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Hi all!!
Well I for one have not enjoyed this artic weather one bit over the last few weeks and according to the experts this is what they expect our winters to be like for years to come!! Is this the beginning of the end of NH as we know it??
Why dont the BHA or HRI look at the possibilty of A/W jumping??
I dont see why not, after all many trainners school and gallop their horses on artificial surfaces!!
Be interesting to hear some of your learned opinions on this one!!
As for the racing this festive season!!
Ba humbug!!
AW hurdling existed at Lingfield (on the old equitrack surface) and on the fibresand at Southwell for a few years in the early ’90s. It was deemed to cause too many injuries/fatalities and the experiment finished in 1994
There may be a case for experimenting on polytrack, as this article from 2002 discusses:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2002/ja … twoodjones
another cold snap, another call for AW jumping
It was tried on dirt at least once in the 40s or 50s, but it was too concussive on the horse’s legs on landing. Same problem with the synthetic surfaces. Believe me, if it were feasible then the NSA would be all over it. They’re always looking for ways to make jumps racing more "mainstream".
There’s also an aesthetic objection to AW jumping. Those of us who appreciate the unique character of every steeplechase course wouldn’t be too pleased with a switch to boring flat ovals. More importantly, most AW tracks simply aren’t wide enough to hold a teeming field of chasers/hurdlers.
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Whatever the case something has to be done. The loss of revenue when this happens (and it seems to be happening a lot in recent years) makes jump racing non viable.
Racing has lots of problems if you read the papers and maybe the weather is the biggest one
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One solution unfortunately might be to close some of the smaller tracks and pump more money into a lesser number of larger tracks and equip them with under soil heating etc.
For example rather than having say 40 race courses across the UK, maybe only have 10 and ensure that they can combat the elements.
There is a sand steeplechase course at Honzrath in south west Germany. It’s only used once a year unfortunately. However, the Swiss seem to have found the answer to holding hurdle races in winter – stage them on the snow in the Swiss ski resort of Arosa! You can find a bit of footage here:
http://www.myswitzerland.com/video/?id=1547
A good idea from Joncol as well regarding undersoil heating. If football grounds can do it, then surely racecourses can! My idea would be to pick half a dozen courses which stage top races throughout the winter (any more might be too expensive) – off the top of my head, I would say Cheltenham, Kempton, Ascot, Wetherby, Newbury and Chepstow. That way, you could maybe make rescheduling races that much easier, say for example if a couple of smaller courses lose their meetings, they could always be transferred to one of the ‘heated’ tracks.
I agree with AngloGerman. Have half a dozen courses with all mod cons to be used as ’emergency courses’ should a cold snap emerge. (My list being Newcastle, Haydock, Newton Abbot, Southwell, Cheltenham & Lingfield)
I have other suggestions:
A winter jumping break consisting of December & January. (except for the ‘big races’ like the King George & Welsh National) Start the jumps season proper in September & move the Cheltenham Festival to April (three day festival Tues/Weds/Thurs followed by the Grand National meeting on Fri/Sat) Of course, for the bookies sake, that would leave a massive concentration of AW fixtures, it’s a chance I’m willing to take.
I don’t know how horses would react to running on different surfaces but I’ve always thought that somewhere like Southwell could install undersoil heating on the two straights (concentrate all the jumping within two furlongs on each side) & run the flat portions on the sand.
I don’t see how closing 30 courses would help anything by the way.
Due to the issues of All Weather Jumping highlighted previously in the thread, you wouldn’t get many NH trainers supporting all weather jumps races.
At the risk of being labelled a youthist I get the impression that most calling for drastic changes to the NH season and NH courses on this and other threads are too young to remember the ‘typical’ winters of, shall we say, more than 20 years ago. This winter (albeit early and exceptionally cold) and the last have in most respects been no different to what was expected back then: snow and/or frost lingering for several weeks with perhaps short milder interludes
The winters over the last twenty years or so have, in comparison, hardly been winters at all with Autumnal clothed trees lingering on into December and Spring springing in late February
T’aint natural I tell you
No idea if records exist, but it may be eye-opening to know just how many NH fixtures have been lost (as percentage of total) each year over the past however-long-as-possible. I’d warrant a cautious if reasonably confident guess that we’ve been ‘spoilt’ in recent decades with abandonments being sporadic and periods of complete shutdown few and far between, and short.
