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Hope Ffos Las get it sorted to their advantage.
If we are to lose 80 fixtures the place to start is surely all weather in the summer. AW was supposed to be about guaranteeing winter sport – not providing bookie fodder 360 days a year.
Isn’t AW bookie fodder 360 days a year our great leaders plan for getting racing out of the mire???
Lord, give me strength!!!!
If that’s true then it’s seems pointless opening it in the first place.
Just like Great Leighs. There is not the demand to warrant new courses atm as I see it. Plus, with prize money dropping faster than NHS budgets, who wants to go see donkeys race for £1300?
So everyone has been screaming for less fixtures for years, and now there is going to be. Great course it may be but in the great tradition of redundancy, it’s ‘last in – first out’
It’s a shame if the place does close, it certainly wouldn’t be top of my list for the axe.Maybe racing would be better served if all the people making calls to the BHA going ‘we want less racing, we want less racing’ had actually been more honest & said ‘we want less racing at Lingfield, Wolverhampton, Southwell & Kempton.’
It’s much easier to cry ‘less’ than it is to offer an alternative.
There was a thread not so long ago where people gave their opinions of "if one (or more) courses had to close, which ones would you be less sorry to see go" or words to that effect. Can’t remember anyone saying Ffos Las.
The "All weather" could be cut back, especially in summer. But that’s not all (imo).
I agreed with Slipperytoad. Bath was top of my list of Southern courses to go.
Brighton every time for me. What an effing dump.
Crap racing on a racecourse more suitable for BMX trials.If that’s true then it’s seems pointless opening it in the first place.
Just like Great Leighs. There is not the demand to warrant new courses atm as I see it. Plus, with prize money dropping faster than NHS budgets, who wants to go see donkeys race for £1300?
True, but my understanding was that Great Leighs had exceptional prize money for the grade but what killed them was less cuts to the levy & more to do with the course providing facilities in the form of a stand in the centre of the course where for most of the race you couldn’t actually see a string bean.
It’s no wonder they didn’t get the footfall.
From what I’ve heard, Ffos Las is the opposite. Decent crowds, good facilities etc.
If that’s true then it’s seems pointless opening it in the first place.
Just like Great Leighs. There is not the demand to warrant new courses atm as I see it. Plus, with prize money dropping faster than NHS budgets, who wants to go see donkeys race for £1300?
Not sure of the flat program but A.P. McCoy and other jockeys on the. national hunt scene was impressed by the track when trying for the first time. They also deemed it worthwhile to run the Welsh champion hurdle on it.
If that’s true then it’s seems pointless opening it in the first place.
Just like Great Leighs. There is not the demand to warrant new courses atm as I see it. Plus, with prize money dropping faster than NHS budgets, who wants to go see donkeys race for £1300?
Not sure of the flat program but A.P. McCoy and other jockeys on the. national hunt scene was impressed by the track when trying for the first time. They also deemed it worthwhile to run the Welsh champion hurdle on it.
I’m not debating that Ffos Las is a very decent course, but apart from the Welsh Champion the racing is not much better than you might see at Bath. But I don’t see them wanting to decimate the Bath calendar.
Maybe the location is the sore point? Itis
kind of out the way for anyone other than a resident of west Wales right?
If you live in Aberystwyth you are fine, but would you travel there from Hereford? Gloucester? Nope, you are spoiled for choice already with a plethora of other racing options.It would actually be quite a trek from Aberystwyth as the we are not talking fast dual carraigeways but twisty single carraigeway roads. (Example – it takes best part of an hour from Aberystwyth to Cardigan which is about 36miles).
It’s probably the location which has had a hand in the small fields which seem to have plagued the track.
guys im not sure you all understand the problem here, the BHA only own 80 fixtures since the oft report the racecourses bid for and now own the remaining fixtures, the BHA have no juristriction over the other 1400 fixtures. 16 of the fos las fixtures are BHA ones fos las bought the remaining 12 in the bidding process im not a supporter of the BHA but what else can the do to reduce fixtures which we all think should be done
It would actually be quite a trek from Aberystwyth as the we are not talking fast dual carraigeways but twisty single carraigeway roads. (Example – it takes best part of an hour from Aberystwyth to Cardigan which is about 36miles).
