the galah

Is anything?. But its the type of thing punters talk about. I don't have the nz figures but i can look up the tabcorp figures and generally the pattern is exactly the same for the nz pools as the tabcorp pools. In other words the higher turnover races are the same. So that race i have been talking about,the win pool turnover came in 5th in the tote win pools,if you compare it to the 18 races held at addington and aucklandi last friday. In fact when compared to auckland the win pool in the last race at cambridge was greater than all but 1 of the 8 races at auckland. So tote pools reflect punter participation which reflect the number of people watching the race. In other words theres more people watching the low stake,1 win battlers that you describe them as than the races you may prefer to watch at auckland. Each to their own. And obviously I was supporting my opinion with stats and pointing out the 0 from close to 60 winning strike rate for horses waiting 3 back the fence at cambridge,until getting a clear run at the passing lane, which was the reason you disagreed with me,may indicate you are wrong.. And no,i don't agree horses coming 5 wide lose 6 lengths either. But yes,i agree that i've made my point enough now.. also;i hadn't expected anyone to disagree with me as i had thought i was just pointing out the obvious,but hey that assumption of mine turned out to be a bit off. The continuation of the thread seems to be losing a bit of context of the woman concerned driving. Its only the 1 drive and she had plenty of good ones. Infact she has an extremely good strike rate for someone just starting out .

We have been talking about a horse that chose to go 3 back the markers at the 400m and gave up the perfect uninterrupted drag into the race. But as to your huge advantage thoughts. We aren't talking the leader or trail horse,but 3 back the markers. Like i said earlier,i went back over the last few meetings to see if it does favour that position as you suggest.I've even gone back a bit further for you. So how many winners came from that position in the last 7 meeting held on that track? 1 is the answer and that horse was off the markers before they turned for home as the first 3 on the markers had gone clear. So out of close to the last 60 races run at cambridge,0 have won by waiting to the passing lane to get a gap. One night there was 4 or 5 that got tyhe gap as soon as they hit the passing lane,which is unusual at cambridge,and they managed to place but as i mentioned earlier it was mostly you had a less than 1 in 6 chance of paying a dividend. And of course thats not factoring in momentum and race pattern,as was applicable in the race concerned.

heck,that sounds a real ordeal.We had wondered where you went to. It must have been really difficult for you to get your head around having to go through that,let alone the physical discomfort and pain. You have youth on your side so hoping you fully recover and heal quick. from the words that you use in your posts,i also hope your being used as a mentor in some sort of way,whether it be within or outside harness racing. Anyway, thanks for the update and hope you achieve your goal of 100 winners next year.

Good points again. Looking at the wording i used in my first post ,your probably right there as well. On a different note. I've wondered why A harrison hasn't been driving. i know its a difficult sport to make much of a living from,but A harrison seems to have gone missing from the driving ranks for some reason. She has driven close to 100 wins as a junior. Does she still work in the industry?

it all seems to depend on the track doesn't it.. Somes tracks like ashburon have the passing lane about 250m before the finish and enough room for a couple of horses. addington seems to be about 220m and cambrige less than 200m. then you have tracks like manawatu with an even shorter run to the finish. Very few at manawatu seem to make much ground on the markers in the straight. grass tracks like oamaru have a longer run to the finish after the passing lane starts and there seems a track bias favoring those on the fence there also. The further from the finish a passing lane starts the better 3 back the fence is as a position. Also its obviously all about forward momentum. If the horses on the markers are going forward then it makes sense to save ground if you can,but if they aren't and are losing moentum compared with the rest,then don't go on the markers.

Also i would point out, its not accurate to say 3 back the markers at the end of the back straight at cambridge, is a position winners sometimes come from. In the last 20 races at cambridge,the horse 3 back the markers with 500m or less to run, has placed 2nd twice and 3rd twice.. 3 of those 4 placings occurred in races where the horses 1,2 and 3 back were 1st,second and 3rd turning for home. Only 1 horse who placed, passed more than 1 horse from that position at the top of the straight. In the last 5 meetings at cambridge,there was only 1 winner come friom 3 back the markers and that again was in a race where the first 2 on the markers had gone clear so the horse concerned had come off the markers prior to the start of the straight.

