the galah

the fine was related to his use of the whip. so had nothing to do with whether he was clever or not tactically. Also,i just had a look at his drive the level of the fine and the suspension borders on the ridiculous to me. I think the same about the L mccarthy drive in the cup as well.. Again,just so over the top for what they actually did.

k cameron earned an easy $3500 last night in the nz trotting derby. sometimes you see horses lining up in those races that have no chance,just to get the starting money. Horses that do that are often given mentally and physically draining runs and you wonder why they bother. But kyle cameron seemed to have it sussed. He went 400m ,not sure why he restrained his horse,but it seemd to resent it a wee bit and galloped and the horse settled about 40m behind the field. So cameron completed a lap,eased it down and pulled it up. As he came off the track i guess he was thinking,i wish i could earn $3500 that easy every week. Talking about drives. the last couple of weeks have seen some very aggressive driving. It must be hard on some horses to be driven that way,but it makes for exciting racing. personally i think the 2 best drivers were the ricky may drive on spirit downunder and the mark purdon drive on arafura last night. may could have gone with john dunn on scrunch when he applied the prssure so far from home,but instead he realised the finsihing post was at the end of the straight and he nursed his horse and it responded really well for him when scrunch hit the wall with 200m to go. Actually,it was no surprise scrunch got beaten last night as he was backing up on such a hard run.Thats the thing about betting. On recent racing scrunch would have won last nights race easy,but when they have been driven so har just a week before you know it will take a toll,you just don't know how much. The arafura drive. Mark purdon used his cunningness to recognise they had gone too hard early,yet if he made a mid race move he would have gone too soon.So he waited,knowing he was positioned to capitalise onthe others up front,who had gone too soon,getting tired. i didn't back either of them myself,but i thought they were the 2 best drives of the last couple of weeks.

i agree with what you say. cambridge,auckland,and southland can't continue in their current form . They need restructuring,whether it be their racing calendar or their venues.The betting product they often provide is simply not worth having a bet on.. its a total mystery why nz administrators think running more and more meetings at a loss ,is good for the industry long term.It makes no sense. the number that run at grass tracks will decline in the future. it a given that will happen. The declining numbers being bred will flow through in years to come as will the aging trainers disappearing and the reducing number of licence holders. The focus of hrnz has not been on this one area which generates a profit and the industry is certain to pay the price for losing the confidence of those who particpated at the likes of grass tracks. your right about the same old horses that go around in southland .Some of those horses just get sick of racing or they are lined up when their manners would say no,but they do it anyway. the only thing working in new zealaands favour is australian harness racing ,especially victoria,are going so poor they dont import as many new zealand horses. lowering the qualifying times would only work if they had a better handicapper/race programmer who catered for all levels.They don't so that won't help.And thats also partly because people realise its too costly to keep horses that don't earn money. perople breeding more? Thats never going to happen. Do people realise just how many mares people have got rid of in recent years. No one wants them and people who breed the bread and butter horses have felt left behind by current policy makers.. Its so sad. but thats the reality. the answer to fixing nz harness racing and making it sustainable,i believe is, replacing current administrators with new administrators who look 5-10 years ahead and who recognise the importance of the profit making sectors of the industry. Thats where it must start

fair enough to have that opinion, but the difference was this year the cup carnival had several really high quality australian horses including the young trotters. They dominated cup week like never before,winning the main pacing races,the main trotting races,the 2 and 3 year old trotting races. Everything they started in during cup week they won.The only ones they didn't dominate was the 2 and 3 year old pacing races,as they had no australian trained horses in them.. take out those aussies,and this year was not any better horse flesh than any other year. I've been around long enough to hear people say,year after year.best racing ever. And why did they come here more this year,because the stake money.Australia is in decline,so they come here to cherry pick while nz has administrators that throw millions at the high end races.And we all know that can't last. Take a horse like gus.He had been going great in australia for the last 3 years. But do you know what.He is the best in queensland and had won 16 of his 42 starts over there ,in the last 3 years. But he can earn more than double his lifetime earnings in just 2 start here.

yes,there was some good racing last night,but you have to be kidding if you think nz harness racing is going strong. Every indicator,whether it be mares being bred,licenceholder numbers,public attendance on course ,turnover numbers,the number of small fiields we are seeing,etc,etc. Every single indicator shows nz harness racing is the opposite of going strong. then as to the nz horses performances. Have you ever seen the level, of dominance by the australians over the new zealand horses before? the reason i point this out is because you have done exactly what the powers that be and the media do and want you to do. That is judge nz harness racings state of health ,on the one off nz cup meeting and the likely good crowd numbers (even if they are also in decline from previous years) at some of the country grass track meetings over the next couple of months,as long as the weather is nice,. the positivity that happens over cup week and around xmas ,happens every year. But even those indicators appear to be going in the wrong direction. So we get these,racing is going strong comments every year around this time,then its back to reality and for the remaining 9 months of the year the talk of industry decline continues. so why is it,unrealistic comments about the state of the industry ,are damaging to the industry as a whole. Well,its because,to those in charge such comments justify their poor decision making and perpetuates the poor decision making.

