nomates

To be honest Joe the issues we have are wide spread and encompass all sectors of NZ racing , it would be a daunting proposition for anyone with the courage to put their hand up and attempt to start fixing them . Personally i believe we are beyond redemption , especially for the wider industry , aside from the fact that from what i see and hear and read leads me to the conclusion that centralisation north is the only plan . If i'm wrong and repairing the wider industry does became the focus it will be a long hard road .

Maybe they should up their game , in the same article he praises NGH for doing a great job with the apprentices , well in my book i can't see much improvement , Yanagida , Hazazumi and most of the others have gone backwards to where they were in relation to all of O'sullivans points , but as he said it's not just the apprentices . Part of the problem is there isn't enough jockeys , they have no pressure on them , they all make a good living whether they are winning or not because who's going to replace them .

While O’Sullivan was pleased to see his apprentice receive a just reward, overall, he is concerned with the standard of riding in New Zealand that be believes is at an all-time low. “Right now, I don’t think it has been worse for the industry as a whole,” he said. “If you took out the top half dozen senior riders, we are in pretty poor shape. “Some of the riding you see is very very bad and things like tactical appreciation, judgement of pace and positioning in a field can be quite woeful. Seems we are not too far off the track in our thoughts , but i ask when L O'Sullivan is saying that in public as others have WTF is being done to address the issue .

So how does the young wannnabe trainer get going , or is it going to be through a scholarship/apprenticeship process . It's a deep and narrow hole they are descending into with only a line of cotton as their safety rope . As i mentioned on here last night and on other occasions over the last few months , this is the road to centralisation to the northern region , for major racing anyway .

When i first applied for an owner trainer licence 25+years ago it was no simple process , made the application , got a visit from a racecourse "D" to check my new property and character , had to prove i was financially solvent , had to spent mornings for a about a month at a "Professional trainers " property to prove i could handle horses and saddle horses . I then had to go to a full meeting of the Central District Committee before the races at Trentham one Saturday , 12/14 old stuffy prats sitting round a board table asking me banal questions . Very stressful , but got my licence . Nearly didn't because we were just setting up a new property , built a house and post and rail fencing , but no stabling , yet , so i had the proviso of having to build boxes within 12/18 months . All bullshit now when i look back . I had to jump thru all those hoops when i had years of experience and references from being stallion handler for One Pound Sterling , Icelandic , Grosvenor , Pompeii Court , and Zephyr Bay among others . Things changed for a long time when they started getting challenged on the human rights of denying someone a licence and they got gun shy , licences started coming cornflake boxes . So if it's going to get tougher than my initial process then i can tell you some of the current so called "professional trainers " are going to struggle to retain their licences .

Fuck off , some of the best horseman i have known have been hobbyist/enthusiast trainers . And some of the worst have called themselves professionals and their standards have been far from high performing , and i know from first hand experience , some of the stuff that some of the people i have worked for has been eye opening . Perhaps if they are setting standards for the industry they should start with themselves , because high performance alongside NZTR is the gold standard for the word OXYMORON . As for the underlined sentence , welcome to their vision of Hong Kong in NZ , centralisation to the north with limited licences for training and riding , and i believe this is not being purely driven by NZTR , they are merely the gun firing the bullets .

I agree about Elliot on Levante , complete shambles of a ride , had Bosson on the rail boxed , allowed him off , then he had OPB's tail , exactly what Kelso wanted , but Elliot panicked and took off around which completely nulified the mares sprint , now he may well have still finished 2nd but jesus it was ugly . As for Concert Hall as soon as he went i thought he's forgotten he's going 2400 and he gave the fav a perfect drag but fortunately the mares class saw it thru , my money went on on Thurs at 4.5 and boy i was worried , James said as much himself . As for the trainers being incompetent , well having spoken to a couple and as they say " what do i do " , bollock them they cry , and who do you replace them with , OPB is nearly always tied to TA as is Johnson , Innes rides when he feels it , namely specific trainers or his money is on , but even then he makes plenty of mistakes . Kelso went from Elliot to Sam Collet and back to Elliot , both have cost this mare big wins , but really they are all much of a muchness . One of the reasons i don't train or really own here anymore , can spend plenty of cash and time just to watch couldn't care less riders cock things up .

