Huey

Very true, but what does need to happen is the opportunity to socialise and attend a race meeting is spread as far and wide as possible, particularly at this time of year. Not gifted to clubs and locations based on some false pretense that they are improving the industry by consolidating it, not to mention know factual info or commercial analysis to justify such poor decision making.

Exactly ! If someone doesn't the industry is a dead duck!

So knock some SI meetings on the head to be sure HB get good fields, that'll work surely?

That's exactly what it is , however they are needed but as you say not in the plan.

People are paid to come up with this, can you believe it? Clueless!

Isnt this the meeting that used to be held at Stratford? Perhaps 2 day carnivals just dont work?

last year this HB meeting had an 8 race programme, biggest field 8 starters add in a 5 & 6 horse field also its not working .

One can understand why it's no longer an option when you look at the utter domination of one stable in the country. D Johnson 1.05 ???

Has this meeting ever been popular from a noms perspective? This sums up NZ racing once again, there are plenty of smaller clubs who could have made better use of the licence from the perspective of doing something positive for Racing, but no come hell or high water the powers that be are determined that centralisation is the only way to go. New Plymouth in the CD doesn't look particularly good tomorrow with only 7 races on the card also. One does have to question the programming at some of these meetings also, I mean how thick do you have to be to not have any idea of the horses available in rating bands.

Surely you dont need to wonder? The Covid bounce has them believing their own hype.

Fools running the industry ,who havent got a clue.

Wasnt Opie Bosson allowed to ride 1 kg over on boxing day?

Strip away the hype & BS from that race & its always quite ordinary,made even worse by the fact you have one stable completely dominate every aspect of it , I find it sad that it belittles our G1 races for 2yos & the 2yo pattern in general.

Well you can't have owners who buy expensive hyped up yearlings at the sales racing for the same money as the rest of us peasants can you?

No. 7 - Titled I think you might have been the underbidder on it .? ;0

Why worry about those cheap horses, there is one in at NP on Tuesday that cost $500k that's racing for a cool $10k (well 5k really but you get my drift)

Where is this American Pharoah colt with more bigger wraps on it than DE xmas presents?

An absolute legend of a sportsman, so happy to see him break the record. I think Tony Lee said his life would make a great movie...couldn't agree more!

He sounds like a lot of others in the sport to be fair who can blame him. One of the few better senior riders riding outside of the cartels , so only go to strengthen their crushing grip on the sport. Only a few more days till they start telling everyone how great shape the industry is in look at the Ellerslie carnival, that usually lasts till about post Karaka sales.

The point I was trying to make was someone who fronts Horse Welfare should have a lot of depth in their knowledge of the racehorse, someone like yourself perhaps. He most certainly does not, as polite as he is and I dont believe he has the indepth knowledge,industry & beyond relationships to appropriately perform to levels they are attempting to make out horse welfare matters to the industry.

Youve lost me abit? But I get you understand that no one there has a clue about racehorses,a big problem obviously.

Yep can't in reality work surely.

The one thing NZTR are too stupid to recognise is : that there is a high correlation between horses performing to the best of their abilities and the level of care or welfare that is undertaken around them. That being one of the main drivers behind racehorses being so well taken care of.

I'm glad others see it for the farce that it is. Of course its only a tick box exercise for NZTR , so its easy to tell everyone you've done something about it but very difficult when you don't know what that is or what needs to be done.

Sounds exciting, hopefully its racking in the winners for ya.