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4x 6 runners
1x 5 runner
1x 7 runnerWhats the point of these small field cards?
Surely if there is not enough interest to fill the cards then we need less meetings until an appropriate number of competitors enter the scheduled events.
I think its about time reserves were used in all races where less than 12 runners turn up on the day. If there are not enough runners then scrap the card. Its pathetic.
Will this meeting even be screened or will another mysterious nationwide hitch appear? What’s the betting?
With no picture payments winging their way to the course a few people will be feeling hungry tomorrow!
The AW horse population isn’t as large at this time of the winter season as earlier. With the turf Flat season only a month or less away, most Flat runners are being aimed at that.
With no 2-y-o races on offer and only a limited population of 3-y-o ready to run this early, it’s down to the older horses to make up the numbers and there just aren’t the numbers.
It’s probably reasonable to argue that by early March, there should be fewer AW cards and more NH cards unless we get a late cold snap. The converse is probably true in November.
I’m the last person who’ll ever call for less meetings because by some arbitrary measure (i.e from people who don’t like AW) there’s ‘too much racing.’
But these small fields are starting to become too common so I wouldn’t complain if there were less AW meetings come late Feb/early Match 2012.
Maybe the fact that today’s card at Southwell realised 81 runners from six handicaps, a claimer and a seller, only one of them better class than Class 5, counter-suggests that there are still enough artifical surface runners to be enticed out at this time of winter if the right races are framed.
It is noted that Lingfield has attracted 76 for a seven-race card tomorrow, and I’d proffer Kempton’s total of 66 for a similar programme would have been better still had another handicap replaced the (very) minor conditions event.
Life in the sand season yet…
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
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