Joe casual would have an opinion. i'm no joe big punter,but my $20 still counts as much as the next guys. The races last night were not good betting races. I only liked slainte in the trot,which i never backed because it was the plunge horse. The other winner i thought that stood out was the horse in question. And if ever there was a race run to suit a horse coming from tha back on the outside,that was it. But hey,it wasn't a major loss for me. i know of others who had more on it and they were disappointed too but puntings like that. . so any race can be a race for backing a winner. Its just up to the punter.. Anyway how i feel about a bet is nothing to with the amount bet. I copuld lose hundreds on a horse and just turn the page to the next and not give it another thought. Whereas if i lose $5 on something i think may be dodgy,then i feel taken for a bit of a ride. As to the stipes.Your possibly right to a degree. some punters read the stipes report all the time,some never and some when they see a drive last night. Without doubt i think the stipes should have questionesd the trainer and driver. Without doubt that would have gone somwe way to punters thinking that at least their interests were being protected. One thing i definetly believe is the areas where harness racing gets the most participants and the most punter participation,they are the areas that punters have the most confidence in the oversight of the stipes provide. In other words,in my opinion,auckland is a weak area for harness racing and that equates to the level of stipendiary oversight. Canterbury is strong and that is reflected in thorough oversight. Turned out,with the benefit of hindsight,you were right on this occassion about that. But hey ,i still rate her becuase as i say,horses seem to run for her..

Thats your opinion. Its not the opinion of someone who just happened to email me this morning saying it was the worst they had seen in a very long time. Hey personally i'm sure there have been worse,but for me i can't think of one that bad in the last 12 months. we all have an opinion based on what we see .They are just opinions.

harrison,you've summed it up very well. But i believe you havent placed enough importance to the perception of the punter. I accept,after reading your post,the horse and driver were there with the intent to win,which is the main thing. I do however think that for someone watching in say australia or say someone in nz who had only a casual interest in harness racing and did not realise the driver had only had 35 career drives,the perception would be one of doubt around intent. like i say, i think you have put your points well,i just wouldn't agree when you say it was a split second decision or that its hard to see which horses are doing what.If it was a split second decision,why wasn't she assessing how the race had panned out in the first 1400m before that split second decision.And there was only 6 others in the race after all and a thinking driver would have tactically assessed who was where doing what. But yes that will come with more experience and learning the skills required. Shes already shown horses do seem to run for her so she is lucky in that she has a natural talent. As to you saying.. I would assume that the trainer,employer or a mentor would go over the race afterwards and discuss her drive and point out tactical errors made. So i would point out,you said she is likely to make more mistakes, because someone she doesn't know has commented on her drive. so using that very same logic, the trainer,who points out the same tactical errors,who she has more reason to impress or value,must also by doing so,make her make more mistakes. so my point there is,on the scale of things,the argument that you make about social media comments is to me more an over emphasising of the importance of what is said on social media. As to whether i would like people making public comments,I can give an informed answer to that.I believe i can assess when something is warranted and when it is not,and i can tell when someone is making a personal attack and when they are just playing the ball.Like i say,this topic should be viewed with perspective along with judging peoples motives. In this case,the motive of the original post was to point out the drive,not the drivers ability was not to the standard a punter would expect.

sometimes i watch races and just see it different from others i suppose. although as i said,for tonights drive i spoke to 2 other people before posting. One said the drive was the worst case of a horse being pulled they had seen for a while,the other said,no it was most likely incompetence at the high level. personally,i wasn't sure myself which one it was.One was definitely applicable,whatever it was.I know everyone makes mistakes,especially those early in their career. But i am surprised at your comments. in my opinion i can't see how giving up a clear run on the 3 wide train that is progressing quickly and instead taking the option of going 3 back the fence behind horses that are stoppingwith 250m to run, is an option that could possibly be viable even one time out of ten let alone 9 times out of ten. Tactics like that aren't split second decisions either. The stipe report on the race is farcical to me.It didn't even ask the question.Mind you,thats what i expected. At the end of the day there were only probably several hundred people focusing on that drive. It was not like it was a horse in a race being watched by big numbers i suppose. Also,i note that people don't comment much on what happens in races much anymore on this site. Unless it is all positive. I didn't used to be like that. Very few threads at all recently. Its as if people would rather not go there. I seem the only one these days who reflects on both sides of the coin. I had always thought what happens in the the actual races,are the main part of the harness racing.

what do people think of the k denifistova drive on delightful chic in the last. I'm unsure whether the tactics used in the last 400m were just really really stupid,or as suggested to me by a couple of people who watched it,the horse was deliberately run into a pocket so as not to win.Maybe a junior driver race next week. who knows. Either way,surely its reasonable for punters to expect better,whatever the reason.