Calls for an official mid-winter NH close season are in my view bizarre. Given the capricious nature of the UK&IRE weather you can no more say next winter will be cold and frosty than you can next summer will be hot and sunny
We also have a welcome flexibility to the staging of race meetings nowadays with extra meetings put on to help make up for abandonments when the weather improves; this did not happen when I were a lad. So assuming icebergs aren’t sighted in the North Sea come February and March the presumption is we can all look forward to a feast of NH then
This period without the noble lepping chaser has been a tad annoying, but no more than that: it’s only a game and it’s only betting
Enjoy Ffos Las, Leopardstown and Limerick. Wasn’t too long a wait really was it?
Jump races on surfaces other than turf isn’t coming back. No one really wants it and comparing exercise pace to racing pace is foolish.
The Winter Flat (my term) courses have done a lot by providing the "Bumpers for Jumpers" meetings and I’m sure if there is another cold snap there will be more meetings like this.
Undersoil heating of racecourses is ludicrous – it would be prohibitively expensive and in most winters would never be needed. You simply can’t equate covering a football pitch with covering a racecourse.
As to the performance of the Winter Flat venues, the Fibresand has done the best – Southwell is prone to fog but that’s not down to the surface. The various Polytrack surfaces have all had a few issues but I don’t think anyone claimed there wouldn’t be problems at -10 or -15c.
The loss of Boxing Day fixtures will hit some tracks very hard and it would have been nice to see the smaller tracks considered in the re-allocation of races. I hope that when the BHA is forced to respond to the clamour for more fixtures it will allocate the best slots to those courses which have lost out.
I agree with AngloGerman. Have half a dozen courses with all mod cons to be used as ’emergency courses’ should a cold snap emerge. (My list being Newcastle, Haydock, Newton Abbot, Southwell, Cheltenham & Lingfield)
I have other suggestions:
A winter jumping break consisting of December & January. (except for the ‘big races’ like the King George & Welsh National) Start the jumps season proper in September & move the Cheltenham Festival to April (three day festival Tues/Weds/Thurs followed by the Grand National meeting on Fri/Sat) Of course, for the bookies sake, that would leave a massive concentration of AW fixtures, it’s a chance I’m willing to take.
I don’t know how horses would react to running on different surfaces but I’ve always thought that somewhere like Southwell could install undersoil heating on the two straights (concentrate all the jumping within two furlongs on each side) & run the flat portions on the sand.
I don’t see how closing 30 courses would help anything by the way.
I think that is an excellent suggestion.
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Stodge
‘s post says everything that needs saying on the matter. "Extreme cases make bad law", and this year’s weather is an extreme case. Rushing around like headless chickens to make contingencies or reframe the season to allow for conditions which only occur every blue moon would be nonsense, a waste of time and money.
Stodge
‘s post says everything that needs saying on the matter. "Extreme cases make bad law", and this year’s weather is an extreme case. Rushing around like headless chickens to make contingencies or reframe the season to allow for conditions which only occur every blue moon would be nonsense, a waste of time and money.
Thanks to the posts on here from Drone, Stodge, yourself and others I’m now coming around to that way of thinking.
In all honesty (and as usual with me) I’d like to see the Festival moved to April for reasons other than the weather (namely, I don’t think the jumps season is long enough) but I accept that that idea will never make it past me saying it on here.
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When you see Poker De Sivola and Kalahari King running at Southwell during what is supposed to be National Hunt racings busy period then its fairly obvious that the current approach (hoping for the best) to combating the weather simply doesn’t work.
Fair play to Southwell and Kempton for hosting these races but at the same time it’s very sad to see
It rather concerns me the way that everything in NH racing revolves around Cheltenham. Now, don’t get me wrong on this; I book the week off work and look forward to it every year, but even flat racing isn’t totally geared around the Derby. Maybe we need more three day festivals of equal importance spread throughout the season? Can’t really start in September, because the ground would be
too firm. And can’t have Cheltenham in April because that would ruin the Aintree festival. Under soil heating isn’t a solution; didn’t the Derby County game get cancelled the other day, even though they have it? If the courses aren’t fit to run on the chances are that trainers would have problems transporting horses to the tracks anyway. Nicky Henderson had to set off at the crack of dawn for the all bumper card at Southwell earlier in the year. Don’t really know what the answer is, but I always felt this was going to be a lousy Christmas. Still, at least we’ve still [hopefully] got the King George to look forward to!
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Well the problem is that in recent years the worst weather has come in Jan and Feb so this may actually only be the beginning of long periods without jump racing.
I’d say we will have at least 2 or 3 big weekends lost in Jan and Feb as we do each year…
Something has to change
Does anyone have a rough idea how much undersoil heating costs? Would scrapping Racing For Change (and all the big salaries that go with it) pay for one or two tracks???
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