With A Dream

Not really surprised as not a lot of big races for 4 year old mares in NZ. Although they have a habit with her of announcing one thing and then doing the opposite. Must be more opportunity for big money in the USA though if she stays sound.

With Bettors Delight now 20 years old and Art Major seems to have been around forever, I am wondering who is going to step up and take their place. Sweet Lou will get his chance having had a good book so far. Not sure if Auckland Reactor is doing the job. Apart from Chase Auckland there hasn’t been many other smart ones. A rock n roll Dance could still come through.

Would be interested to know what stable you are referring to Hunter, if u are at liberty to say

Brodie is right here, In the 70's two year old racing began in the latter part of the cup meeting. I remember a horse called Fancy Fred who won his first start in November. In the following January he won a 2 year old race by 15 lengths. Des Grice had some nice two year olds around that time also.

One change I think would boost turnover and interest is to turn pick 6 into pick 8. The idea of pick 6 is to create jackpots but it too often gets struck every week or every few weeks, meaning we never get a big jackpot pool. We should have pick 8's terminating at 1mil, though I doubt even they would jackpot enough times to reach that.

If Brodie is as successful as he says then lifting restrictions on him would likely decrease stakes lol. I think turnover needs to increase, but it must come from overseas as our market is too small.

Rather than discussing how stakes are distributed I would like to see a good discussion on how to increase the size of the pie so all stakes could rise significantly.

And remember, this season Allstars didn’t win the NZ Derby or 3year old Colts Jewels , races they have dominated in the last decade.

Not sure I agree Brodie. All stars is a big, time consuming business and MP isn’t getting any younger. The time is coming when they will want to take life a bit easier and relieve themselves of major logistical management. I think we will see other trainers step up in the next few years.

Comparing stakes with 20 years ago makes depressing reading. The question is what can be done to reverse the trend. Relying on betting turnover and sponsorship and on course income from catering will never fix the problem. Most sports with huge prize money, including NSW racing, seem to derive their income from selling broadcasting rights. I am not sure exactly how it works but I imagine this scenario, NSW racing sell broadcasting rights to a sports broadcaster in China. They might have 50 million subscribers. 1 million of them are interested in racing and pay $4.00 per week to see the races live on their tv. There is 200 million revenue. The broadcaster pays NSW racing 100 mil and keeps 100 mil for themselves. These are made up figures of course but it must work something like that. For this to work of course there needs to be a demand to see the product world wide.

Dexter finished 3rd in his first race. ChristenMe was scratched from the same race

Brilliant now or never. Perhaps we should give a reward to the first person to fall off the stand.

Hats off to those brave souls in the photo risking near certain death to have their photo taken with their horse lol. In 40 years of following racing I have never heard of anyone being injured having their photo taken in the birdcage. Talk about solving a problem that doesn't exist. More chance being injured driving to the race meeting

It's Highland Fling for me too. He time trialed in 1.57.8 in the late 40's which I think may have been not far outside the world record at the time.

Being a hobby trainer he probably does it for the love of the sport. Without people like him harness racing would be all the poorer

DefinitelyBrodie. All stars responsible for a race earlier this season with the most blatantly choreographed team driving I have ever seen on a race track in 40 years.

Two for two in the training ranks now. He is on fire. I imagine he will be creating interest from owners

Great effort indeed. Will be interesting to see how his career progresses from here. Will he concentrate on freelance driving or will he get into the training side of things?

Dead right LongOwner, There is no financial incentive to race a horse. Owners only do it for the fun and the hope to be associated with a good horse one day. Start fiddling with the fun aspect and you risk owners deserting the sport altogether. Think again Addington,, you are playing with fire.

I’m no expert on this but I assume the rights to broadcast NSW gallops is in high demand Are they broadcasting their races all over the world? Would be interested to hear from anyone who knows more about digital media rights

Interesting also that in spite of a windfall after selling Harold Park, harness stakes are only a fraction of thoroughbred stakes in NSW.

Amazing money for thoroughbreds in NSW. I don’t think it will make much difference to Harness in NZ as the stakes over there have been far superior for years. To make Harness Racing financially attractive here stakes would need to quadruple for Ratings races and double for group races. But I don’t see how we will ever achieve the income streams needed to achieve that.

McGrath has proven to be a great selector of yearlings over the years, but hasn’t had the owners to compete with Purdon. Did pay a bit for Artstanding last year but he may not work out to be his Best Buy. Good luck to him with those 2 year olds. Would be great to see someone else get the top filly & colt for a change

I hope so Hunter. Have you heard of some other trainer or trainers having 2 year old that are pretty smart?

It has gone very quiet over there these days. Not many posting and not many new topics.