Reefton

Lets not knock the 'big day' marketing too much though. If there is one out of every hundred of those kids actually notices the horses and thinks 'I quite like this game' then it is at least something. Kumara is a classic example (although a bloody sight cheaper for the NZ industry than NZ Cup day or KM night) and very important to us guys. However it should not be at the expense of paying attention to the genuine devotee who has had their local meeting ripped away and is understandably badly disillusioned with the game on that basis(a classic local example being the Westland Racing Club guys who were booted in the guts and retaliated). All this focus on the big Clubs and big days due to the Waikato Mafia is all fine but the looming economic crunch is going to bite them too. Some 5% owner with one of these syndicators who can't pay the mortgage is hardly going to stump up in Feb next year for another nag. And we all know the old story - the bigger they are..... We have had 'good times' economically in this country for a bloody long time and if they(TAB) could not make a quid then how are they going to do it with what looks likely to be coming?

fair comment A procession of Racing Ministers illustrates your point perfectly

All government departments suffer from mediocre performance I'm afraid Waka Kotahi and the disgraceful state of the roads Kainga Ora and the housing debacle Whatever the hell that endangered children group calls itself The Health and Education outfits The Reserve Bank Governor who reportedly had no idea how this inflation surge came about(when you study economics the second thing they tell you, after supply and demand, is that printing money creates inflation) All the OIA requests waiting forever Mind you there are one or two very very mediocre Ministers in charge of said departments so I suppose what can you expect

I think there is a little more sizzle in that sausage just yet. There is some pretty valuable real estate to be gobbled up by these guys. Ironically the likes of my Club will be not worth their effort because the assets are worth f all but not long ago we heard about Levin. If Ellerslie comes up OK watch em leering at Avondale. Rangiora clearly, Timaru and God knows where else.

no no no you lot can't see the big picture...... We'll just shut down a bunch of tracks and take the money to use to prop up the stakes for the big Clubs And when its all pissed up against the wlll we will just ........ um.........um Oh f*#k it by then we will have resigned anyway.

Bit of an issue with the appeal (to the wider punting public) of South Island Racing. Packer grabbed a red hot spectator sport and ran with it just like the LIV golf concept. Is SI racing in any position to go it alone? In an ideal world nobody would be more in favour of a breakaway but being realistic it isn't going to happen. And as far as the CJC meeting next week on the AWT well there are a lot of horses in the District and if a trainer thinks there is an opportunity to pick up some easy money they will be there. Clearly Michael Pitman for instance has virtually ignored Cromwell, will not go to Invercargill in a couple of weeks and did not trial anything at Ashburton this week so it is a fair bet there will be a ton of his team entered for a start.

they might have been like Te Rapa that time - the gates might have been parked at the 1300m by mistake

Well if effing Riccarton needs renovation let effing Riccarton pay for it. Whatever work we do we pay for ourselves but these big clubs have got their hands out all the time and after getting millions given to them they still produce shit surfaces

And another couple of 'nors' nor does the Reefton Jockey Club get the guts of a million dollars worth of industry money lavished on it to splurge on stakes for one day then produce a substandard track for the said day And nor would the Reefton Jockey Club say 'right we are refunding all the entry fees' but then basically beg people not to claim the refund. I have to say that is a rather bizarre press release on behalf of the CJC. I VERY much doubt anyone who was there for the actual racing would have any sympathy for them and the ones who were there for the piss up probably didn't even notice there were no horses on the track so wouldn't care. I would have just kept the money and if some individual whinged just refunded them their entry fee.

you would know We also don't have a range of full time track staff nor do we get grants from NZTR to run a training facility nor do we earn huge amounts of track fees And while I am on the word 'nor' to my knowledge nor have we ever abandoned halfway through our raceday. We did abandon our day ten or so years back but that was seven days ahead of time because we knew we had no hope.

Dead right. You cannot apply the same logic at Riccarton and the Coast when it comes to track prep. Our guys know what they are doing and the national track man (Garry Foskett) knew that.

Happened to read the exact same circular to my Committee tonight. Banged my fist on the table as I did. Dated 15 November 2022 from B Sharrock

Well since you mention it..... That's another bloody thing Wellington dictates - who (all things being equal of course) gets a start and who doesn't Tim Mills basically dictates the program(as the SI programming committee of one) and NZTR will refuse additional races at their own whim. We don't even discuss the program at committee meetings because no correspondence is entered into And then there is the calendar issue that Curious is justifiably unhappy about. In the next nine weeks there is not one feature meeting within five hours of Riccarton. Not bloody ONE! I offered to redo their entire South Island Calendar when they made the mess of the Coast schedule in January but why bother when it is not appreciated. It would not be hard - just pin your features(GN Cup Week, White Robe Lodge day) and schedule around them. Sure have say four weeks after Cup meeting but Timaru and Ashburton should have feature meetings in the Christmas leadup even if they are Friday Twilights. Give those Clubs the opportunity to hop on the Christmas Party bandwagon with their locals. The Timaru Cup would fit nicely there.

