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Just wondering does anyone actually genuinely like this muck
For me (And just me) it hightlights weak and brainless, yes brainless jockeys, terrible horses and cheating trainers.
I justed watched a race there at Suffolk Downs where the jockey of a 3/5 favourite gave the field a 22 length start turning down the back straight.
Not sure how anyone can justify that sort of behaviour??
Another thing if you want to bet anything above £200 the pools are so weak that the market will dilute making your bet in some cases pointless..
And to top it all off, Jason Weaver, great jockey, terrible tipster and ive never seen anyone so biased in defending jockeys, he wont discuss anything that has an ounce of negativity attached to jockeys.
On the one hand aslong as he is stuck presenting that programme we wont have to listen to him talk about ours so every cloud and all that…..
Just for me I think the American racing is shocking, Thank god they decided to retire Sea The Stars!!!!!!
Can’t comment on Jason Weaver and do not follow Suffolk Downs but I do like American Racing (as I work in it!)
Pools are a problem at some tracks for sure, but there’s lots of clever ways to play the horses here.
What do you find shocking among American Racing in particular?
Craig.
Pretty dire stuff – identikit tracks, no middle distance or staying races, an appalling attrition rate, tiny fields and the drug rules in America are a disgrace.
I just don’t see the attraction of it.
As I occasionally point out on this forum, horse racing in America is in catastrophic decline, it will be virtually non-existent within 10 years, and there’s little sign of any leadership forthcoming to come up with an alternative business model for the sport. Still, they’ve only had around 30 years to come up with something, so we mustn’t be too critical I suppose.
At least, everyone now knows that ‘racinos’ and slots have proved to be a total disaster for the sport and that the huge subsidies to which racing has become addicted in America (and Canada as well) are now coming to an end.
(I read the other day about a recent weekend race meeting in Ontario where a ‘crowd’ of less than 500 bet a total of $8,000 on a card with a total prize fund of $80,000 – madness)
I watch some of their big races. Apart from that i don’t have much interest. Too many horses not seeing the trip due to the pace and not enough finishes down to the wire.
To try and address some of the points made here:
To Venusian:
Drugs: No arguments from me here. Drugs and race horses should not go together.
Attrition rate: Varies a lot from track to track. This year at Arapahoe Park, in 36 days live racing there were two fatalities. One was shortly after the start and even now I am not sure what happened as it was obscured from the commentary box. The other was a horse who had been eased down but certainly was striding out ok and somehow just tripped over its front legs. Got up…fell back down and sadly stayed down. However, there are tracks who seem to get one every 2-3 days.
Growth: Three main problems here. 1. Many State Governments change too often and so too does their attitude to the sport and they make it tough to make real progress because of appalling bureaucracy solely designed to bilk money out of the industry. 2. Management at many tracks do not have faith in their product, yet are amazed when the public do not. 3. Management know the price of everything and the value of nothing. It’s never worked before and will not work now.I do not think tracks are identikit but that is the way racing has evolved in the USA. Thetide is starting to turn, at least out west, from less sprint races being written to more 1 mile races – there is a definite move towards that from the horseman, at least in Colorado.
To be allowed a boast. Arapahoe Park, a minor track really, think a Pontefract or a Hamilton Park, increased handle and on track attendance in 2009. Purses are to be increased around 50% next year thanks to the tracks management successful lobbying of the State Government to pass a bill that freed up more wagering $ to go to horse racing and we have added three more race days to the schedule.
To Mick:
Honest jockeys and trainers outrank dishonest ones by 99/1 and dishonest ones are very quickly made unwelcome.
To Graeme:
I see and call a lot of races that go down to the wire.
Craig
I love the sport. Bet on it every night. I heartily recommend it. The original tro…er…poster highlights a race he thinks smells a bit. I can count ten at Folkestone from this season alone – the one won by Zowington where the clerk of the course had deliberately altered the going to eliminate a bias is one obvious example.
US racing is possibly straighter than British racing because of the high prize money, it’s relatively simple because of the homegenity of the courses and the stereotyped way many of the races are run, and the people who run the racetracks are a lot nicer.
And you can something to eat for a couple of quid, unlike Newmarket: my wallet is still bleeding.
I find dog racing slightly more interesting,yankee racing is so boring, all the tracks look the same, only ever had 2 bets, one a tip on a pat day horse years ago it won at 50/1, even that didnt convince me to take an interest.
Because of the geographic nature of racing in America tracks have to run long seasons as racegoers generally attend only their local course. Therefore the bulk of their racing is low quality.
However the way to view racing is a bit like the dogs over here ie only look at the open races – which are called Stakes races in America.
They have a fantastic portfolio of Stakes races – mostly leading up to the Breeders Cup races on 6th/7th November.
It is fallacy to say that there are no middle distance races for, whilst they are scarcer than here, in October(for example) there have been the Joe Hirsch Turf Classic, Canadian International, E.P. Taylor, Flower Bowl, Yellow Ribbon, Turf Championship etc all at Grade 1 level over 10 furlongs or more.
Yes horses can run on Lasix but the use of steroids is banned in most states now and on the way out in most others.
