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With several meetings blighted by fog recently, we know scant regard is paid to viewers and racegoers and money drives things. There’s a little heed paid to safety, if the jockeys can see far enough ahead and the medical car can see ok, but it occurred to me what about interference and whip use? How is that accurately accounted for?
It would also be a good opportunity to give a horse a quiet ride, especially if connections were looking to get dropped a few pounds.
In one race my horse was in second then they disappeared and was nowhere to be seen when they reappeared
The more I know the less I understand.
Was at Chepstow Nathan, Madaket in the 2.10 seems he was pulled up.
The more I know the less I understand.
Aintree,Chepstow et al should have been called off.Full Stop.No consideration for punters,racegoers etc etc.Imagine if there had been an awful incident in the fog.The animal rights mob would rightly have a field day.Also how can fences be taken out due to low sun yet jumped in thick fog.
Racing is its own worst enemy.
View from the jockey’s position on a horse is very different from the pictures we see from TV cameras and what the crowd see from the stands – you can best believe that if the jockeys were having any trouble seeing the fences/hurdles the respective meeting would be abandoned immediately.
I think the only way you can abandon a meeting with fog is if they can’t see the fences/hurdles, if they can see them they will race (rightly on wrongly that it negates the spectator part of being a spectator sport).
Fog can disapate just as quickly as it appears so you could only imagine the furor if a meeting was say abandoned before the second race only for the fog to lift and the whole course be fully visable by the start time of the 3rd race.
I’ve seen a lot of flat racecards go off in fog, apparently visibility is usually better on the ground than it is for spectators. I’ve seen charts where the sectional calls and margin of victory are left blank, as long as the steward can see the order the horses cross the finish line I suppose it’s fine…
It might be frustrating for the on-course viewer; but not as frustrating as studying the form for five hours… Making the journey to the course (another hour). “Waiting for the fog to clear” (another 30 minutes)… Driving back (add another hour). Sometimes in dangerous driving conditions… All without seeing a race.
Happened to me the only time – at Wincanton.
I also seem to remember a day at Goodwood called off due to fog (or was it “sea fret”?). Only for it to clear pretty much as soon as they’d done so.
Value Is EverythingI can see why racing goes ahead and visibility is much better in real life, it has to be a real pea souper not to see fences to jump safely. But for the sake of on course and at-home viewers:
Thermal spotters give good pictures now and it would probably be easy to make some saddlecloths with the numbers in an insulating fabric to get the contrast.
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