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A profoundly depressing report:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/ju … -cuts-2012
Although the discovery that the bookies main man is called ‘Dirk Vennix’ suggests that they have now added virtual spokesmen to their virtual racing.
AP
Alan , many thanks for link , one thing you can be sure of is , loads of low grade.low funded , bingo racing , bookies will have an endless supply of this
What was the world’s greatest racing has/is being dumbed down aided and abetted by the horsemans group , as the more they drive for extra funding for category racing , the more the courses duck it , and supply below par racing with prizes that are lamentable
what a shambles
Ricky
- Total Posts 17716
Loved this bit:
Asked to identify the flaws in the present system, Vennix pointed to "a lack of evening racing on Mondays and Tuesdays during the winter; two rather than three fixtures on Mondays, Tuesdays and Sundays in the summer and gaps between afternoon and evening racing". He also foresaw racecourses being subject to penalties for every race they stage which attracts fewer than eight runners.
Not just virtual, also clearly from a different planet.
Whilst Vennix’s identifying of the thinning of Sunday fixtures during the summer as a weakness finds no quarrel with me, his mentioning of penalties for courses putting on sub eight-runner races is alarming.
For the avoidance of doubt: is he actually foreseeing a time when courses will be penalised for these, or is he
advocating
it?
Even just a 60-second brainstorm immediately identifies a raft of races for which penalties could be imposed if that is the case;
– many Graded / Group non-handicap events,
– graduation chases,
– intermediate chases,
– novice chases containing likely Festival aspirants from the bigger yards,
– area-confined hunter chases,
– races at courses with tiny stabling allocations, yet are encouraged by other powers to host cards of seven races wherever possible (the 70-box Fakenham, for example, would have to make sure it attracted first a maximum entry, and then divvy that into seven nine, 10 or 11-runner heats to escape censure, as if that’s necessarily the easiest thing in the world to contrive),
– races at courses with a natural propensity to provide extremes of going,
– Ffos Las generally.
One of the races often cited in people’s lists of "greatest ever finishes" is Burrough Hill Lad’s 1984 King George victory. Three ran. Equally, the best finish I saw to a race last term was Little Josh and Weird Al’s dead-heat in the Colin Parker Intermediate at Carlisle. Five ran.
Conventional thinking would cherish those two small-field contests for what they were. The world according to Vennix would see them as something requiring censure (or presumably even elimination from the calendar, ultimately). Weird.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
PS None of the above represents a softening of my position where railing against trainers who under-populate certain races and then bleat about a lack of opportunities is concerned. Ideally I still want the sort of races listed above to feature respectably sized fields wherever practicable. What I don’t want is racecourses to be punished or cowed into dropping them forever if they aren’t. Quite a difference.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
Generations of punters have been indoctrinated with the mantra that what we want to bet on is ‘big field competitive’ races. Jolly good fun they may be and all that, but bookmakers know that it’s they who put caviar on their table and it’s small field races that put bread on the (wise) punters’ table
No surprise then is there that a bookmakers’ representative has the temerity to suggest penalising courses who serve up a dish of tasty sub-eights
A truly depressing and ghastly article indeed APR
it staggering that after last years fiasco over the fixture list that its happening again.
why did the bha plough on with plans for another bloated fixture list when they knew at best that funding would be slightly down?
if say on a typical afternoon you had 3 meetings 2 turf & 1 all-weather,if the all weather meeting was culled would turnover be down by a third? i doubt it.
back in the 80s my local course bath had about 10/12 meetings a season now they see to race every week!
i think there should be a drastic cut in the fixture list and if the bookmakers dont like it…..tough!Interesting stuff on the fixture list – do you know how much British racecourses are paid in the so called image rights per race?
Surely putting that into prize money would bring prize money up considerably?
Also interesting to note that for certain non-rules races the BHA set MAXIMUM prize money so should I (or anyone else) with a hypothetical 10k want to sponsor a race I wouldn’t be allowed to (these races are Point-To-Points).
Good luck to The Horsemen who seemingly are fighting a losing battle – the BHA stance of wanting levy to be decided on the basis of all horse racing (not just British) didn’t help them and it’s not surprising the bookies aren’t playing ball.
Licensing only UK based books and those who pay full levy as was rather than those offshore and block access to those outside the UK from UK residents would be one way of increasing the levy somewhat – sadly this would need government intervention which as we’ve already seen isn’t something they want to get involved in.
Martin
The problem is that for those seeking to reduce or trim the fixture list, there are three powerful groups whose desire and interest seems to be more, not less, racing:
1) The racecourses: – racecourses want to stage racing. There are various reasons but one might be they can’t get enough non-racing business to survive. Uttoxeter stages racing while it rebuilds its fences, Bath stages races even though it doesn’t have a functionning round course as happened to Newcastle last year. Courses can get away with murder and are still allowed to race and charge fortunes for food and drink fleecing the customers and not caring about genuine racegoers.
2) The bookmakers – they seem to want more racing. We are told racing is a declining proportion of their take but it must still be important. Let’s charge them £400k per race and see how valuable it is. In my High Street (East Ham), there are 10 betting shops already and another is on the way. The bookmaking industry (outside the Independents) is awash with cash – it supports racing like a vampire supports a bloodbank.
3) Trainers, Owners and Jockeys – fewer opportunities to scrape a living foe those already struggling yet other industries in this country have been allowed to die (mining, ship building) so why not cut back racing? Those involved in the product won’t do anything.
So, there we are – more racing, more eight-race cards, more dross until or unless we start running out of horses. No one will face down the above vested interests so there’ll be another 1.500 or so opportunities for the three groups above to make some money and gouge the punter.
Bath stages races even though it doesn’t have a functionning round course as happened to Newcastle last year.
Neither does Newmarket but it never seems to trouble them!
No one will face down the above vested interests so there’ll be another 1.500 or so opportunities for the three groups above to make some money and gouge the punter.
By and large the majority of punters are basically collectively stupid as they lose their money and keep coming back with more! But then presumably if they don’t do their money on racing they’ll do it on something else, football coupons, 49s, two flies crawling up a wall, raindrops running down a window or whatever.
Rob
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