- This topic has 13 replies, 14 voices, and was last updated 12 years, 6 months ago by
.
- Posts
What’s the longest period you have not had a bet, looked at the card or watched the racing?
I’ve just gone around 3 months of paying very little attention to racing, mainly because I lost interest and just found myself not looking at the next days cards or reading the RP for days/weeks on end.
I’ve now got my interest back in time for the jumps season and am raring to go but feels like I missed a lot.
Just wondering if anyone’s done the same?
DEEMAN
In the days of mostly 2 meetings a day and Sundays off it was easy to maintain enthusiasm and interest. Bookmakers would also take large bets at a price. You got to know all the horses and could remember most of their races. Wall to wall anything including Premiership football kills any interest in the long run – there is nothing to miss – another match / race seems to always be starting somewhere in five minutes.
Nowadays, I have totally given up any interest in jump racing not because I don’t like it but I simply do not have any time left. I never watch any televised racing – I can no longer stand the gullible, ill-informed media comment.
So much time is wasted trying to get lots of small amounts of money on – so zero enjoyment in that. The turf flat racing is so dreary today with very few stars around that it may mean that gets chucked as well, and full circle I will just go with the all-weather and Irish racing which is manageable form wise and a couple of enjoyable meetings per day maximum.
I never ignore racing. Betting? I took a year out to identify and follow trainers who had a tendency to disguise their charges ability. I am now betting again and turning a profit.
I had about 12 years away from the sport from 1996
I’d left work to work for myself and thought I’d better give up betting and buying racing papers and magazines as I didn’t know how much money I would have coming in
Surprisingly quickly after stopping betting, I stopped watching on TV…
When I took it up again in around 2007/8 I was amazed at the amount of information available at your fingertips via the internet. Betting was a wholly different game to the one I left a dozen years earlier. Women jockeys. Two racing channels on TV. Onlne betting.
Bit of a paradox here though……….in the 80s when we had relatively little information, hardly any readily available form (last 3 runs in the Post or Life) I used to bet every day
Now that we have everything we want I only bet occasionally – no bet since Royal Ascot
The main difference though is that in the old days I used to lose, now I win
I wouldn’t say that I have ever gone cold turkey on racing, but lost a huge amount of focus once I started university.
Before uni, my daily routine was:
– Come home from school about 4, turn on the laptop and watch replays of every race at every UK venue from that day.
– Update my spreadsheet of horses to follow, hypothetical profit/loss etc. (I was too young to bet and had no debit card, so ‘staked’ 1 point on every horse I would have backed)
– Look at every race for the next day in detail, using video form and notepad until 11 or 12 o’clock. Aimed to come up with a selection in every race (even bumpers, maidens and low-grade handicaps)
– Sleep until 5, then update my daily blog of best bets for the day.
– Start over.
I was thinking and talking about racing all the time, even if people didn’t want to hear it! This was definitely my most prolific time for picking winners. I could look at a list of 10 horses in a racecard and could have probably given you at least scratchy details about 7 of them by breeding, race record, ideal conditions etc.
School and college work was an inconvenience, but never tore me away from my routine very often. Skipping forward to university, everything changed. Although these broken sentences probably don’t give it away, I did an English degree! Every year started with a reading list of about fifty books and plays, plus there was a full daily schedule of lectures and seminars eating up my time – not even mentioning the regular demands of 4000 word essays. In that workload, racing took a back-seat very quickly. I still watched Channel 4 most Saturdays and skipped classes during Cheltenham and Aintree, but lost track of the daily events.
Even now that I have started working freelance and have a little more free time, I am finding it so hard to regain the commitment I had to racing. It is dispiriting to look at a card (even a Saturday one sometimes) and see a list of horses that I hardly recognise. Form-scanning takes twice as long without that old mental familiarity and it feels like such a daunting task to get back to my old level. I still love racing and am trying to get there, but it will take time.
So, Deeman, I certainly identify with what you are saying. Three months is a
very
long time in racing. Hopefully the start of the jumps season will keep your focus now.
I had a break from 1991 to 1993 having seriously watched racing since the late 60s. I’d found it harder to make a profit at the time as the market had caught up with the methods that worked in the 80s. I was watching football and rugby league during the winter and deeply involved in my cricket club during the summer, so I suppose it was a time issue more than anything.
I met my wife thorugh a social group in 1993. We were looking for a day out to be organised for the group and I suggested Newbury races. I really enjoyed getting back to racing (two decent winners on that day helped!) and have been a regular racegoer ever since, more so since moving to Scotland.
Rob
I didn’t look at the results on my phone when I was last on holiday for about 8 hours. It was tough.
Around 9 1/2 years, from the age of 0 to 9 1/2, when Red Rum finished 2nd to Rag Trade. After that it was a yearly thing. Then steadily climbed to just a few months gap until I was 18 and then…
Oh that’s not what you meant!
Since legal… In the early years sometimes had a lean spell of betting, month or two went by. But if we’re talking about in the last 20 years…
After a particularly bad losing run once or twice took three or four weeks off to rekindle the old enthusiasm and look at what I was doing wrong. Bet when feeling down and I will lose! Just can’t study in the correct way. Time away also a good execise to help prove I’m not addicted. Although I probably am addicted to "Racing" (not "gambling") so still watch the racing without a bet. I don’t back my favourite horses or anything like that. So by backing the "price" – then if I don’t study – can never say "I’d have had that"! So watching racing without a bet is relatively easy for me.
At about this time every year (transition between Flat and Jumps) I’ve tended to cut down on the amount of bets; whether profitting or not. Though it’s usually even fewer bets if on a losing run. In the past been as few as three or four bets in the whole of October. But nowadays I need to bet to have any money coming in, so can’t stop for too long.
Value Is EverythingBecause of work and family committments I didn’t really follow racing that closely throughout the 1990s, bar the major races. Having been obsessively interested during the late 1970s and 1980s I never quite gave up at any point. As the kids grew up a bit and my job changed I got more and more into racing again, and by the end of the last decade I was back where I started all those years ago, spending endless hours poring over complex calculations, spreadsheets and wild theories searching for the holy grail.
I’d say there hasn’t been a day since the mid 70s when I’ve not had some involvement with racing even if it was only talking about it..
Whether studying the form every night in the
Oldham Evening Chronicle
, catching at least some terrestrial coverage each weekend, or more recently keeping/catching up via new media, I don’t think I’ve ever gone more than three weeks without racing somewhere in my diet since 1981.
Those long stints consisted of family holidays to mainland Europe. The equivalent ones to Devon included a trip to Exeter or Newton Abbot, so business more or less as usual for those.
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.
I have ridden side saddle
for many years and many
years I just jumped off
and it was good to smell
the grass close up and see
the little crickets.
Other years I have been full on
sweating buckets in my plaster
of paris horsehead with its
customary blinkers.
It is all a question of
life balance, time, and priority.
You don’t get the time back see
YOU DECIDE !I dropped out of school at age 16; I lived for racing back then, so naturally I wanted to make a living out of it.
Six years later I realised that despite my passion for racing, work is work. The fun of being involved in what you love ran out quickly — there was no joy to be had. I was a form analyst but all that meant was analysing numbers and statistics on a computer screen all day. And when I took up journalism, all that meant was forming words on paper.
So, I resigned to take up study last year and for 9 months did not bat an eyelid at a single result. Not even Black Caviar at Royal Ascot would lift my spirits. In terms of passion, going from a full tank to drained empty spooked me enormously.
Things have changed since but I will forever keep work and play separate from each other.
The problem now is I have experience that is central to the racing industry and therefore am struggling to find work in other areas. Experiential learning in full flight.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.