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Bit Of A Yarn

Harness drivers Why do you do it?


Brodie

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I wonder if anyone knows why harness drivers do it?

For a long time now I have wondered why many of them don’t bother pulling the whip out of the dust sheet until half way up

the straight or even later??

So often a horse is going well and then the driver decides at the 100metres to get the whip out and use it a bit!!

Often  this unbalances the horse and they lose momentum!,

Surely any half sensible driver will have the whip out and ready to use if required prior to the home turn????

Happened to turn over and saw the end of the last race at Palmy and Terry Chmiel didn’t pull the whip out till Halfway down the small straight and the horse lost momentum by him doing it then.

Yes, the horse Sunhi Magic is a flea so all the more reason to have the whip ready to use earlier, I would’ve thought?

Anyone else think that this seems pretty dumb from many drivers, and it happens all the time and yet the Stipes don’t seem to question the drivers as to why they weren’t giving the horse every opportunity!!

 

 

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21 hours ago, Brodie said:

Happened to turn over and saw the end of the last race at Palmy and Terry Chmiel didn’t pull the whip out till Halfway down the small straight and the horse lost momentum by him doing it then.

I was surprised to see Terry Chmiel up at Palmy. Thought his horses were better than going to all that effort of going up there.

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1 hour ago, Happy Sunrise said:

I was surprised to see Terry Chmiel up at Palmy. Thought his horses were better than going to all that effort of going up there.

At the moment many trainers have to take what they can get as you have to be pretty good to win any race.

Palmy is easy kill for most Canterbury horses if they travel up well.

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On 13/02/2020 at 8:50 PM, Brodie said:

I wonder if anyone knows why harness drivers do it?

Good question and I don't know the answer sorry. 

One thing some drivers employ, is to stick the whip behind them, and up in the air, at or above head (helmet) height.

This usually keeps the trailing horse an extra yard behind the driver employing this tactic. The extra yard can sometimes make all the difference in a close finish.

You often see trailing horses get their snoz all over the driver's helmet in front of them. It can anoy the sh!t outta the driver. Not allowed to do the reverse head butt these days, but the ole stick the whip up in the air, behind the helmet trick keeps the trailing horse back a bit. Some of the smarter drivers do this on a regular basis. Not the reverse head butt, but the whip at head height, but held under the arm trick. 

Edited by Rusty
Incorrect jargon used. Bloody horses nose from behind was annoying me.
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A lot of Palmy visitors from south are "on the market".     Chmeil sends horses to Arna so maybe he uses Palmy as a stepping stone.     From my observations Palmy seem to be doing pretty well under the present climate - make posts in Facebook for instance and generally let the public know what's going on.     More than can be said for others.      Will be interesting to see what support Stratford gets from participants in a couple of weeks.   I hope they do well but whether the club wanted it or they were again shafted by the HRNZ/TAB etc Thursday not an ideal day - in the past they have run on a Saturday or Sunday.     Good luck to a very friendly club who appear to be the victims of the codes/governments plan to shaft the sport.

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