There is so much wrong with the quality of our jocks , for the majority race tactics is a foreign word , but to understand how poor the majority of our jocks are you simply have to watch a field turning for home , where most of the jockeys are asking their horses to wind up and sprint , only one problem , most of them have their horses on the wrong fucken leg . Happens every race , come round the bend horses trying to sprint around and on one reign because the jockey hasn't got the horse balanced onto the correct leg before asking them to go . One of the most important aspects of riding a horse in a race , balance , but most can't don't get it , but sadly don't seem to care . Watched countless times yesterday on one of our biggest days when our best horses and jocks are supposed to show they're ability , many are lacking and doing they're horses a disservice . When OPB and Allpress are gone who is going to replace them , god knows , the premiership will be won by the best of a ragtag mob .

A hypothetical question , Awapuni on Saturday is currently a H11 and raining , with some sort of rainfall forecast for the rest of the week , so if they had the A/W track already installed , would they , should they xfer the meeting onto the A/W track ? If it stays on the grass the fields will take a hammering , if it was xfered to the A/W would they be much different ? Any more substantial rain it might not run at all . Perhaps they could xfer the black type races to Te rapa again , that one is tongue in cheek . This is the scenario that they say the A/W's are here to prevent . I'm a grass track man , it is what it is , i can live with it .

Pitmans done it a couple of times , and have to say as a rule 2yo's have a few opportunities at Riccarton leading up to the cup meeting and the Welcome Stakes , that's why Te Akau usually send some babies down . And i think the Tylers had one in the last couple of years , some can correct me if i'm wrong . As for splitting the fields at Ashburton , if they don't it's because they will say there will be an opportunity at Gore on Sunday , this is them micro managing people's and trainers horses , something they have no idea about . I was told once when i queried why they weren't splitting a race , they said well if you don't get a run there is another opportunity at Ellerslie on the weekend , i the succinctly explained i was in Levin and would be happy to if they would subsidise the transport cost , eh no .

Going on those numbers they could realistically split 2 of the maiden races as well , reasonably expect 12 horse fields for all 6 races if split . Don't worry the CD is treated much the same . As for the 2yo's at Pukekohe that comes back to a colossal Feck up in the programming , 6 weeks out from the Karaka Million and they have had very few 2yo races in comparison to recent seasons , and the ones they have had not all horses that got stake money are registered for the race . So they have created a squeeze for horses to qualify , and this race wasn't even programmed up until last week . So where is the planning and pathways . In the CD , they took the Wakefield to Te Rapa , so they have a 2yo race at Awapuni on Saturday , and as far as i can see only 1 1000mtr race at Tauherenikau programmed before the KM , not exactly conducive to preparing a horse for the race if you have a serious intent to try and get one there .

Perhaps you could xfer my last post over to the SI programming thread chief .

I agree with everybody's sentiment on this topic but the reality is that what used to really work for us was in another lifetime , a life time when there were 6000+ foals being bred , so many that there were division races for maidens and even then horses had to qualify at trials for an A or B certificate as the only sure way to get a start . A time when training costs were affordable to many and the costs for doing it yourself made it worthwhile . When i first got my licence there were 700+ owner trainers alone in the calendar , be lucky if there were half that including full and permitted trainers now . Back when a fair horse could easily pay it's way . Things have radically changed over the last 30 years , the costs associated with breeding have taken it away from the hands of the small breeder of 1 or 2 , so the foal crop has slowly declined , that along with the numbers still going through the sales , because of the continued success of the NZ bred horse overseas , then the massive growth of Asia as a market for trialled and tried horses as racing in HK and Singapore got huge which has inflated prices for those horses which has made it difficult for all owners but especially at the lower end to refuse good money when compared to racing a horse here . Our foal crop is so precariously low now that when we factor in the yearling sales then the RTR and trialled and lightly raced horses we would be lucky if we are left with a third of a crop for the domestic market to race . So where are we now , we are left with a shadow of the industry we once had , it is what it is , we will never get back to where we were , so we should be trying to work with what we have , but unfortunately a lot haven't got the memo especially the ones with the power to change things . For me that me that means a complete rebuild of our industry , with all industry participants being able to have their say , the rating system doesn't work with the calibre of horse we have now , the programming is a shambles , even up north there is trainers complaining at the lack of suitable races for horses . Doomed mentioned 2yo's for the SI but the 2yo structure is a shambles everywhere . A large part of the 2yo scenes problems has been the introduction of the Karaka Millions and how it completely dominates the 2yo scene and the flow on effect after it . But the structure of our programming for all divisions of our racing has to be reset . One of the biggest issues with the programming is how one club in each island has been able to run rough shod over other clubs that has hugely impacted those clubs meetings , in some cases so called " Iconic " meetings . We have huge track issues , the quality of jockeys slowly diluting , the list goes on . For me i think they are set on a path of concentrating the power in the North and there are people with great influence pushing this agenda . I maybe reading it wrong , but when i see so many issues , especially in the CD and the SI , not being addressed , i don't know what else to believe .

