Saturdays are now the domain of the gallops, harness no longer exist, Saturday nights no longer exist for , it's the domain of Sport, but I've always queried why the inconsistent calendar, why today just out of the blue Winton race Saturday yet next three or four days go back to midweek, it's got me beat.
I often check out the exotic pools as a guide to how much interest is on some of these harness meetings, today's main quaddie at Winton was less that 5000, that's fuck all..
Last Friday with small fields invercargill main quaddie was over 10000.
Alexandra Park was over 13000 on a Friday night and while that's not massive it shows that harness racing mostly gets pushed into the background on Saturdays now
The Invercargill Cup last year was supposedly a success last year yet strangely is on a Friday this year.
10 races, good numbers too, mostly Southern trained also, one wonders sometimes if more meetings are needed in the South, as well as Timaru, even a few mini meetings now and then, problem is would the tracks handle more use, it's always a gamble weather wise, strangely they have moved now to Sunday which is probably a smart move with heavy rain tomorrow , spose if you wait 4 months what's a couple of days.
Nominations for Gore Friday are good, maybe 10 races but heavy rain for Thursday, so that's a bit of a shame, maybe 10 races but will the powers that be be keen, there is a double standard it seems.
This meeting made the news last year as it was abandoned through lack of numbers, numbers are low and maybe there is a preference for Wyndham as it gets better numbers, even better than Winton.
But as a rule it's pretty ordinary in Southland in recent times.
At least it is being used. Te Awamutu the same, gee even one race day a year at each venue would probably be better than another non event at some of the other courses.
Omakau have 1 race day a year, harness but no horses trained there but as its races at right time it's a boomer, same 4 Kaikoura.
Times change, no real need to have TABs on their own, the pubs and TAB cater for the same people and it probably pays off to combine, after all the pubs probably ain't raking it in either.
All the pubs have the pokies so probably made sense to close them down in TABs, not worth the hassle anymore, especially as Entain are going to start raking it in with the massive boost in turnover they are anticipating 🙂
1977 Kurow moved to Monday because of the 4th Lions test at Eden Park, never went back to Saturday.
Strangely Mondays only for greyhounds now and that's just to put something on trackside for the bored and lost, would save trackside lots of money if they only showed aussie races, maybe only a audio stream for greyhounds, always was fine in the past.
Big difference between friends and associates, Putins not even attending a summit in South Africa, maybe he don't trust his so called friends.
Wouldn't think we are friends of China but as they buy lots of our stuff we turn a blind eye to their human rights issues.
I stand to be corrected on this one but Russia produces a lot of dairy produce, some of that may be ending up in China, Russia don't have too many friends at present.
The farmers did actually contribute to this government, 2020 to 2023, remember that.
As for the man you are referring to hè needs his fiscal hole filled with a size 12 gumboot..