Robalan

Self assured and Bolt For Brilliance for me

Ludwig, the Peter Kelly style commentary you referred to was in fact given by Dave Clarkson, the inventor of the New zealand style commentator

Youb are correct about the rule Karrots

Kevin Fairbairn and Whatsundermykilt

I would like to see evidence of Mr. Fitzgerald's claim regarding comparatively high turnovers on amatuer drivers races

I'm not a fan of Fitzgerald either. I was surprised when he wasn't questioned about his drive

I think he wanted to, he restrained his horse to take a trail but the other horse wouldn't or couldn't get to the lead

What collateral damage are you referring to Chief?

more meaningless woke nonsense

Robalan by a nose from Arapaho

Chief, reading Galah's comments, it strikes me that he has a very similar style to another agressive poster by the name of Michael

I agree with you Chief, from what I could see the horse wasn't travelling that well so rather than pull out and get stuck into the horse with his whip, he kept him on the back of horses that were travelling well hoping to get a late gap. the gap never came but in my opinion the horse finished closer than he would have if he'd tried to go down the outside

Dennis was one of the all time great trainers, up there with Cecil Devine, Derek Jones, Jack Smolenski, Jack Litten, Cecil Donald. Robalan was my all time favourite, a huge horse with a magnificent stride. He would swoop into the finish with a speed that made other horses look like they were tied to a post. A beautiful pacer who raced without hopples

I think that the request for only light training of horses was observed more in the breach than the practice

Who would want to breed horses in the current environment, bloody hard to make anything out of it. Good luck to Brad but I think he's in for a pretty rough job

You may be correct there Trotsfan, but Jensen had the authorisation of the HRNZ board to sign off on the deal

HRNZ had an agreement with Thoroughbred racing that the income on offshore betting would be shared evenly between the 3 codes in return for harness racing giving up most of its Saturday race dates. This agreement was thrown out at the latest round of discussions and now as a consequence each code receives the distribution which equates to the percentage of overseas betting on their own code. The amount paid to HRNZ therefore was considerably lower than previous years

The new season started on 1 August. It will be over before they bring in their new programme

Where is the increase in stakes then?

Where's the plan to stop the rapid decline in people interested in breeding horses?

Harness

Dubious

I think you will find that the control of Harness Racing Club assets was changed in the latest racing act passed by parliament

The trainers don't need to worry about the cost of travelling to Timaru and other far flung places, they don't pay the bills. Many have the perception that it might be easier to win a race at Timaru, but if you have a look at the Addington fields you will find that the same horses are racing at both tracks

Still, would be nice to win one