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Marb sounds like someone who doesn’t worry too much about the going. If the favourite has won a couple of races then everything must be ok.
I laid Sakhee’s Secret quite substantially earlier in the week – I simply thought he was too short. So, from a selfish point of view, perhaps I should be celebrating the fact that Haydock messed around with the ground, even if I am not entirely convinced that was the reason for the horse having run below form.
But I’m not. If Clerks of Courses continue to play around with the ground in this manner it may cost me in the future. It will undoubtedly cost others who are even more likely to become disillusioned than am I.
There need to be proper guidelines for watering and descriptions of going, proper independent monitoring of the situation and proper penalties for getting it wrong.
Marb any argument you make that disregards the opinions of one of the biggest owners in the game, senior jockeys and trainers is no argument at all.
I laid Sakhee’s Secret quite substantially earlier in the week – I simply thought he was too short. So, from a selfish point of view, perhaps I should be celebrating the fact that Haydock messed around with the ground, even if I am not entirely convinced that was the reason for the horse having run below form.
.Why do you think he ran below form, prufrock?
Really, whichever way you look at this, bookmakers gain. They gain if people lose confidence in racing and move to betting on other sports .
I don’t agree with that at all. Making horse racing unattractive, unpredictable and frustrating for punters won’t help bookmakers in the long run and obviously won’t help racing either. Racing needs to stop shooting itself in the foot and bookmakers need to wise up to the fact that horse racing is a valuable product that needs nurturing….
Perhaps my wording was not quite right. I should have emphasised ‘off-course’ high street bookmakers, rather than all bookmakers, and rather than gain, I should have said, ‘won’t lose out’.
I think bookmakers have diversified the betting opportunities offered to the public to such an extent that they can cope with a steady decline in betting on horse racing. However, I did not mean to imply that they see this decline is seen as a positive thing; rather, they would like to see an increase in turnover from any source or product to contribute to profits.
There need to be proper guidelines for watering and descriptions of going, proper independent monitoring of the situation and proper penalties for getting it wrong.
Precisely..as i advocated earlier, this could be managed in the same way as cricket pitch inspections
Well, my strictures about the big bookies and their groups, sounded a bit OTT, in that, as far as I know, none of them belong to the Carlyle Group or is an off-shoot of Monsanto, but the psychopathic cynicism of Ango-American capitalism and the corporatism we so enjoy is, nevertheless, of course, perfectly true.
but the psychopathic cynicism of Ango-American capitalism and the corporatism we so enjoy is
As if French, German or Japanese capitalism is some how superior
And anyway….the alternatives are?
Not enviroments where we be allowed a bet (let alone contribute to fourms)… i would imagine
I thought you bet regularly in France, Clivex, and as far as I know they do in Germany and Japan. As in the US, no bookies, perhaps.
If you want to learn about different formulations of capitalism, I strongly recommend The State We’re In by Will Hutton. It was a best-selling paperback, and very accessible to noddies like me.
Also, look up J Edward Demming on Wikipedia and Total Quality Management by the same author.
Ironically, after WWII, as well as Demming, MacArthur laid the foundations of Japan’s post-war prosperity in some key ways which would be totally unacceptable in the US. For example, the income of the CEO of a company would not be able to exceed the lowest paid worker’s by more than a hilariously low multiple, in the light of the 18000 times + that now obtains in the US after the far right has plundered the country.
Scandinavian capitalism has to be the end of the rainbow, though. Ironical when you think of the Viking empire of the middle ages. Social evolution. Their Norman brothers, here, have never, alas, aspired to it.
Why do you think he ran below form, prufrock?
There are a number of possibilities, including that he wasn’t quite right on the day and that the going was not ideal.
It should not surprise anyone if a horse runs 12 lb or so below its best – they are not machines and we don’t always know for sure why these things happen.
Just wanted to point out that I am certainly not talking through an empty pocket (which was the accusation levelled at those who have been critical in this instance) when I say that I am also not happy with the situation.
You can use a degree of randomness and unpredictability to your advantage when punting, but no-one wants it to become a lottery, surely.
I bet on Hellvelyn at a fair price, but fortunately only to a small amount. No, it’s the injustice of it all.
Why were the trainers not notified in advance? If it was too late when they were able to decide, then it should have been too late to water in any case. If bookies are able to exert authority over the upkeep of the course and its officials, it’s like putting a fox in charge of the hen-house. A surprisingly common phenomenon, if not even the rule in the US, now, under Bush, particularly in terms of regulatory bodies.
Ive read "the State were in" and like a lot of will hutton’s writings, I found it a bit muddled and full of bluster
The CEO to lowest paid worker earning ratio is hardly the most significant economic indicator. I think Japan in particular , should be more concerned about all the other stats which clearly show how far they have fallen back in the last 15 years
I think the loose ground was a factor is Sakhee’s Secret being below form, but also think a lack of cover could have contributed to his downfall. His least impressive runs have been at Ascot last year where he raced freely out wide without cover, at Newbury this year when he was held up out wide and obviously on Saturday where he didn’t get a great deal of cover out wide.
I laid Sakhee’s Secret quite substantially earlier in the week – I simply thought he was too short. So, from a selfish point of view, perhaps I should be celebrating the fact that Haydock messed around with the ground, even if I am not entirely convinced that was the reason for the horse having run below form.
.Why do you think he ran below form, prufrock?
John Francome on C4 clearly stated prior to the race that both Sakhee’s Secret and Hellvelyn looked ‘underweight’ compared to earlier in the season. I think (but not certain) he put both up as Parade Ring Negatives.
On the contrary, it’s probably THE most important indicator of SOCIO-economic strength.
What is the good of having a country in which its sociopathoic leaders (the norm, incidentally, altough inevitably worse when far right wing) claim that the country has never been richer, while its material and social infrastructure has been deliberately neglected for their own enrichment.
Are you too young to remember a half-decent society, instead of the one we have to day, with hundreds of thousands of homeless people? The highest rates of drug addiction, binge drinking, knifings and shootings by youngsters, suicides and single mothers among the young, in the whole of Europe. Primary school children raping and sodomising each other? Official unemployment figures a travesty of the truth? Inadequate pay levels, stolen pensions and the discontinuance of company pensions?
I honestly don’t know what world you live in Clivex. You must be a relative youngster, but even so.
We’re taking sides, marb, over the clear nature of our unfetttered capitalism, in which the wildest dreams of avarice, by very definition, can never be assuaged, but its cheerleaders (I don’t mean Clivex, here, but capitalism’s prime movers) will continue to try to do so at the exense of the rest of the population.
And the direction it is taking us in is becoming ever more ugly. Imagine emergency workers being violently assaulted on their rounds, doctors and nurses being routinely attacked in hospitals and on their rounds! I mean how farcical is that? It’s beyond parody. Yet under Labour, REAL LABOUR, their media myrmidons had the lying gall to claim that we were looked upon as the Sick Man of Europe! Only by their corresponding financial snakes-in-suits, as one psychologist has described the psychopaths who disproprtionately tend to reach the highest positions, both because of their narcissism and idolatry (avarice), and because theyre more than prepared to cut corners and do the unthinnkable.
If you look at the history of the world, right up to the present day, it’s difficult not to be struck by the evident fact that it is largely the history of the ministrations of the worst, most cruel psychopaths.
In fact, it never ceases to amaze me how many of the far right wingers -"historians", etc, who readily fulminate about the late Saddam Hussein, seem to think Henry VIII was a great character, and there seems to be a never-ending supply of books and TV programmes about him. Good King Hal, the serial killer of his pitiable young wives. The banality of evil seems to escape them.
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