Reefton

Not sure what Cookie would be able to contribute to further your knowledge Thomass. For where I sit you seem to know everything there is to know already.

Well whatever I know Thomass would be one thing more than you do. You distinctly said 'The Lindsays will lose heavily over this...' You are commenting on the business of a man who, they tell me, is a very good bloke. You have no idea of his commercial arrangement re the horse(and nor do I) but I feel bloody sorry for him. He could not be said to have had much luck since he took over CS and this doesn't help.

I just see he has checked the towel in. Not standing again. The New Zealand racing industry won't miss him

Training is a bloody hard game wherever you are from what I can see Bloke (and I suspect it is just as tough in Aussie). Especially trying to get the initial breakthrough in a new location.

Just remind me the stakes paid on each of those two days and the percentage of turnover achieved those stakes represent(not that NZ Cup day is anything to skite about in terms of return on investment by the NZ industry) Reality is as Laurie Sutherland has pointed out when it comes to efficient use of industry resources those big clubs toil well in the rear(and always have done). Your average picnic Club props them up well and truly.

no the owners stumped up most of it and NZTR the rest

You wouldn't know the first thing about Cambridge's arrangement re the horse Thomass(nor would I) so if I were you I would sit back and see what happens. Brendon Lindsay is a pretty sharp operator and he will lose a lot simply on the stud fees let alone anything else but the horse could have got colic anywhere so blaming NZ or Cambridge is drawing a long bow.

Those the same North Island trainers that wanted all the courses closed? They want to stick to something they might just know something about and forget about telling the people providing them the opportunities what they should be doing. You only need to look at the impotent position of their own association to know how well organised they are. And since you are a bit thick I will reiterate - the numbers imbalance has been the same for 45 years since the races were first run down here. And again I will reiterate - my experience of North Island Trainers is they don't care about the expense - just load it on the owners. Two of the more prominent up that way(Sharrock and Pike) were trumpeting how they were off to Aussie a couple of years ago. Not too much progress seems to have been made?

Don't horses get colic in England Thomass? Why would this instance stop shuttle stallions? There have probably been a thousand shuttle movements in the last twenty years to Australasia and this is one of very few incidents. Perhaps they should stop having tests at Westpac Stadium because Retallick did his shoulder a mischief there. Occasionally these things happen

Actually you two would be prime candidates for the Vacancy on the NZTR Board (1) No common sense (2) You want everything for the upper North Island (3) You want to tear apart one of the few things that actually works in NZ racing(and God knows there aren't many) and relocate from a place where almost twenty thousand turn up for a look to somewhere where you will be lucky to get a couple of hundred(based on the view of the grandstand last Herbie Dyke day - room for three hundred people populated by about three) You two are wasted on a social media site - get your CV's in to Bernard pronto!

Might not have been bog tracks but there have certainly been plenty of uproars about the standard of tracks presented. I don't think there is another track in the country that attracts critical comment like Te Rapa does(and Ellerslie in the 'bad old days' would have been number two although to be fair Riccarton is not saint where that is concerned). Coincidentally all three have been 'renovated' regularly which proves my point about not touching them. It was lucky someone wasn't killed at Ellerslie with that drain nobody knew about (remarkably that ARC mob and their supporters know all about what is wrong with the rest of NZ racing but have no idea about their own dung hill - Ken Rutherford is another prone to opening his mouth about what should happen elsewhere in the game without looking in his own backyard).

Ellerslie or Te Rapa? Bloody great - run them in front of 200 people and with a real risk of a bog track

Are you that thick that you can't tell when the piss is being taken?

Yeah well that proves the point. Imagine what they would have won by if they had prepared on decent tracks instead of the North Island shit holes.