The tracks are similar in that they are all flat and left handed but some are huge like Woodbine (with turf outside Polytrack) and Belmont whereas others are much tighter. Santa Anita is a rarity in that it has a downhill turf chute.
The biggest bug bear I have is in the lack of variety of distances – I wish they would bring in more sprints – particularly on the turf – and not run so many races (particularly for 2yos) at around 8-9 furlongs.
Quite hard for horses to be laid out for a gamble in the States compared to here. In Britain we have a system based on handicaps and handicap ratings whereby horses can be trained to win off a specific mark. In USA their main system revolves round claiming races where horsemen put in their claim before a race. Therefore you risk losing your horse if you mess around with them too much.
Funny how all the things people want here to make racing "straighter"; better prizemoney, a fairer handicapping (claiming) system, no laying of horses allowed, they already have in America, yet US Racing is all bent according to some
Good replies from the people who know what their taking about.
Drone:
In general race days are down.
At some places they are the same and at very few they are increasing…
Craig
I must say I am not a fan of USA Racing. For me it looks bent as too often odds on shots run extrodinarily poorly which I cannot have. The drugs situation makes me even less comfortable with placing my hard earned cash in such a sport..
It’s funny, a lot of the things Europeans complain about US racing, the Americans complain about in reverse. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard Americans dismiss European racing as "they canter around for a mile, then sprint the last quarter… why don’t they just have 2f sprints?". I think each of those attitides displays a lack of understanding and appreciation for the other.
American racing is about speed, and always has been, and not just the sprints, but even at classic distance the perfect horse is the horse that can sustain their speed over a distance of ground. Just look at Secretariat’s Belmont victory, he goes out in blazing fast fractions and sustains that for a whole 12f. You have to admit that is an amazing feat. I suppose you could dismiss it as wasteful, he was 30 lengths in front, why not ease up and canter home? But that’s not what American racing is about, he had a clock to beat.
There are times when you wonder about their obsession with the clock, if they wouldn’t be better off just running time trials. But speed and time are a large part of how they measure a horse.There’s not much variation in courses. I admit that that can be a bit boring. But that’s just the way it is.
A lot of the "problems" with US racing, small fields, short distances, drugs, etc can be chalked up to trainers and owners. They have a lot more power than their counterparts in Uk and Ireland. They like small fields, it’s easier to run in the money. They like short distances, because it’s easier to train a horse to go 6f than it is to go 1m4f, less time consuming conditioning to build stamina. You basically train sprinters by sprinting them. It’s also easier to race back in a shorter period of time off a shorter distance, less recovery time. They run on drugs like lasix and bute because the former means you can race a bleeder and therefore not lose your investment and the latter means you can run a sore horse that would otherwise need time off and not be producing. Those are both things owners and trainers want. Don’t kid yourself that owners and trainers in the UK and Ireland wouldn’t run on either of those drugs if they were available. They just don’t get to call the shots to the degree they can in the US.
The attrition rate is higher. That’s a combo of an emphasis on speed and racing on a surface, dirt, that is incredibly tiring. A tired horse going flat out is more susceptible to break down. Still, the attrition rate is less than half that of NH racing, which most punters in the British Isles seem to be able to live with. In fact I’ve seen studies that have the fatality rate for Bumpers as higher than dirt racing.
US racing does offer more information to the punter regarding past performances and timed workouts etc. The former can give you a fairly accurate idea of how a horse tends to run by just looking at numbers on paper, without having have had to see the horse run with your own two eyes. I think timed workouts though have to be taken with a certain grain of salt. For one they are still hand timed in this day and age (why they can’t use chips in saddle cloths like they do in HK and Japan I find strange, this is 2009 after all, when even a local showjumping competition at some village fair can be timed to one hundredth of a second electronically). Plus, unless you actually saw the workout you have no idea how hard the horse was running, whether they were in full flight when the clock was started, how well they galloped out afterwards, or on what part of the track they were galloping on, in the middle of the track or close to the rail, all can make a huge difference. Not to mention that the clockers can, and do, get horses mixed up, with so many going around the track each morning. or if an unscrupulous trainer calls out the name of different horse.
I also saw that race at Suffolk Downs, I am not willing to place my money in the hands of brainless jockeys.
Even if you have never ridden a horse you dont give a 22 length lead. The jockey did not even try to close down, the jockey seemed happy to let him have that lead.
Im not saying English racing has great jockeys as it really doesnt but USA raacing has a lot more negatives..
Or has it remained stable(ish) for many years?Or is it now in decline?
Here are some figures from the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities site:
1996
: 67,101 flat races, 219 jump races, 64,700 harness races.
2007
: 51,132 flat, 172 jump, 56,148 harness.
If I could press you further V, do you know if that figure for 1996 represented a peak following rapid growth through the ’80s and early ’90s?I’m really just trying to hatch an idea that the boom and slow bust of racing there may foretell what will happen here, under the premise of ‘America leads the world follows’.
Though I realise the structure and financing of the two racing jurisdictions are not a straightforward like-for-like and hence may not be susceptible to the same problems
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