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Has racing been brought into disrepute this afternoon? Are the going stick readings we have been given for Folkestone correct?
This is the going description given on the BHA site.
FOLKESTONE – Flat (Updated:26/06/2009 at 13:27)
GoingGood to Firm, Firm in Places
(GoingStick: 8.8 on Friday at 13:00)
StallsStraight Course: Stands Side
WeatherForecast: No measurable rain overnight, showers this morning
with heavy downpours expected.
WateringWatered
There is no mention of selective watering here. Moreover, there is no distinction between the going on the stand’s side and far side, which there usually is. The public would therefore be under the impression that the going on the two sides was uniform.
Surely the HRA should be desptaching one of their 52 security people to the course to check the going stick readings on both sides of the course and verify they are essentially the same. I have a feeling the public may have been put away badly here.
I’ve just seen ATR and have found out, after two of the three straight course races have been run, that it’s 8.6 on the stands side and 9.8 on the far side. That equates to a circa 30lb differnce! Given that in previous meetings the stand’s side had a 20lb advantage, that’s a 50lb turnaround due to the sabotage of the track that they tell us about after the race!
Paul Struthers, what do you intend to do about this?
Three races three boilovers. Who benefits from that I wonder?
I will be watching the racing authorities’ response with interest. Paul Struthers claimed that Clerks aren’t advised to water out draw biases. If that’s true I see no reason why they should hold back in this instance. If they do hold back, I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.
Glenn reminds me of the boy who cried wolf …. one day he will be ignored when he is actually right.
Today could be such a day.
I have long been uneasy about the way clerks approach watering, I would like to see "natural" ground and artificial watering should only be carried out on safety grounds to make the racing surface safe.
There is no justification, whatsoever, to water ground in such a way as to try and counteract a draw bias. Even more so when that very watering actually flips the bias completely instead of evening things out.
To further compound the matter no advance information is given about this change in watering approach.
It is actions like this which bring racing into disrepute. For the goodness of the sport the BHA must announce an immediate enquiry and in the meantime all such selective watering should be banned.
Some tracks do have a bias, however most punters are aware of the bias, bookmakers are aware of the bias and it is factored into calculations on both sides.
Do not mess about with it – it is extracting the urine, doing racing a diservice and does nobody any favours.
What next – will Chester flood the inside five yards to make sprints fairer?
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Like all genuine biases, there is a logical reason for it, and Folkestone probably owes its to the ground being more compacted on the inside rail by the amount of traffic on it. Not just horses, but ambulances, stall movements, patrol cameras, etc, all add to this by travelling round the inside rail, making it a must, on anything but unevenly watered ground, to gain the advantage offered by the fastest part of the course.
No problems with that when its evident for all too see, but to water the bias out without informing Joe Punter is tantamount to changing the result of every race run on it, and it isn’t just Folkestone that are doing it.
Beverley do it for some meetings, and it also appears to be happening at Hamilton; it’s wrong, and it’s high time that course officials, and the BHA, took on board that they have a responsibilty to inform the public, fully and before the fact, when they intend to do it.The Clerk’s defence that he was watering to make ‘safe’ ground is made all the more curious given they have raced on much quicker ground there already this season.
To misquote Daniel Hannan. Whenever a racing official cites safety as the reason for something they sound like a Brezhnev-era apparatchik giving the party line. We know it’s not the real reason, they know it’s not the real reason and, what’s more, they know that we know it’s not the real reason.
The only real genuine safety initiative I can recall being introduced recently is the order to ride to your draw for the first part of the race. This is because a bunch of jockeys veering sharply upon leaving the stalls is dangerous. How does making the opposite side of the track to where the stalls are placed faster improve safety? Surely it does the opposite by encouraging jockeys to all veer sharply right at the same time.
In that the BHA post the information on their website in good faith (sic) they are being misled as well. Should they not be instructing COCs to give them full, accurate and up to date information at all times.
The governance of this sport is unbelieveable.
In fairness to Neil McKenzie Ross he did put this information in the public domain 40 minutes before racing, granted not much consolation to morning and lunchtime punters.
The bookmakers tip sheet are claiming a big scoop of course but it’s more down to the diligence of that particular "Live Reporter" Graham Dench then any editorial policy as the live reporters cant be arsed to even get a jockey going report half the time.
I’ve found Neil McKenzie Ross very helpful the few times I’ve emailed him, he certainly doesn’t come across as a put away merchant although clearly he’s overdone it yesterday bigtime. There are a few of his colleagues at other courses who are a lot less open about what their doing with their watering cans.
The BHA should look into this and report back. Is it any wonder punters are piling into other sports and casino games these days. At this rate "Ben" won’t be sticking around too long…..
I think Ben left the building earlier this week. The final straw was The Tatling getting beaten by a well punted stablemate that had 35lb to find on official ratings (in this case The Tatling’s rating was one he could run to – he’d started fav off it LTO).
He watched in disbelief at how much harder the winner was ridden and then someone told him ‘but that’s alright, Milton Bradley said on some obscure blog or pinned some notice to a weighing room to the effect that The Tatling wouldn’t be whipped, so that makes it ok.’
He watched in disbelief at how much harder the winner was ridden and then someone told him ‘but that’s alright, Milton Bradley said on some obscure blog or pinned some notice to a weighing room to the effect that The Tatling wouldn’t be whipped, so that makes it ok.’
If you look at the form of the 12-year-old this season the whip has hardly been used on him at all, as it seems to make little difference nowadays.