Been off BOAY for a couple of days but coming back to this! Firstly let me make an observation in regards your (quite correct) claim about how good the Ellerslie track is in November when the ARC seem to run one raceday being Melbourne Cup day(they have run the odd one later in the month over the years but generally one). Shiite they must have a lot of confidence in the reliability of their weather and track to run one meeting in the month of November! Clearly it is sheer coincidence that they have had a run of good tracks. I might add I had a look at the times on at least one of those good 3 days and I think the whoppers might have been told about how good the track was(2.08 for a G3 2000m race on a good 3 track?) . Riccarton aren't above a bit of that sort of trick themselves however so we will let that slide. But lets imagine I am a trainer with a colt I think might just be good enough to make a stallion but I am not 100% sure of his liking for wet ground (bearing in mind seven of the last ten 2000 Guineas winners have gone to stud versus two Derby winners so it is fair to say that the 2000 is a better 'Stallion' race than the Derby). Debatable whether either race is a feather in a horse's cap stallion wise given the state of NZ racing but I guess not every promising young NZ horse is a Dundeel who can match it in Aussie. Now am I going to risk buggering his reputation by running him in races like the Bonecrusher or the Sarten race where tracks could be bogs or would I be better to go south to the Coupland/John Grigg and/or Canterbury Stakes(where history suggests the surfaces - and therefore the Horse's winning chances - are more reliable)? I will give you the Hawkes Bay Guineas but they seem to have given up on the Great Northern Guineas and Wellington Guineas at that time of year(wonder why?). Jimmy Choux and Sacred Falls could clearly handle the mud so I guess it made b-all difference to them. The formula Te Akau seems to have used successfully (I think they have won four of the last eleven) is send them South early and you really have to say it seems to be a very wise idea(three of those four and all three of their winning colts turning into stallions(to date not setting the world alight but Embellish and Xtravagant have the test to come) And then your claim about trainers being concerned about costs - having had(shares in)horses with prominent Trainers in the north it strikes me that a lot of them don't give an eff what the cost is(that is the owners issue) when it comes to travelling or anything else and as often as not tell the press that the trip will make the horse. I reckon if the horse farted one of those trainers would send you a bill for smelling it! From my understanding there is a horse flight south every Tuesday so what is the logistics issue(getting them home is another matter but the damage is done by that time)? Then this continual bleating about the imbalance of South Island horses - well I think there have been about five South Island winners in 45 years so whats new? Southern three year olds are not competitive at that time of year(nor are many of the older horses to be fair) and Southern trainers recognise that. The way Pitty and others compete strongly at Wellington Cup time shows the delay in getting Southern horses up to a competitive level in the season(and Pitty gave a demo with Savvy Coup about not pushing a top liner that early in the year by picking up top dosh in lesser NZ Cup week races). AND as Pam said Cup Week is unquestionably the best Carnival in NZ racing(and probably the best attended on the two big days at least) so if it ain't broke why fix it?

oh yes we can see how well that has gone by how keen they are to test it out in the bowels of the winter this year. And if they have had a decent result(to be fair it appears so so far) it will be a fluke To (sort of) paraphrase Meatloaf 'don't be sad cos one out of about a bloody hundred(track renovations) ain't bad'

Well (1) you quoted statistics about North Island horse domination of those races numbers wise as if it is a recent phenomena. Go back through the 45 years those races have been run at Riccarton and you will see it is no worse than it ever was (2) that carnival is one of the shining lights of NZ racing(God knows there aren't many) and 1000 Guineas day is one of if not the best attended galloping raceday in NZ (3) as I mentioned at that time of year you are liable to run into a bog track in the North(vastly less likely in the South) and (4) witness the number of North Island horses that turn up in the south as early as September each year to take advantage of the better weather (admittedly mainly Te Akau but in recent years Latta, Pike, Lowry Cullen et al) If you want to race the guineas races at that time of year AND to make it look reasonably attractive the South is the only place for it(unless you want to take them to Ruakaka of course - it really looks good at that time of year)

Riccarton in November is a vastly more reliable surface than say Ellerslie is in November. Keep up

I did mention 'if they can afford it'. Since they are not interested in my opinions I don't bother looking at what their performance is like (ie no idea what the annual turnover is but I do know the $150M distribution figure

Fair comment.

Re the twenty minutes interval thing the way to do that is to have a set of stalls reserved for horses in the next race where they are required to be prior to the previous and as close to the weighing room as poss. Saddles out and on and in parade ring within ten minutes and off to the start. Make D Walsh the sole adjudicator of enquiries in the south and someone equivalent in the North.

North Island not frigging NZ!