having a musician on like the one last night ,was cetainly different,but i found it entertaining in a positive way. Obviously mitch james is a well known musician,but these blokes should go with whats natural for them even if its outside the norm for the average trackside viewer,as being themselves is what makes them entertaining. is what they do a suitable look for the trackside channel. well for me i would say ,definitely,yes. what i like about them is ,when they're being themselves,they seem really genuine happy people who enjoy having a play on the punt and taking those who invest in their betting pools along for the ride.. I don't think people should focus too much on whether they win or lose or how much they bet at a time,as that doesn't seem to be the point,the point is they are there to have this good time and from entains perspective ,show the general public that you can put $10 in a betting pool,have a nights entertainent, as well as follow bets in every race. thats what it used to be like when you went to the races 25 years ago. The people serious about the sport like those who watch the races on a thursday night would be there, but also lots of people who went along to the races to have a good time and not focus much on whether they won or lost on the punt,were there. You want the latter to give the sport a boost...

i'm not sure whether you have got the point i've been making going by your post. They got good fields in the middle of the southland winter by pumping up the stakes. So if you have no problem with them doing that as it appears,then the obvious solution to the numbers on the latest sunday and wednesday meetings,would have been to pump up the stake for them,,because that would have guaranteed them better numbers. Whether it be the middle of winter factor ,or the 4 day back up factor,both can be neutralised by artificial manipulation via increased stakes.Problem solved. Now i'm saying hrnz will go broke doing that,but if people who think the southern surge was good,then why aren't they presenting a consistent argument, instead of saying,look at the poor numbers yesterday?

the southern surge races in southland over winter was just yet another example of HRNZ throwing money at a problem and artificially getting a short term solution through the injection of money in the form of higher stakes. Theres nothing organic about hrnz's solutions,they are all artificial and once the money goes the problems will still exist and then what.Its just dumb thinking in my opinion. And when hrnz got criticism for their poilicies of prioritising funding auckland, 2 year old bonuses and high end stakes.What was their answer.It was to placate the criticism by using more of hrnz funds to over subsidise races like the southern surge or the stallions under $5000, $60,000 day at ashburton. I mean,how is going from overspending to support the big players and the elite horses,to overspending at both ends ,how does that make any sense.Again,it just seems such a dumb strategy long term as they will just run out of money quicker. You say southland need to race 12 months of the year and use the success of the southern surge to support that thinking.All it proved was everyone is out for themselves in the short term and they all want their piece of the gravy train before it runs out and that they are willing to give up their principled criticism for just a few extra short term $. And mikeynz. Your the bloke who points out the unfortunate number of 6 horse fields, yet here you are saying you support a policy for southland that has contributed to 6 horse fields. I mean,your comments are contradictory.

the quality of the betting prioduct has never been worse in the history of harnesss racing in new zealnad. No one could argue otherwise. Southalnd fields are shocking betting races these day. today 3 x 6 horse fields and 2 x 7 horse fields. nearly every race has a hot favorite,well under the odds.. the form is often inconsistent due to the horses being over raced. Southland should not have as many meetings as they do. They should be closed down over winter. But the people running the industry seem to have no idea just how much they are turning off punters with the very poor quality betting fields. As you say,cambridge has 1x 5 horse and 2x 6 horse races tomorrow. Auckland has a couple of 6 horse races. addington has 1. if they are going to run these small filed races,they should not be paying the lavel of stakemoney they are in them.You can't keep running things at a loss like they are. for these races. The fools that said the 2 year old bonuses would get more horses racing,they been proven well and truly wrong. The people who said you would get more horses running in the age group races if they changed the season to 31 december,they were very obviously wrong. the clever people in charge show time and again how they are far from smart.And the worst thing is,that was all pretty obvious from the start. Then they have been paying all these big stakes out in top end races ,only to see the aussies win all the big races. If you look at the stakes won,you would see 7 or 8 aussie horses can start here 2 or 3 times,thats the equilvalent of the total number of starters you would get in 2 races run in nz each year,yet they win 10% of the total stake money paid out in nz harness racing each year. So they have about 2800 races run in nz each year and you can have that minute number of aussies winning all that money,because the administrators have top end loaded the stake money. people can ramble on about how good racing in cup week was. No one is denying it wasn't. But when will people wake up and see cup and show day are not even 1% of the nz racing product. The other 99% is where it matters as to the state of harness racing. as an aside,i haven't seen the hrnz website ramble on about the betting figures or the numbers that attended,like we know they would have,had they been good.Silence tells a story of its own,you just have to listen for it. all that goes on in nz harness racing doesn't effect me much,i just observe whats going on,but its so sad that the people running the show have degraded the product to the extent they have. i can see why hrnz tried the odd different strategy,but when they are failing,why do they keep on with the doomed strategies.Like running extra race meetings in the areas of nz which were already struggling for numbers,how can anyone not think that was just so dumb. From a betting perspective,the answer to me is very clear. Punters who bet on south island harness racing, should be redirecting their time to south island gallops.At least they ahve good size fields and there isn't the dominant favorites in every race that you get in so many of the the harness races.

