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I haven’t seen the new plans but the water jump has to go if there is to be a joint jump track as you can’t have a portable water jump. I wouldn’t have thought it feasible to drag the portable fences across one of the flat tracks so the only place for the jumps track would be on the inside where the current hurdle track is. When not in use the fences/stroke hurdles would be stored on the infield. There is a portable version of an open ditch but I would think that the current layout of 5 in the back and 5 in the home straight will be unworkable unless the track is wide enough for them to bypass the last in the straight as at Huntingdon and Ludlow for instance.
I agree that it will be the midweek NH meetings that will get he chop – so those autumnal days when the true jumps lovers would form 80% of the crowd will disappear. The Friday night summer themed meetings are hideous to attend unless you are there with the intention of getting p**sed – these are the meetings so close to the executives heart. Q the trotting out of "they are a great way of introducing new people to the races". No, they are a great way of ensuring that racing lovers will stay away to be replaced by purchasers of a vast amount alcohol!!
(Edited by bear at 12:18 am on Feb. 27, 2007)
This is bizarre and ought to backfire on them, because Haydock’s jumps meetings include some terrific chases, while the Flat is largely boring.
The ground gets bad when it rains on the Flat track and you get horses spread across the course, which destroys the spectacle.
The Sprint Cup has never gripped the imagination like the July Cup or the Nunthorpe and it’s often run on soft/heavy ground.
They may rake in more cash from the booze brigade, but the track will slide backwards in terms of prestige, and 10 years down the line they’ll wish they hadn’t done it. I hope.
Quote: from bear on 12:14 am on Feb. 27, 2007[br]I haven’t seen the new plans but the water jump has to go if there is to be a joint jump track as you can’t have a portable water jump. <br>
According to the RP the water jump and its hedge will remain.
Wonder how the ground will cope with a combined jumps track?
Echo the other thoughts in your post. Rather ‘enjoyed’ Tellwright’s cringeworthy words “In the summer, we get a large Friday evening crowd watching relatively modest Flat racing SUPPING champagne" – presumably in plastic pint pots
Boye: The ground gets bad when it rains on the Flat track and you get horses spread across the course, which destroys the spectacle.
The Sprint Cup has never gripped the imagination like the July Cup or the Nunthorpe and it’s often run on soft/heavy ground.
I think the idea is to make more fresh ground available by having two flat tracks, so in theory this would be less of a problem.
However, I agree with Drone that this may then cause the same problem on the jump track. Not a fan of portable fences either. <br>
Today’s RP gives an explanation of simple economics.<br>Crowd of less than 3000 attended to watch the relatively expensive to stage Peter Marsh Chase NH meeting .Also competes against sporting events such as football, rugby league etc. taking place in the North West. <br>Conversely crowds well in excess of that turn up to get lashed up at its mundane flat meetings in summer, especially in the evening.
Just read the racing post. If anyone had any doubt that NH racing in this country is doomed, they have now had their card marked.
If Tellwright thinks there are 7 inch drops behind each fence I would suggest he knows as much about his racecourse as the marauding drunks he and his cronies are so desperate to attract.
RIP Haydock Park – long live Chav Downs!
Very interesting thread this. I haven’t read the RP article, but there seems to be general agreement that Haydock’s decision has been driven by economics.
Haydock is one of many courses where the fences seem to have become progressively smaller/softer in recent years. Newbury hasn’t offered much resistance since the late 70s, Kempton/Newcastle fences are now pretty appalling and Ascot doesn’t look as formidable since the alterations. Even Cheltenham (what have they done to the ditches?) is a shadow of its former self. Apart from Wetherby/Wincanton, is there a "stiff" jumping track left?
I am old enough to remember the days (in the 60s and 70s!) when "soft" fences were almost the exception, rather than the rule. I even remember Doncaster having really tough fences. No one should have any quibble about the importance of equine welfare, but populating courses with portables does not address that issue at all.
Dark days for NH racing – wonder what Ginger McCain thinks of Haydock now?
Properfences,
Welcome to the forum, it seems your user name was made for this debate! :biggrin:
Thanks Aragorn. Just felt compelled to contribute after watching the De Vere Gold Cup – was hard to tell the fences from the brush hurdles!
Ok, I reckon that I’ll be in the minority here and say that I have never been a great admirer of the National Hunt racing at Haydock. The fences have been too stiff in the past for a horse to jump fluently and naturally. There have never seem to be that many runners in the chases at Haydock so maybe the trainers share my view?
I cringe sometimes when I watch a chase at Haydock when the ground is heavy as the horses seem to really struggle to jump the final fences and quite often fall, refuse or get pulled up. I also dislike the long run.
Also the atmosphere when watching on TV at Haydock gives me the impression that most of the racegoers are roudy and drunk and could not care less about horse racing and only go there for a good booze up.
(Edited by SwallowCottage at 2:52 pm on Feb. 27, 2007)
I tend to agree Swallow
Its a slow horses course. Always seems to be heavy with horses out on their feet at the end
But the flat racing often seems to be endless sprint handicaps (well it seems that way)
Apart from Chester, its the only grade one course ive not visited though
I agree with you Swallow on the ground, but I think that this, more than the fences, explains the small fields. I must admit, though, that I have never been to Haydock (am from Belfast), but my impression from TV is that there are relatively few fallers at the course. I have never felt that the fences look particularly stiff, compared to say Cheltenham or Ascot a few years ago, although the drops are tricky. I just fear that if drop fences are seen as unacceptable, what chance is there for Aintree?
