curious

Maybe owners should start putting rides out for tender?

That's 10% increase. CPI +1.4% through September and many suffering paycuts and redundancies. Not sure who negotiated that on behalf of owners. The Owners' Federation? If so, they need to get a new negotiator.

Well as JB says, free racing works in Oz. It appeared to be working here some years back but a faction of the TA influenced NZTR to can it when the shit hit the fan on funding.

If you add that money onto the winning stake then the jockey of the winner will get it. There is no extra going to trainers and jockeys en masse however the stake is distributed.

Not sure I get what you mean by a double dip. By whom?

Yes JB. And here it's really a way of paying the jockey fee to owners in a way that trainers and jocks still get a cut of what would be otherwise lost stakemoney.

Well you can't have it both ways. Above you said that those races were self-funding.

But did they generate the revenue to cover the stakes, aside from any other costs of staging the events? I don't think so.

As long as the money that is not paid out in an individual race is being used to fund additional races giving participants another crack at a winning stake, I don't really see the problem.

Yes but in all those cases the winner and placegetters will still get the advertised stakes for their placing, just not any extra because of the smaller field.

Gotcha. Although those funds will be redistributed in the form of extra races right?

What's dumb about it?

Don't know but the video quality is worse than Spark's.

T2 sound fine here.

This from Saundry today: The industry needs to be aware that TAB NZ has not underwritten a total amount to be paid to the codes this season, rather they have provided a budget of the funding it aims to pay. We now exist in a funding structure where we are paid in arrears, rather than in advance and cover as much of what would otherwise be a negative cashflow position. My understanding of the legislation is that TABNZ distribute to the codes any surplus as determined by S16 to the codes during or after the season, so are they not always essentially paid in arrears? My belief was that the profit from the previous season was paid out once determined and essentially funded the current season.

I was wondering that too. The track record is 1.07.01 I think and they went 1.07.18? The next heat of maidens took 1.08.27 which is pretty amazing in itself. Presumably the stipes will have been investigating and report. Did they forget to apply the advertised irrigation to the chute?

I think we just have very different ideas about this. A horse being "on the bit" to me means it is travelling on a light rein and responding to light pressure with barely any contact, not that I need "leverage" to control it. The dining chair execrcise is about demonstrating how you can increase the leverage which is not what I want to do.

Doesn't make much sense to me. Taking a short hold just seems likely to tense them up, set up for a scrap and give them something to pull against. Maybe not a kiss and a cuddle but probably some pain relief, not the application of more.

Lol. Hadn't heard that one. Classic Boomer though. I liked the way he used to just show up out of the blue with a truck load of goods then equally mysteriously disappear a couple of days later not to be seen again for months.

How can that be when half your bodweight is in the cart not providing leverage? Anyway, imo the solution is to teach them to work and race kindly, not wait till or expect the driver or jockey to win a physical battle at race time.

Another polytrack replacement under way. A synthetic surface, Tapeta replaced Turfway's Polytrack and has been in use for training over the past month. Tapeta is already in place at Woodbine, Golden Gate Fields, and Presque Isle Downs and the light-brown color of the Tapeta at Turfway is similar in appearance to the one at Woodbine. Turfway became the first racetrack in North America to install Polytrack on its main track in 2005. Initially advertised as being maintenance-free, it proved to require upkeep, as all racing surfaces do, and its materials, such as its wax, gradually degraded with time.

Well may be they've improved it. When the Arlington Park one went in the report said: The next step in the process included trenching and the installation of more than four miles of irrigation pipe and nine miles of perforated drainage pipe covered by 4,000 tons of four-inch-deep graded drainage stone Pretty sure Pakenham were considering irrigating theirs when they had kickback flying over jockeys heads after a periopd of no rain dried it out.. Something doesn't add up. Hard to see how the colour and texture could change that.

I just don't get the no irrigation thing. You'd think it would blow away in those conditions or at least redistribute and pile up like sand does.

So it's really a shortfall of more like 600k on average for each of the 16 days at Ellerslie? That's before sport, pokie and overseas racing subsidies?

Surely the 13% is net revenue after expenses?