Yeah sorry about that. Just read the 'shut the coast' comments and thought here we go again. NZ treats the Coast like shit (in far more ways and areas than racing) and it gives me the shits. I gave Bernard all he was looking for and I will continue to defend the place. We owe nobody anything and we aren't giving up our racing when we are perfectly viable. Thats the whole point - the self sufficient get the life booted out of them and the bludgers sail happily onwards with smug looks on their gobs. My plan would right he ship in that regard

Yep! And risk running them on shit hole tracks like the NZ is prone to at that time of year

Most of you are talking tripe here. The reality of life is that subsidising a business entity or sector is madness. And we all know exactly who the subsidised mob in NZ racing are don't we? (if you don't have a look at Barryb's list of tracks he wants to close and it is all the ones not on the list). The only option to prolong the life of NZ racing(and like Curious I really worry it is past the point of no return) is to reintroduce proportionate payouts to Clubs for their turnover. So lets say total turnover is $600m for the year and the payout is $150m(I know the later is about right just not sure of the annual betting figures). So the average Club on the average day ought to get 25% of its turnover as a return(assuming the industry can afford it of course). Now we need racing at least six days a week and year round so paying a flat 25% on turnover is impractical at this time of year or on a Tuesday say when people have spent their pay. So a bit of analysis to work out how to even that up would be needed but say the intent is to get every club $125k per day as a base. If I am racing in July with a $400k turnover I would get 31% whereas if I race in January with a $750k turnover then I would get 16.67%. Before you say that is not fair it is to make sure there is an incentive for Clubs to race on the unattractive winter, Mondays or other undesirable dates. Clubs racing on Saturdays could maybe get a little more percentage wise so they can afford somewhat higher stakes BUT the idea of Derby day turning over $4m and paying out $2m in stakes is utter madness. The downtrodden battlers of the game - whether they be trainers, owners or whoever - are merely subsidising the fat cats (we all know who they are) on those days and that is not good enough. If NZB want to pay a fortune for KM night all well and good but don't expect the NZ industry to pay for it(especially when a lot of NZ trainers cannot even think about buying something from Karaka). As an incentive to Clubs to provide a quality experience there should be more paid for on course turnover so that they provide attractions to racing newcomers. Despite what Barryb has to say you only need to think how many Cantabrians who might go one or two days to Riccarton per year religiously turn up to Kumara 150 miles away - the point is the quality of the experience (despite what a dump Kumara actually is). AND plenty of flashly dressed women turn up to Kumara as well - the point is people like to be where others are and Kumara is one of those places. Riccarton on the other hand has very very few days in a year where more than a handful of people turn up and they need incentives to correct that. Now of course the upshot of a 'receive what you earn' scenario is that the 'big' clubs(essentially all the ones Barryb wants to keep open)would find that they are living beyond their means and would have to either reduce their costs, drastically reduce their stakes or bite the bullet and relocate(which ultimately is the best option for NZ racing). Places like Te Rapa, Trentham and Riccarton are shit holes for significant parts of the year hence nobody wants to go there. Sell them up and buy property in better draining areas where you can set up decent tracks and better facilities(hopefully tied in with transport options - Riccarton for instance to West Melton or Darfield beside the railway line. Te Rapa to God knows where). And most importantly don't let 'turf experts' within a million miles of the tracks. I have said it a thousand times - any time an expert touches a track they bugger it up and there is no better example than Te Rapa. Ellerslie with its property income streams could probably survive but if Ron Brierley was running it it to would be sold off(or at least totally redeveloped in joint ventures for commercial property) and the proceeds used to fund a decent facility somewhere further out(of maybe even Avondale since it is clearly a superior track surface). It is basic economics but of course the Messara Mafia would not accept it as they persist in thinking that the small clubs are somehow getting a benefit at the big Clubs expense. Considering some of those guys are pretty successful businessmen they are surprisingly accepting of blatant subsidising of certain organisations within NZ racing. How would Sir Patrick for instance have reacted if NZTR had said that Waikato Stud breds got 20% added to their stake money because that was where they were bred? In conjunction to encourage top quality training facilities I would have the home track of every runner paid for each runner produced(more if it is stabled in the track as well but someone like Steve McKee or Byerley Park with their own tracks and property would get industry help to maintain it) And finally one thing we all agree on - take the machete to the hierarchy of NZ racing and sort out NZRB or RITA (or whatever the eff it is being called this week), the TAB and NZTR. No more bloody import CEO's for a start.