton this week, compared to 9 good fields with 8 ballots who couldn't get a start on a heavy track at Timaru last Sunday. Timaru really should have had 10 races with more intelligent programming. I would suggest there are quite a few lessons to be learnt from this, which are probably relevant to the northern AWTs as well. Not all horses are suitable for the AWT, but of course we always knew that. Many winter horses are actually waiting for wet tracks. Timaru is much more centrally located to attract horses from Otago and Southland as well as Canterbury. It will be essential going forward that winter horses have a grass track low key option at least every couple of weeks, ideally centrally located. Hopefully NZTR do respond to the lessons they have learnt so far when allocating dates and venues for next season. There may even need to be some changes made to allocated dates.

I imagine that the Auckland clubs will probably move their's to $17,000 now anyhow as the first $14,000 is being fully funded.

I was pleased to see Polly Grey scratched yesterday, she had no chance on that track. She has been a bit unlucky on her trips to Brisbane to strike good tracks at just the wrong time, still she has benefited from those wet Sydney tracks for the last 16 or 17 weeks.

There will be when the new Group 1 stakes start.

Lots of interesting stuff there. I wonder how many of the bright sparks that came up with the plan are still involved in the industry. I see the Cambridge synthetic will no longer be used for racing in 6 or 7 years and Cambridge will have moved to a new venue. Banks Pen I see will have moved to Ashburton and Marlborough will probably be the club that races furtherest away from its home town. I wonder if they assess progress each year and give themselves a rating as to how successful they have been so far, I imagine they do. I wonder what the last rating they gave themselves regarding success and progress was?

Not sure where you got those figures from. Open races dropped from $40,000 to $35,000 for the winter months. Most the other grades have been at $30,000 for most of the season.

You only have to look at the winners of the multi million dollar Derbies and Oaks during the three years of Winston's earlier beneficence to see that massive stakes boosts achieve nothing long term. Purely from memory, I don't think any of the Derby or Oaks winners went on to achieve anything. I think several of the Oaks winners were sold overseas straight afterwards.

The problem is that no one has ever figured out that we need to find our level and discover what works best for our racing industry. Instead they just keep firing money into group 1 races thinking we can compete with Australia.

I have partly got over being speechless, but it is all pointless really isn't it. Just when I was thinking we had to reduce the numbers of group races dramatically, as they were becoming an embarrassment, here they go increasing group ones to $300,000. At least they didn't fire another $1m or so into the derby, oaks and 1,000 and 2,000 Guineas. How many 2 or 3 win horses do they think will hang around in NZ because they can race for $70,000 ($40,000 odd the winner) a couple of times a year when they can race for $140,000 every week in Aussie? Imagine what that Otaki group 1 meeting will look like with a $300,000 race and the rest small fields for $30,000, all on a bush track. Look at this weekend. 11 noms for the $25,000 Waimate Cup, 5 noms at Trentham for $35,000, and just yesterday 4 starters for $35,000 at Hastings. To my mind the whole allocation of stakes money is totally wrong. The latest announcements will make it worse.

I can't help thinking that about 30 years ago if the chairman of NZTR, or the equivalent, had a job on the side that was somewhat distasteful and brought the racing industry into disrepute there would be discussions on high from the power brokers and they would decide he had to go. It's hard to believe no one of influence has suggested this isn't a good look.

Don't come on here talking common sense Joe, you ruin the whole look of the place.

I'm actually speechless. No point even bothering really.

Does anyone else find it somewhat surreal that the person who overseas the rabble that is the warriors, basically a laughing stock, is considered totally suitable to run NZTR?