Well there's a chilly bin full of booze as a trophy and often the owners don't turn up so if he wins it and Mr Gardiner fails to show his face I guess it is Pam's(wouldn't be the first trainer to snaffle it with glee)

Hope they'll be setting him for the Reefton bloody Cup! Forget the second rate events I could make quite a fuss over the battlers Pam and CWJ(and the poor old owner I suppose) in the President's speech They went perilously close to winning one there last time

Well I have no idea on Riccarton and don't really want to publicly condemn them because (1) I am sure they did what they thought was best and (2) Murphys law says it will happen to us in seven or so weeks time BUT............ If there was an issue with the irrigation being blown by the wind and therefore all the water dropping in one lane (as appears to have happened) why don't they get a water cart and the verti drainer(the spiker machine) and have the cart follow the verti drainer around with the boom very close to the ground so the water went precisely where they wanted it to. Yes it would be slow but it would be consistent. I know it would have been windy in Canterbury because it pissed down here for a lot of last week but too many people knew of the issues(long grass and inconsistent watering) and the 'blundering' surely ought to have been ringing alarm bells????? Apart from anything else wasn't irrigation inconsistency the problem at Rangiora? Was no lesson learnt? They should be consulting KT Myers(Farmer and Horse Trainer - and good bloke - who knows his stuff on tracks)

Sorry HR I can't quite get the gist of what you are saying. Private enterprise didn't run the schools or the water or the Hospitals(well not the vast majority of them) or the polytechs But I drove to Christchurch today to attend a race meeting(I had left by the time of your triumph sorry Pam!) and I passed literally hundreds of trucks carting all manner of stuff(Logs, milk, frozen goods, general freight) I also on multiple occasions passed close by a perfectly good railway line between the Coast and Christchurch and wondered to myself why NZ Rail (a government organisation) is not able and much cheaper to cart those goods. And if there are hundred to and from the Coast there will be thousands on SH1 (which coincidentally also runs close to a railway line). If I ever need a to know why private enterprise works better I need only think of that.

I think he might have been taking the mickey

Would the not be better to say 'what are the tracks where this never happens doing right?' not ' how can we get it set up so it happens to everyone?' We are only a one day Club but last year after the Trotting meeting and with forecast seven days of 30 plus degree temperatures before our meeting in prospect we went all out with irrigation and it worked. We didn't need Wellington to tell us - it was common sense. But we also make sure our irrigation(k-line) is working properly and is covering the ground evenly. It is moved twice a day to give one and a half days to cover the entire track so there were basically 4 laps before the meeting. It's not hard and we aren't experts but we're not mugs either.

NZTR considering taking over the management of all the tracks in NZ? Are they trying to organise more effing abandonments? Their man they appointed to supervise the upper South Island tracks (Mr A Chapman from Riccarton no less) gave us a great demo of how to produce a track this week.

Good point actually. On reflection there is of course a penetrometer reading done in the morning. There was more than one person not doing their job. Good job Riccarton is so wide and they could swerve to avoid the cones.

Couldn't agree more. Just someone to drive the course beforehand to make sure everything is in order. You would expect it to be standard practice It shows the loss of the stipes going out to patrol towers - one of them surely would have picked it up.

I remember once the starter's assistants went on strike and sat down in front of the gates. Think it was in Melbourne. I thought to myself if that happened on the coast we would be a laughing stock. Mistakes happen in all areas of life it is just that when the happen in televised events we all know about them. I have a relation, an extremely experienced coal miner now retired, who worked at Spring Creek at the time of Pike River. He reckoned there was an incident at Spring Creek the week before that was the most frightening he had seen in his career. While it was Pike that went bang it could easily have been somewhere else. It's a fact of life

Agree it shouldn't have happened but equally nobody did it on purpose. When you rely on staff you get cockups

True although they tried to make one when that girl let that horse run straight instead of steering it around the corner. Your ex partner was very handy that day pointing to pilot error. But the bottom line is mistakes like the cones are easy to make and so in the heat of the moment are scenarios like starter's assistants not being noticed in front of the gates. Not acceptable because someone could get killed but easy to make. I make mistakes all the time and it is but for the grace of God there have been no tragic consequences for me or others. Remember Cromwell last year when eagle eyed Stipes picked up those halfwits on the track on the bend out of the back straight. Nobody gives them credit for averting a tragedy there. These guys, I am sure, are doing their best.