I hope for tabmans sake he is someone different. But after reading the obituary on the hrnz website he just sounds so familiar to the person we discuss things with on this website. the similarities seem rather long. for example he always such a strong defender of the ATC,like yourself gammalite. But it was more than that,i got the feeling he had real personal relationships with people from that club and he did say a few times he was a regular there on racenights.The thing is,when it came to the ATC,even though he was pro the atc,he never disputed any argument we made based around their financial postion. And this mr williams was an accountant. One time i drifted off in some posts i made on the topic of air quality. i referred to invercargill,timaru and nelson as having poor air quality and how it was reflected in stats relating to increased lung and heart issues for people from those areas. He had replied that i seemed to know what i was talking about as far as that went and mentioned he had lived in a couple of those areas and mentioned he had coached sport,inferring it was nelson. In his discussions with mikeynz he also more than once referred to himself as a former southern man.i hadguessed he was a ex dunedin person, although when we discussed the air thing i wondered,maybe he's worked in invercargill as well. There was no mention of invercargill in mr williams obituary, but he obviously had a long association with otago. Then there was the tone of all his replies.He always tried to be upbeat and positive and that seems similar to what they say about him in the obituary. there was the occasional time when i got under his skin and he wasn't quite his cherry self in how he replied,that was uncommon,but after one of those rare occasions i said to him,well you may not agree with what i'm saying but i could tell a bit about him from how he had worded things,telling him i thought he came across as someone who had wealth and that when it came to his work background,he would have had positions where he was the decision maker.Reading mr williams obituary,his working background sounds famliar to how tabman came across. And from his replies ,you could tell he had a good sense of humour. then their was the reference to him using social media. Like i've said before,when we post on this forum,we all,every now and then,tell people a little bit about ourselves.Its just what we do,even if we use pseudonyms. and for regular contributorslike myself,it feels like you have a connection with some people you don't know,but do know so to speak. And its that connection,through this forum which we enjoy having,most of the time anyway. So,i hope i'm wrong about my assumptions and tab man makes a comeback. Wouldn't that be funny if he did.But if he doesn't i'm sure,even though this is a forum where we don't actually know peoples real names,we still know them well enough to miss them when they stop contributing.And the point of my posts about tabman is,its nice to put a face to a name when they stop posting.

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i was listening to trackside today and they spoke a lot about the life of a man called gary williams who had died and some of the things they said about him sounded similar to what tab man has told us about himself. So i googled gary williams auckland harness racing and it came up with an obituary on hrnz which when i read it,had even read more similarities. if he is the same fella,then i'm sure we will all be saddened. i do hope he makes a reappearance on here,but maybe someone may know whether hes the same man we often debate . its one of those things ,when you contribute to a site like this. You can tell so much about how the person you discuss things with,without actually knowing who they actually are. i had recently been wondering what had happened to the man who called himself walt ,as he discussed he had health issues at one point and we haven't heard anything from him foer a while.i hope hes doing ok.

the aussies i think are just driving a little bit better than the new zealnad drivers. i've always thought taragindi is the best nz 3 year old and i thought today it went the best in that race. They obviously had decided to drive it from behind because it can run around but those tactics back fired and he missed the boat down the back and then ran into interference. All the while the 2 aussies had the uninterrupted run in front. Habibi pat is a father patrick and as i've pointed out many times,they are good young horses but as they age their manners get more and more inconsistent.Obviously thats a generalisation but theres heaps of examples of it. So habibi pat is good one week but not the next and punters should never be surptised whatever happens on any given day.

can you believe that start. 2 horses wiped out a good 50m before the start and no false start. Whats going on with the starter?

the offical stipes report says "a better jackalack broke in the score up and shifted inwatds checking sweet reine,losing fround" You can see that from the video. so the stipes report acknowledges what we saw happened,but thats it. How can the starter not be questioned as to why he did not call a false start. its dumbfounding. The stipes hold the drivers and the horses responsible fot their actions,but the starter can stuff up big time and they just brush over it.Punters who backed sweet reine deserved better all round.