It’s probably the location which has had a hand in the small fields which seem to have plagued the track.
I know what you mean, when I drove from Pwllheli to tywyn it took bloody ages, my GPS took me past a lonely goatherd on a remote hilltop road lol
Not sure of the flat program but A.P. McCoy and other jockeys on the. national hunt scene was impressed by the track when trying for the first time. They also deemed it worthwhile to run the Welsh champion hurdle on it.
The "Welsh Champion Hurdle" is (or was last year) a Class 2 race and not a pattern race, though, so at this point it’s just a race with an historic name. That’s one of the reasons it wasn’t restaged when the meeting was abandoned in 2010.
No matter how impressed people were by it, is the size of the fields backing that up? I had a look back from the beginning of June til now. In 9 meetings (I may have missed one) only 3 races had double figure fields and most seemed to be that 7 runners or fewer that the BHA are trying to do away with.
Part of Walters plan was to get the Irish over. In 2009/10 Gordon Elliott sent 8 runners over. Last season it was 6. He’s not sent any (yet) this season, even though he’s sent more runners (65) to Perth than he did in the last two years and his first runners to Hereford (ever? Since 2007/8, anyway). Walters said the economic downturn had affected the Irish attendance at the course, but is it more than that?
I wouldn’t want to see Ffos close but in the end I agree with Bob Davies. How can you put together a business plan that relies on you getting almost 50% more fixtures than you can be sure of?
Hopefully Walters will secure enough fixtures at the revised bidding to allow the course to continue, but perhaps he needs to rethink his plans for the course.
btw, I do tend to agree regarding the AW. It was meant to help prop up betting revenue in the winter, not be 12 months a year, and if the BHA had more control over the fixtures I’d hope that would be the dross they’d chop… Although it does seem to pull in the size of field that they’re aiming for.
I do just wish people would stop referring to low grade horses (which is the majority) as dross and donkeys and the like.
It’s just as well there are enough true racing fans still around at the pointing tracks and Plumptons of this world.
Someone asked who wants to go and watch the "dross" well thats not how i’d describe a 0-90 handicap hurdle, but I think you’ll find they’re more true racing fans at Plumpton on a cold monday afternoon than their are during the whole Royal Ascot meeting!
Sorry I know thats not what this thread is really about. As for Ffos Las, I found it to be a friendly little track on a visit earlier this year. I was a little disappointed with the facilities for such a new track, it did rather look like it had been rushed and not properly finished. It would be a shame if it were to go, although given the start up costs, you would rather think they would have come to some sort of legal agreement for at least the first 5 years with regards to fixtures.
Would you rather I call it ‘bookie fodder’ Robert? Anything to keep those bums on seats in the High Street taking 2/1 about bad value 5/2 shots.
In an era when any new initiative within racing plc tends to be greeted with cat-calls and derision, Ffos Las stands nearly alone as a success story, and to lose it would be the greatest of shames
I haven’t been there, have no idea how successful their business model is proving to be and can only comment on the NH fixtures but in its short life I’ve grown to like it a lot.
A fine big galloping track that nevertheless doesn’t seem to unduly favour a certain type of horse; what appears to be excellent turf on going not prone to extremes; the fences seem sturdy and well-distributed; horses travel sweetly; and clinically, if perhaps most importantly to this punter it is very friendly
A Newbury/Doncaster/Kempton/Wincanton hybrid. Can’t be bad
Good luck to them
If we are to lose 80 fixtures the place to start is surely all weather in the summer. AW was supposed to be about guaranteeing winter sport – not providing bookie fodder 360 days a year.
I couldn’t agree with that entirely. I’ve espoused on these pages a few times now that if any revision of artificial surface racing in the summer is to ensue, then it should avoid reduction of fixtures at Southwell and indeed maybe even increase them slightly.
In the face of a prolonged dry summer, and with resultant fast conditions prevailing on turf Flat courses, Southwell has a role to play as a summer refuge for slow- / deep-surface animals concurrently. Currently, however, the Rolleston venue can offer just 11 Fibresand fixtures between May and August, and none at all during September. That seems a bit on the thin side to me.
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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