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Bit Of A Yarn

Riccarton trials deleted


curious

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It's not a good look. No matter whether there are a multitude of reasons why trainers don't want to trial this week, the impression given is that they are trying to force trainers to use the AWT throughout the year and the trainers are saying piss off.

The AWT was always promoted as a handy thing to have for training and occasionally racing purposes during the wet winter months. Unfortunately, NZTR and the CJC always saw it as a way to eliminate all of the despised country tracks around Canterbury and North Otago. 

They have never accepted that it is Riccarton that needs the AWT and not Canty and SI racing as a whole, because Christchurch and the Riccarton track gets much wetter than the rest of Canty during the winter months.

When they inevitably have to close Riccarton down for a year or two to totally renovate the grass track I imagine they will want to race on the AWT all year round as there will be no other options. I imagine this is the reason they are trying to get trainers used to racing on it in mid summer at the moment.

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Beats me. Why would you schedule synthetic trials when there's no synthetic racing for 2 1/2 months and plenty of perfectly good grass tracks about? OK for young ones that might need some gate practice but not much else.

Edited by curious
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1 minute ago, curious said:

Beats me. Why would you schedule synthetic trials when there's no synthetic racing for 2 1/2 months and plenty of perfectly good grass tracks about? OK for young ones that might need some gate practice but not much else.

Because you have people administrating that don't know race horses.

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8 minutes ago, curious said:

Beats me. Why would you schedule synthetic trials when there's no synthetic racing for 2 1/2 months and plenty of perfectly good grass tracks about? OK for young ones that might need some gate practice but not much else.

Er...plenty of grass tracks ...?

Ashburton which got hammered in the spring and Timaru,  although a good surface, a fair way and cost to get there.  Don't think there'd be too many keen.

Shows the wisdom of getting rid of Motukarara and Rangiora, both 20-30 minutes away.

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1 minute ago, Freda said:

Er...plenty of grass tracks ...?

Ashburton which got hammered in the spring and Timaru,  although a good surface, a fair way and cost to get there.  Don't think there'd be too many keen.

Shows the wisdom of getting rid of Motukarara and Rangiora, both 20-30 minutes away.

Getting rid of Motukarara is a travesty.

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1 minute ago, Freda said:

Er...plenty of grass tracks ...?

Ashburton which got hammered in the spring and Timaru,  although a good surface, a fair way and cost to get there.  Don't think there'd be too many keen.

Shows the wisdom of getting rid of Motukarara and Rangiora, both 20-30 minutes away.

When Riccarton was reconstructed,  back in 1998, we used both mentioned above until things were ready.

Very pleasant it was, too.

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10 hours ago, Freda said:

Er...plenty of grass tracks ...?

Ashburton which got hammered in the spring and Timaru,  although a good surface, a fair way and cost to get there.  Don't think there'd be too many keen.

Shows the wisdom of getting rid of Motukarara and Rangiora, both 20-30 minutes away.

When I said plenty of grass tracks, I was including those like Rangiora, Motukarara and the Riccarton CP, all of which are useable for trials (not sure the status of Motukarara) but have seemingly been sent to the sidelines. One or more of them need to be reinstated for that purpose.

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7 minutes ago, curious said:

When I said plenty of grass tracks, I was including those like Rangiora, Motukarara and the Riccarton CP, all of which are useable for trials (not sure the status of Motukarara) but have seemingly been sent to the sidelines. One or more of them need to be reinstated for that purpose.

I'm not sure about Motukarara either.

Harness still race there, although I don’t know how often now.  Akaroa trots, I'm pretty sure still have a day. 

At one stage I heard that the committee were struggling to attract new and younger members,  so were not in a position to fight for the gallops to continue. 

Rangiora is still a viable and important training venue, and had run trials successfully - and profitably - for years.

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5 hours ago, Chief Stipe said:

the biggest and only problem is a lack of mobile phone coverage.

See, this is something I don't understand.  This is an area money must be invested into, especially if manned totes are to be replaced with mobile phone betting.

Why is there such stupidity on where money is spent?

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1 hour ago, Special Agent said:

See, this is something I don't understand.  This is an area money must be invested into, especially if manned totes are to be replaced with mobile phone betting.

Why is there such stupidity on where money is spent?

Especially when the TAB need an internet link for their services on course.  Wasn't there a lot of drama around places like Foxton not having race dates because they didn't have a data link?

Why couldn't the TAB subscribe to a Skylink service and tack it onto the back of the broadcasting van?

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21 minutes ago, Chief Stipe said:

Especially when the TAB need an internet link for their services on course.  Wasn't there a lot of drama around places like Foxton not having race dates because they didn't have a data link?

Why couldn't the TAB subscribe to a Skylink service and tack it onto the back of the broadcasting van?

Be simple and cheap as chips wouldn't it?

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34 minutes ago, Chief Stipe said:

 Wasn't there a lot of drama around places like Foxton not having race dates because they didn't have a data link?

 

Probably just used that theory to justify not racing there.

It's called bullshit.

Edited by mikeynz
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Gets worse though. Both New Plymouth and Hastings race meetings will also be  deleted without further nominations. Can't say I recall that ever happening before but I guess they need to save the stake money from those to support the Ellerslie meeting.

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23 hours ago, Freda said:

Er...plenty of grass tracks ...?

Ashburton which got hammered in the spring and Timaru,  although a good surface, a fair way and cost to get there.  Don't think there'd be too many keen.

Shows the wisdom of getting rid of Motukarara and Rangiora, both 20-30 minutes away.

Are any gallopers trained at motukarara?

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16 minutes ago, curious said:

I doubt it but can't remember any ever being trained there. Freda will know more.

No, I can't remember any trained there but I do recall, way back, that the odd one or two would front up for a gallop, probably a farm-trained model.

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54 minutes ago, Special Agent said:

Did Ian Rogers train there at one stage?

Just looked him up. Last had a horse to the races in 2020 ,a horse called chorister. He trained an ex north island horse ,sandcastle to win an open handicap at ashburton in 2012,paying $40.Terry mosely rode.It was a noted front runner.

Colours are red body with black arms with a purple armband and cap.

Interesting what pops up if you do a search.

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