Does the Racing Post do ANY factchecking?

[Miss Woodford]

Let’s count how many things are wrong in this article
http://bloodstock.racingpost.com/news/b … g/1028021/

THE Kentucky Derby provided the connections of the winner I’ll Have Another with a first prize of $941,677 – an amazing return on the $11,000 he cost as a yearling.

The bargain-buy colt is a second-crop Classic winner for the Three Chimneys Stallion Flower Alley.

Standing at $7,500 this year, compared to $25,000 when I’ll Have Another was conceived, Flower Alley bears striking similarities in fee to Proud Citizen, sire of Oaks winner Believe You Can. Proud Citizen stood at $25,000 in 2008 and covers at $7,500 this year.

Like Believe You Can, I’ll Have Another is the sole winner from his dam, the Arc mare Arch’s Gal Edith. Bred by Harvey Clarke, I’ll Have Another is the only black-type winner within the first two generations.

1. I’ll Have Another was indeed sold as a yearling for $11,000, but not to the current connections! He was “pinhooked” and sold for $35,000 in a 2yo-in-training sale to Dennis O’Neill.
2. Flower Alley has had 3 crops to race.
3. Believe You Can’s dam El Fasto has two other winners besides BYC.
4. Arch’s Gal Edith is by Arch, not Arc. Yeah, yeah, it’s a minor typo, but come on, the mare’s sire is in her name.
5. Perhaps the most glaring error – Arch’s Gal Edith’s 2 other foals of racing age are both winners. Her first foal, the lightly-raced 5yo Those Wer The Days, is in quite a nice runner. He has a record of 6-5-0-1 His sole loss was in his debut. He most recently won a $50k allowance at Belmont on April 13. Her 2008 gelding When Willy Win has a record of 15-6-2-4, with 3 wins in 5 starts so far this year.
6. The impression that the RP is trying to convey of a nameless, cheap pedigree is wrong wrong wrong. This is a classy old Widener female family, tracing back to the classy matriarch Patelin. This is the family of horses like Roanoke, Pleasant Stage, Marsh Side, Pleasant Parcel (winner of the Radnor Hunt Cup and My Lady’s Manor-gotta mention him!)-not quite the rags-to-riches situation they’re looking for.

[CarryOnKatie]

In answer to your subject question – probably not. Too busy trying to think of ways of charging for access to data which is free on other websites!

[ricky lake]

Racing post is a busted flush nowadays Katie , just forget it , try the Sporting life , its a much better deal , and free

Its only a question of time before the RP folds IMO

CHEERS

Ricky

[CrustyPatch]

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve lost count of the number of times the Racing Post has misspelled Iain Mackenzie as Ian Mackenzie or Ian McKenzie (and then spelled Lee McKenzie as Lee Mackenzie).
Even the Boy Wonder, Lee Mottershead, did it recently. We’ve also had commentator Alan Howes spelled as Alan Howells, Alan Hawes and Alan Halls (Howes is on Twitter, for goodness’ sake, and the Racing Post are obsessed with recycling people’s Twitter musings).
I once, after one mistake, considered emailing the editor about the spelling of Iain Mackenzie in a bid to be helpful but then I thought that if the Boy Wonder (the reporter of the year), his immediate superiors, the sub-editors, the proof-readers and even the Editor himself as a final check don’t know the correct spelling after all this time and don’t pick up the mistake and correct it in his copy, then why should I bother?
If they’re not sure of a spelling, why don’t they look in their archive (and choose the correct spelling) or Google the person involved? It’s a basic rule of journalism that you check the basics and there’s nothing more basic than getting someone’s name right.
In mitigation, of course, Mackenzie (sorry, McKenzie) is a new name to racing and has only been around for a mere 40 years or more.
I’ve also noticed that they sometimes don’t correct the wrong spellings of the names of all sorts of racing people — and grammatical mistakes — written by readers in letters. Again, laziness and complacency.

[Author]

Posts