Often you read reports or media segments on things like that and they downplay just how significant they actually are for those involved. As to the horse iron heart,i would bet my last $ that its body will always bear the scars. If its grazed its knees, which it looked like it would have,it will forever have swelling around its knees. It may start off not too bad but as it ages its almost a given that it will get significant swelling there.

J dickie showed a lot of common sense standing himself down after the fall in my opinion.Personally i think there should be a mandatory stand down of an hour or so for drivers in incidents like that. I see the story on hrnz said of the telfer horses to fall,iron heart was the worse effected but then it said none were seriously hurt. Given its been reported b butcher suffered a concussion,its also a surprising the stipes report doesn't say that he has been stood down until a certain datehe just says a medical clearnacewill be required. Isn't there a mandatory stand down like other sports have for someonewho has a concussion?Thats unclear from the stipes report.

these days theres absolutely no point in backing on the tote if you see a top 2 favorite horse paying 50 cents or more on the tote in the minute or two before tote close. Just face reality and realise the tote odds virtually every time will end up reflecting,within 50cents the win dividends for the ff. It happens in every race. today the only 2 favorites in the first 8 races,not to be end up similar to the tote,were a couple of roughies backed in who ended up on ff paying a couple of $ more at the end.I guess the bookies didn't need to put that much on those couple to still make them a winning result for them. Obviousuly the tab have a system where they off load some of their ff hold into the tote pools,after the race starts so as to limit any potential losses,(potentially even making them winning results). If you think about it,if you happen to select a win mover who has dropped into first or second favorite,don't realistically waste your mioney and have a bet. Because in the long run you will only lose as at the closing tote or ff odds,you will not be getting realistic value for the horses chances. In a way ,by the tab doing that,they really are just snuffing out a lot of punter participation in their tote pools. And if you are actually backing a roughie that hasn't had any ff support near tote close,your best to wait until the last couple of minutes as thats when the bookies will push out the odds. so the moral of the story is its easy to see why tote pools and punter participation will continue to decline .

Its in the 2023 annual tab report under marketing rebate.in notes to the financial statements.

on a different tangent i see Tab nz pay entain a marketing rebate of $25 million if entain spend over $50 million on marketing in the first 3 years.things like bonus bets are marketing. Is that not just a way of saying they got more money up front from entain,but in reality they give that part back spread over the following 25 years. I see when entain took over they got about $850,000 in jackpots ,i assume from pools not struck and carried over. Wasn't the punter being shafted there.How come they were holding that much in the first place.

no,has it changed much since they took it over? And what do you think about the entain value?

Just looking at the above and the value of their shares have both halved since september 2023. Entain from 1158.50 to 648.20 and tabcorp from $1.10 to 46 cents yesterday. I wonder if there are any punters out there with the overseas shares. Who knows. Entain last year posted a loss of 936 million pounds,but hey they are going a bit better this year.Expecting just a small loss apparently. Uk and ireland wagering down,australia flat but expansion into good old brazil seeing significant increases. Tabcorp not much better with a loss of $1.367 billion(719 million pounds),although that seemed mostly because they revalued their existing assets. Wagering was down 5% for them. whats all that mean,well probably not much to the regular nz punter.

rreally. Du val was one of aucklands best known large scale residential property developers The ATC sold to the chinese who i had thought were going to use the land for a large scale residential property development. were you thinking they were going to turn it into one big market garden?

Thats assuming the price would have gone up in the last couple of years. Property supposed to have gone down instead. Du val the most recent example of how tricky a business property development can be in auckland.

Maybe. But you could also think that the ATC would have made a statement to that effect earlier so as to allay fears. Aren't penalty clauses a bit of a grey area. A prominent nz barrister specialising in commercial contracts on his website says''In general a clause that can be classified as a penalty is regarded as being unenforceable. Conversly a clause that represents a genuine liquidated damages clause is enforceable". Apparently it may come down to whether the contract provided a genuine pre estimate on the happening of a certain event or breach. if it did it may become enforceable. i'm no expert in commercial law but i suppose it depends on the type of agreement and whats in it. Its obviously a different kettle of fish than the original disastrous development. Didn't the ATC have sunset clauses for the apartments and could have saved themselves millions and millions but chose not to enforce them when the delays in construction happened,with people who had pre bought apartments off them.. Didn't they say it was the ATC'S leadership at the time who knowingly contributed to the financial ruin of the atc when there was a way to reduce the catastrophe. Thats what the only investigative journalist in the north,the lincoln farms man i think wrote one time. Anyway, "The interest rates have been brutal and are really cutting into how much money we will be left with." a quote from jamie mackinnon in last months guerin article. No mention of compensation for late payment in that article.