Looks like the future of racing lies either with subsidised betting shop fodder meetings taking place in front of two men and a dog, or drink-sodden weekend chav-fests.
Read the excellent article on this topic by Lydia Hislop in tomorrow’s Times.<br>
v, i was just going to say the same thing:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/ … 449335.ece
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Kempton’s all-weather racing â€â€Â
Excellent points made by Lydia Hislop.
If the water jump is to stay, the width of the flat course at the finish is surely not going to be any wider than it is currently?
I accept that summer Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons are going to be more profitable, and I am well aware that National Hunt meetings are more costly than putting on flat programmes, but for the north’s so called premier dual-purpose course to reduce the area of ground reserved for jump racing by 50 per cent…
How many of the country’s dual purpose courses have their Flat racing subsidise their National Hunt racing? The vast majority if not all, I would guess.
Nottingham and Windsor grabbed the financial carrot in the 1990s and deployed the axe, but I think this is potentially more noteworthy and serious to the future of the jumping code.
Quote: from Drone on 5:27 pm on Feb. 26, 2007[br]Correct me if I’m wrong but haven’t Lingfield actually introduced – or re-introduced – more NH fixtures over the last few years.<br>
<br>Yep, I think there was one season where they had none at all, then a couple with no more than four, but as far as I understand both the local public demand for the product and – broadly speaking – NH-sympathetic management ensured a fuller resumption of the winter code at Leafy.
Certainly getting some of Ascot’s fixtures during its rebuild did no harm to the overall thinking – my sole visit to the track was for the Totesport Chase meeting there (Iris’s Gift and all) in 2005, and whilst it wasn’t packed to the rafters, it wasn’t exactly three men and a dog either.
I note in the calendar that Lingfield’s NH season extends to the penultimate week of March this time around, so the length of its season is growing sooner than it is shrinking, evidently.
Jeremy<br>(graysonscolumn)
<br>Jeremy<br>(graysonscolumn)<br>
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
The following is an excerpt of a posting I put on my Thatracingblog weblog back in October, having watched Haydock’s first jumps card of the season on RUK:
<br>Away from the racing, much of the talk at Haydock’s first jumps meeting of the autumn concerned the appearance of three portable fences down the back straight, representing phase one of clerk of the course Kirkland Tellwright’s plans to phase out the course’s famous drop fences.
Tellwright’s interview in the Racing Post in April indicated this was a necessary development, as Haydock strives to "maintain tradition and move with the times". It is also the hope that a repeat of instances such as the omission of three fences at one meeting last year can be avoided hereafter by resiting the new portable obstacles away from false, waterlogged or frozen ground as necessary.
All well and good, and the new obstacles appeared to pass muster when schooled over by some of Ferdy Murphy’s string earlier in the year. In the heat of battle at full speed, however, the early signs today are that they do not constitute the same challenge as their antecedents, with a number of animals getting away with one or two more liberties than would have been the case hitherto.
Of more alarm is the fact that a phased introduction is being persevered with. There are inherent risks in having one set of fences on the course softer (as these certainly appear to be) than others; horses don’t know the difference between one and the other, and run the risk of being tricked into thinking, for example, the mistake they got away with at the last ditch in the back straight won’t be any more punished if repeated at the ditch in front of the stands – which, for the time being at least, remains as big, black and stiff as ever before.
How should the introduction of the portables have been performed, assuming it needed doing at all? All in one fell swoop, preferably. Haydock’s chase course is separate from the Flat equivalent solely in use from May to September, so there was surely never going to be the same issue as with some other tracks – whose jumps courses are in more continuous use around the calendar – of there being insufficient time to replace every fence between the Swinton Hurdle meeting and today’s.
Another alternative might have been to have had all the portables ready at once and in use on the hurdles course – with all chases on a card being run first, a la Southwell – so that an extended period of testing under race conditions could have been undertaken, but given the course’s propensity to getting very heavy underfoot, what state that would have left the ground in by the middle of a wet winter doesn’t bear thinking about.
For the time being, then, we have this halfway house situation, and I’d be keen to learn what difference, positive or negative, there is to the percentage of fallers around Haydock’s chase course come the end of the season, and how much that may be realistically attributable to the new obstacles. The Lancashire venue will never not be a galloper’s track, but let’s hope its status as a proper jumper’s track need not be placed in too much doubt hereafter.
<br>I don’t think it adds a lot more to what’s been said in this thread, but I have to say I hadn’t expected so many of my worst fears to be realised so quickly – and then some.
"Never not be a gallopers’ track" – even that is put into doubt now.
I hadn’t planned on going to Haydock for the Red Square Final on April 7th, but have every intention of doing so now to have one last, dewy-eyed look at the course in its "true" state. All very sad.
Jeremy<br>(graysonscolumn)<br>
(Edited by graysonscolumn at 9:40 am on Feb. 28, 2007)
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
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