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Cook’s fundamental point is right. Last Saturday’s racing was poor fare and I wasn’t sorry to miss it.
I am not sure he offers much in the way of a solution. I doubt the races he mentions will be moved back to the dates they were on ten or twenty years ago. The John Of Gaunt was moved from Haydock to strengthen the Derby card, which was criticised for being poor and lightweight after last year’s meeting.
It is not quite what Chris Cook had in mind but as we head into June, the summer and the lightest nights of the year, was it really necessary for both of yesterday’s evening meetings to be run on the all weather?
Then again, looking at the state of some of our Turf courses, maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea after all!
“Cook’s fundamental point is right. Last Saturday’s racing was poor fare and I wasn’t sorry to miss it.”
I disagree CAS, there is far too much emphasis on Saturdays. How many races have been shunted onto a Saturday at the expense of midweek? You correctly point out last Saturdays racing wasn’t the best but how many Sundays throughout the year have worse? There was already sufficient big races on a Saturday without moving a lot more.
How exactly did The Ebor benefit from moving to a Saturday?
It’s just another race on the conveyor belt of big races every 5 minutes, with little build up or analysis after it, that it used to get. And that’s not mentioning any other sporting events it might have to compete with on a Saturday. As said previously it’s even had to go split screen with micky mouse selling hurdles on Racing Tv more than once.
Obviously Chris Cook is positively drooling on Super Saturday (July Cup & Magnet Cup Day) I’m afraid it doesn’t do it for me.Let’s hope Cheltenham don’t make the same mistake that Epsom & York have made and move The Festival to Weds-Sat
Would it be too difficult to create a new set of Group flat races at a couple of racecourses that doesn’t feature them? Carlisle isn’t a bad track at all. It certainly has potential to host group races. Chepstow is another
What a genius idea, let’s just create more group races so we can all pretend we’re watching top class racing every weekend.
Of course we would just be watering down the sport even further, with more small fields, enabling owners and trainers to avoid the competition and gain cheap black type for their horse.
Fortunately, I don’t believe the Pattern Committee would contemplate such folly. If anything we need fewer pattern races.
Let’s get a grip please.
....and you've got to look a long way back for anything else.
The only racing related things I associate with Chepstow are
Five fences in the straight
The Welsh National
Loads of Class 5 racesI know what you mean, yeats. Racing has arguably become too Saturday centric. Aside from the Ebor, a greater casualty in York’s season is the old Magnet Cup. Not so long ago, it was the feature race on its Saturday. Now it is completely lost in a “Super Saturday” where the main race is the July Cup. Which also hasn’t benefited from being moved to the weekend (it was on a Thursday when I first attended the July meeting in the mid 1980s).
I think there is a balance to be struck. Whether we like it or not, Saturday is the main leisure day of the week when many people are not in work. While not wanting the midweek to become neglected, it must be possible to offer weekend racegoers something better than last Saturday’s dross.
It is inevitable some Saturdays will be stronger than others but Cook is right to highlight the poor nature of last weekend’s offering.
Racing from Carlisle last Saturday wasn’t that bad. Three competitive handicaps shown on ITV albeit the first two turned out to be not so competitive being won by a couple of well backed Wathnan horses. I would rather have that type of race than some mundane Group 3 events, the Group 3 at Carlisle never interested me for betting purposes.
The more I know the less I understand.
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