When you consider the overall strength of NZ racing he is a superstar , anywhere else a nice promising horse . If you are sending a mare to him you are doing purely on hope and because he is cheap , but the devil is in the detail , grazing and vet fees are what has killed breeding a cheap horse . Even at 3k with transport grazing and vet not a lot if anything left out of 10/12k . Plus going on his performance as with Embellish , their progeny will take time .

If i go to church it would break my life up , nah to scary for me .

Matey i'm still dizzy from the weekly ones i've given myself , then there's the odd ones my wife throws my way , i'm not even sure i'm typing this for real or dreaming .

Had another quick shifty at the calendar and Trentham has that ridiculous 3 Saturdays in a row , the 2nd Saturday is just a bog standard Saturday meeting along with the Ellerslie Karaka Millions meeting and Gore , why not put that day back on the Monday and leave the Karaka/Gore meetings there , betting on that day outside of Karaka will be average anyway as everybody is focused on the millions , the CD gets a holiday meeting and the Trentham track gets an extra 5 days to prepare for the Cup day , and god don't we know they will need all the time they can get . I would actually a have a bet that turnover and on course patronage would be better on the Monday than the Saturday . Perhaps i'm asking for something a bridge too far , commonsense .

So a couple of seasons back the wizards that produce the magic out of NZTR thought in their wisdom the CD doesn't need a local race meeting on Wellington Anniversary Monday so gave the date to Matamata , their thinking being the gambling addicts in the CD would still bet at Matamata , well maybe they didn't because they have just put out list of venue and date changes in the new year and low and behold they have moved Matamata to the Wednesday and left the Monday vacant , no Cd meeting back in it's place , nothing , nada , SFA . So if you happen to live south of Taupo and like a bet on a holiday day off forget it , for they have forgotten about you . Or is it just more of the destabilisation of CD racing working towards the North being where all things great in NZ racing reside .

Great fields for both of those two group races that were xfered to Te Rape , and the spelling for Te Rapa is correct , because that is exactly how the CD racing is being treated , but as i said last week this is exactly what the northern racing fraternity want going forward . Playing out perfectly for them . I wonder what the new or prospective new leader of NZTR is thinking , having second thoughts perhaps .

Yeah checked after , even better value , definitely a chance , i like Derryn a lot to , have seen some great types on Gavelhouse , 2 speed horses that should do alright .

Something i didn't realise , Ardrossan is a half brother to Incentivise . I have always thought that Ardrossan was a chance but this has elevated him greatly for me , and at 4k a nice price for a well bred horse that had more to offer on the track .

Yeah Embellish is the bar for pricing him , although the Lyndsey's had already bought into Embellish , but he stands at 4k , shares maybe 12k , valued him at under 1mil , so will be interesting .

I think they should get the message , but you never know , might send you some bonus bets .

The going rate for a sale as a racehorse is 10% , once a horse is retired to stud generally the trainer is out of the loop . In this situation i would suspect because it was a syndicate put together dedicated to making stallions it would be written into the contract that Te Akau , the business not the training operation , get a percentage . Te Akau's business is run along of the complete management of the horse from start to finish . When Our Maizcay was retired thru injury there was dispute when he was sold to stud , one party thought they should get a percentage and the other didn't . Never got resolved , but there was no legal recourse for the party that thought they should get a percentage . As for Noverre , it's a shame as he looked to have a big future , not sure of his value , maybe somewhere between 1-2mil at a guess . As much as they like to hype the Guineas as a stallion making race it hasn't really produced to any great level , Darci Brahma probably the best in recent years .

Give us long enough we'll suck it all out of you .