It is not as if it is a secret and has even been referred to in previous analysis comments.
As far as I am aware there is nothing in the rules to say a horse has to be beaten.
Now if all Ben is interested in is seing a horse whipped for no reason then, frankly, I will be quite happy if he stays away.
Do you have to look for some twisted conspiracy in every race you watch Glenn?
I wasn’t talking from a personal point of view I was talking from Ben’s. It wasn’t me that saw a conspiracy it was Ben.
He was watching ATR and he heard the presenter claim that there appears to be a plot afoot, with the easy-to-back favourite’s stablemate being punted off the boards.
Ben turned to me and asked what the presenter meant. I said, ‘Well you see, we don’t believe in conspiracies in this country. We’re not like those paranoid nutters abroad who couple horses from the same connections to alay any doubts amongst the punting public and to quell any temptation to conspire to cheat punters. Did I tell you that British racing is the straightest in the world.’
Mackenzie Ross is back and he’s planning to kill two punters with one stone.
He’s gonna attempt to remove the draw bias on Lingfield’s turf course and as a ‘by product’ of this selfless act he’s had to reduce safety limits to 14 (could be raised to 15 pending an inspection by Dale Gibson or Kevin Darley).
This guy must be 1.01 for the BHA Board.
Is that the one who said Ayr was perfectly safe as horses fell down on slippy watered ground?
300 cheers for Hazel!!!
Where was the training and inspection by BHA at Ayr before?
Where was basic common sense?
What if the broken tines come up and cut through a horse’s hoof or a jockey falls onto the tine?
(job for a metal detector ?)
BHA and the rogue courses may well be flouting Health & Safety Management Law unless it removes these risks to a level of as low as practically possible.Racing at Ayr had to be abandoned (13 July 2009) as seven horses were involved in a horrific pile-up, leaving jockey Joe Fanning with a broken collar bone. Balwearie, the first horse to slip on the home turn, broke his jaw.
Clerk of the course Katherine Self, who left her post after the following meeting, said: "
We feel that we did everything
in our power to ensure safe, good to firm ground, that is my responsibility".
"We watered on Thursday and Friday ahead of heavy rain being forecast
for Saturday morning when we got 7mm – we also shallow slitted the bend to give it some grip which we do before every meeting and the jockeys agreed that we do it."Hazel: Any attempts to remedy the compaction had long since been abandoned. I found the verti-drain sitting in the shed – the groundsmen were afraid to use it as some tines had been lost on the course and it had never been repaired"
On July 13 2009, she was shadowing departing Clerk, Katherine Self, at a busy summer meeting and, anxious to get a closer look at the course, headed for the home bend. There, she found herself at the centre of a major drama when a seven horse pile-up occurred as the field turned into the home straight.
Running rail specialist, Dan Grigg of MK Surveys, studied the rail alignment on the home bend, and pronounced that the radii of the bend was not only too acute, but also continued to decrease as the runners rounded the turn.
"Ideally the bend should be at its tightest early on and then become more sweeping, otherwise you are asking the horses to do the impossible," explains Hazel.
New courses have a bend radii of a minimum of 135m, and Ayr’s round course now has 146m but, at the time of the accident, it was just 100m.
"This, undoubtedly, was a factor, although some courses have even tighter bends than that," says Hazel. "Jockeys had commented on how tight the bend was – it was a matter of the angle being slightly wrong each time the rail was moved,
and getting progressively worse. It is ironic because, unlike many courses, Ayr has plenty of space to create a more sweeping bend. We can still provide fresh ground with the gentler turn and there are no issues with camber.""The course was being mown when there was no grass to cut, which was causing compaction – cores tested at the European Turfgrass Laboratories Ltd. in Stirling showed how bad this was.
Whilst it is common practice to cut frequently to encourage vigorous growth, I proposed that we should cut less often, and against the direction of racing, so that the sward was facing the horses."The divot mix was another area that needed addressing; Hazel had it tested at the same time as the indigenous soil and the results were not encouraging.
"The pH was too high and the mixture was too high in clay based fines, which restricted drainage and could have led to the surface capping," she explains. "Green shoots would appear and then just die back; there was a crossing area on the course that clearly showed the impact of this divot mix."
Coupled with the acidic indigenous soil, it meant poor growth, particularly on the jumps course, and a ‘slimy’ feel to the sward,
so Hazel switched to the divot mix used at Hamilton, after analysis for compatibility. Verti-draining was also beginning to have an impact on the jumps course. "There were no worms in the top three or four inches of the first sample core,
now they are all through it which is great to see. Worms are free aeration!" says Hazel. "I decided to wait for the results of soil analysis before choosing a fertiliser regime as the course had always been over-fertilised
," she explains. "It was too acidic, with too much nitrogen. We should be aiming for good root development and a hardy sward rather than a flush of growth." "We took the groundstaff to the European Turfgrass Laboratories to see the research that had been done for the course and then on for a pub lunch; no-one had done that before and it made them feel appreciated. I now have a happy and motivated team and that counts for a lot."
At the final meeting before the Ayr Gold Cup festival, Hazel briefed the jockeys on the measures taken, and the greatest vote of confidence came from Robert Winston, who had been injured at the course two years previously. "The jockeys said that the course was riding tremendously. This was against the background of considerable scepticism from the racing media – they were looking for a story.
Hazel Peplinski’s experience as Clerk of the Course at Ayr Racecourse, where she was on secondment from her regular role at Hamilton Racecourse.
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