i see peter profit has a written a story today that the inside mail he's been given is the chinese property developer won't be paying the $90 million expected on time,in november. Sometimes his inside mail turns out to be wrong and i'm not a subscriber and only read his headlines,but the headline was" is the auckland trotting club stepping closer to the abyss." mick guerin wrote an article last month saying the ATC was paying $115,000 a week just in interest,so every month they wait they have about a half a million $ less to spend on their new training establishment. It already seems obvious the only way they will get a new training establishment is if HRNZ provide the extra funds. So,while who knows if peter profits information will turn put to be correct,but if he is.. Well,given HRNZ is currently throwing money at upper north island racing,is it not a given that if there is a delay in payment to the aucklnad club, it will be a given that even more funds will have to be diverted from south island clubs,owners,breeders,trainers,drivers. why is it they always say its a chinese property developer. Do they not file returns. The company that proceses the money,mount hope limited seems to be nz run with nz shareholders. The whole thing from the lack of media interest as to exactly who and how well funded the purchasers are,HRNZ's plans or lack thereof as relates to the ATC,the lack of transparency and leadership around how auckland issues will impact drag on the whole sports future,or morte precisely lack thereof. Lets hope peter profits inside mail is wrong as for anyone in the south island ,HRNZ has already seemingly attached itself,and every stakeholder in nz with them, to a sinking ship which may be going down a lot quicker than everyone thinks.

he wrote a nice story on a regular redcliffe patron a month ago. "Rest in peace thelma copeland". The redcliffe club named a race after her this month. That story just an illustration of how ranger is able to put into words and paint a picture of harness racing intertwining with every day peoples lives. People who provide the industry with content like that are few and far between.And their importance seeminngly undervalued in some quarters. Rangers connection to grass roots harness enthusiasts is a natural and instinctive thing ,sort of similar to nigel armstrong but in a different form.So few of those media type left anywhere so the industry should be promoting as much exposure as they can from them,while they can.

i like your stories like the redcliffe one. Redcliffe has their very own harness reporter ,duane ranger,father of leading auckland junior monika. duane ranger has developed into perhaps the best media harness story teller in australasia in my opinion. I know we have barrry lichter who is very good,but ranger seems to have free range of what and how long his articles are and by the end of reading them, you feel like you know the person they are talking about and some of their lifes journey. his latest couple of articles are about a trainer who had a recent redcliffe winner and who's first brush with harness racing was when his father used to work the door at harold park. Every time hondo gratten won tony turnbull would tip his father and it helped his family. The other m,ost recent article was about 2 mates who are redcliffe regulars who are going through on going cancer treatment and how they appreciate harness racing. I knew duane ranger earlier in life and used to play a little sport with him occasionally and he was always a great guy and has turned into a great story teller.Just keeps getting better. duane ranger harness racing is what you google to read his stories. He often has stories on ex new zealanders. phill keats was a recent one from memory.He was a junior driver who worked for dick prendegast back in the days along with roy purdon,john lischner and paul hadfield.

interesting concept.Good to see new ideas. Looking at it,it seems to be another form of the sires stakes type model.Just have to be queensland bred to be eligable. in nz, HRNZ are funding the selective group that race in the sires stakes series with a reported $600,000 this coming season. I had thought the increased funding was because the sires stakes weren't getting enough enrolments to put on the higher stakes,but who knows because hrnz like throwing money at the top end horses anyway. looking at how it works fro queensland,you have owners paying a registration fee of $700 for 2yo,$950 for 3yo,$1200 for 4 year old. But they do that a year or two before. has a few conditions and you don't get anything if your horse wins at aged 6 or over. so it seems the point of the scheme is encourage people to support horses bred in queensland only. hopefully it works for them,but nz doesn't have several states like australia. wouldn't it just be easier for hrnz to pay a higher winning stake to the owners of a horse at its first win each season. For nz i think it makes more sense to just redirect the extra funding they have recently handed out,which only a few benefit from,and instead spread the funding so many will benefit from. Even if its just for every horses first win,whatever the age.Just common sense i think to get the most positive impact.But we all know thats not how HRNZ thinks.