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A competitive race with a tight finish. Can’t see much wrong with it.
So long as you didn"t have a bet though DJ! I just hope the mugs supported it!Its called the food chain!
A competitive race with a tight finish. Can’t see much wrong with it.
So long as you didn"t have a bet though DJ! I just hope the mugs supported it!Its called the food chain!
Twas a desperate contest.
Winner now 2 wins from 28 runs
Runner up 0 from 11
After paying for transport, jockeys fees and winning % , how much does the winning owner come away with?
The opening race at Kempton tonight, a Class 7 handicap worth £1365 to the winner exemplifies all that is wrong with racing.
Blackpool donkies racing for rosettes would carry that lot
No it doesn’t. It shows that even the lowliest of nags gets a chance to shine.
At the lowest level of semi professional football, the players probably don’t have much left after travel expenses & the like. Doesn’t put them off though does it?
So long as there are owners willing to pay the training fees for these stumblers, who are we to deny them?
The opening race at Kempton tonight, a Class 7 handicap worth £1365 to the winner exemplifies all that is wrong with racing.
Blackpool donkies racing for rosettes would carry that lot
No it doesn’t. It shows that even the lowliest of nags gets a chance to shine.
At the lowest level of semi professional football, the players probably don’t have much left after travel expenses & the like. Doesn’t put them off though does it?
So long as there are owners willing to pay the training fees for these stumblers, who are we to deny them?
But they perpetuate the overblown surfeit of mediocrity and dross that constitutes UK racing.
They are only there for the bookies benefit
Exciting progeny of Galileo and Bernadini ready for seasons to come, the absence of the salesquake predicted by ranks of doomsayers, enthralling title battles, Dream Ahead, Frankel, Master Marvel, Native K, Saamidd, the Dewhurst, the Racing Post Trophy, the Ces, the reincarnation of record breaking Derby winner Workforce, Goldikova and Zenyatta, the last vestiges of summer in the air and Ascot and York on their way…
…I love horse racing. What else you gonna do?
Lingfield,
The winning owner would nett £1065 on that prize money. Some of the racing costs -jockey, lad’s expenses- are fixed, but the biggest cost of getting a horse to a race is usually travel, so it depends how far the horse has travelled as to the total costs.Based on the prices I pay for a horse trained in Newmarket, total costs specific to that race would be around £550, so the nett gain to the owner would be about £565. That doesn’t include the owners’ expenses in getting there, hamburger and a drink (whatever), or farrier and vet costs which may be specific to getting that horse into that race.
Training costs do vary by trainer, but I would budget for £20k a year all in per flat horse for, say, seven runs. To put it into perspective, hypothetically, the "gain" to the owner in that race would be about 0.3% of the horse’s annual cost, based on the above figures and the prize money for that race.
It is perhaps no wonder that the number of owners and HITs are declining significantly and that trainers are boiling up to boycott races.
Whilst I have been a racing fan for most of my life and my wife and I have owned horses for a good many years, as things stand I see no alternative to an escalating and eventually dramatic decline in horse racing ownership in this country. Germany and Italy, relatively speaking, are very good examples of what happens when the betting operators effectively run racing.
richard
Class 7 Handicaps and $4000 claimers make up the "bread-and-butter" of racing. Even if only the best mares were bred to the best stallions, the vast majority of the foals would still be mediocre horses and they need somewhere to run. Also, many horses at the very bottom levels of horse racing are barn pets who trainers either don’t want to, or more likely can’t get rid of. I recommend reading
Not by a Long Shot
by T. D. Thornton which is about the 2000/2001 season at Suffolk Downs but applies to most cheap racetracks, it gives you a sense of how/why the connections of these horses get by.
Miss Woodford; have you ever read Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley, which chronicles the downward spiral of Justa Bob, and the upward spiral of some of his more illustrious peers? Imo the best racing novel ever written [not that I’ve read many fictional books on racing].
Miss Woodford,
Thank you for that info and I too will try to get hold of that book. Out of interest, roughly what percentage of the class of races you mention are they of all horse races in the USA?thank you
richardThe opening race at Kempton tonight, a Class 7 handicap worth £1365 to the winner exemplifies all that is wrong with racing.
Blackpool donkies racing for rosettes would carry that lot
No it doesn’t. It shows that even the lowliest of nags gets a chance to shine.
At the lowest level of semi professional football, the players probably don’t have much left after travel expenses & the like. Doesn’t put them off though does it?
So long as there are owners willing to pay the training fees for these stumblers, who are we to deny them?
But they perpetuate the overblown surfeit of mediocrity and dross that constitutes UK racing.
They are only there for the bookies benefit
So what?
I’d watch Kempton every week if I had Racing UK but I’ve got ATR & they have Wolverhampton so it’s no big deal.
If you think it’s dross, don’t watch it or pay attention to it. It’s not like it’s the law.Would you rather we have a traffic jam to the knackers yard?
(To answer the question, no I’m not sick to the teeth of racing but I am sick to the teeth of people whinging about it)
Miss Woodford; have you ever read Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley, which chronicles the downward spiral of Justa Bob, and the upward spiral of some of his more illustrious peers? Imo the best racing novel ever written [not that I’ve read many fictional books on racing].
No, but Jane Smiley has caught a lot of flack because she dumped Waterwheel, a horse she wrote about in
A Year at the Races
, lame and pregnant, at an auction where she sold to slaughter. In said book, which I was unlucky enough to read, she buys some crappy horses, finds a trainer willing to take them, relies on an animal communicator to help "train" her crappy racehorses, characterizes racetrack people as sleazy old chain-smokers, and generally comes across as a gushing horse-crazy woman with more money than sense. That’s my Jane Smiley rant.
Miss Woodford,
Thank you for that info and I too will try to get hold of that book. Out of interest, roughly what percentage of the class of races you mention are they of all horse races in the USA?thank you
richardClaiming races represent about 70% of all horse races in the US. About 25% of all races could be considered "lower-level" claimers under $10,000.
Yeah, I’m really bored by the game at the moment too.
I follow the racing news but have not watched a race in a couple of months, can’t even remember my last bet either. The collective urge to compare present champions (and even seemingly every Group One winner) with the past really frustrates me.
Maybe the jumps will bring me back.
Thanks to those who responded to my post.
It doesn’t sound like the £201 gross for third place in the Kempton race will cover too many expenses.
Richard Hannon isn’t too far wrong when he commented that horses at the bottom of racing’s food chain may as well race for rosettes.
I note that certain trainers are talking about boycotting tracks or races (will never work- remember Dunnett and the attempted Yarmouth boycott). Gary Moore said that he would never become a trainer now and that he has lost I think it was 8 horses to France where prizemoney is better.
Why do owners persist with low grade horses? Ego, an expensive hobby, give a pet a home, more money than sense, access to inside stable info?
As regards the current floodlit fare at Kempton and Wolves, I think that there has been some interest because Hanagan and Hughes have been there.I’m a racing fan and I’ll have a quick scroll of the cards there but have no real interest in bad horses ridden by second raters. Some national newspapers either don’t publish the card or it is abridged. To be honest I am in full time work and don’t have time to read all the cards and form as there is so much racing.
In the wider scheme of things, my view is that there is too much racing and the product too diluted. I wouldn’t organise trucks to the glue factory but it is obvious that there is overproduction of horses (see recent yearling sales) and stallions unworthy of standing or support.
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