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Surprised no-one has commented on today’s news that Newmarket have moved their "Future Champions" raceday to the Friday before Ascot’s Champions Day. Is it only me who thinks this is totally bonkers? How about all the people who have to work on Friday and are going to miss a great day’s racing, why not move it to the Sunday or better still why did they have to move the meeting at all?
Reading the report on the Sporting Life website http://www.sportinglife.com/racing/news … nd-created this looks to be the idea of Rod Street, which explains it all really.
Can’t wait, I’m looking forward to it already.
I’m glad it’s on a Friday, I’m sick to death of all the good racing being shunted to a Saturday.Why not book a days holiday, that’s what I do if I want to go somewhere on a particular day.
I agree with yeats. Too much racing is concentrated on Saturdays- holding a top-class meeting on a weekday is a good move and hardly an insurmountable problem for those who really want to attend.
If this is Rod Street’s swansong he’s saved his first euphonious tune for the encore
A good idea, and that Friday and Saturday promises to provide the best of both worlds as presumably the Cheltenham October meeting will continue to be run on those days too
However, the moving of the Newmarket meeting from the previous Saturday does leave that day a little thin with just the rather mundane – by its standards – last York meeting and the reasonably good sorta NH kick-off at Chepstow
Which really just emphasises that the time-honoured late September/October Flat pattern shouldn’t have been tampered with in the first place
I’m not convinced. Isn’t this rather a case of putting all (or most) of ones’ GP1 eggs in 2 baskets?
Let’s imagine it absolutely pi$$3s down and renders one card (or both)unraceable. What then? Switch them all to Lingfield on a Monday?
Is it fair to deprive those racegoers who can’t get to either of these 2 days of the opportunity to see a GP1 race? Better to spread them out a bit surely.
A days racing should be able to get adequate crowds / TV coverage / sponsors etc. with just one top Gp1 race (okay, chuck in belting handicap as well).
The "Breeders Cup – "all-top class" cat was let out of the bag by the yanks, and the UK, in trying to mimic it only highlights how lacking it was and still is in original thought.
I’ve banged on about this before, but one of the main shortcomings of the UK flat season (as far as those who like to actually GO racing are concerned) is that nearly all the GP1 races are concentrated in the "Golden Triangle" of S.E. England. Okay, there’s a few at York and Doncaster (and that sprint at Haydock). But why-oh-why, when some initiative to relaunch racing in the UK is tried, can’t the powers-that-be think outside the South East of England? (The yanks shift the Breeders Cup around tracks so it’s not that revolutionary an idea.)
Why not a GP1 at Newcastle? Or Ayr? Or Hamilton? Or Chester (you’ll get the crowds there all right – even if 90% of them are legless), Or Wolverhampton? Or Leicester? etc. I could go on (and often have).
I wish the initiative well, but I just hope they don’t have a really bad spell of heavy rain (not unheard of) and realise they’ve got no f***ing room left to shift ALL those GP1’s to other fixtures.
Oh well, maybe they could could transfer them to Longchamp!Stand to be corrected but I can recall just one day being abandoned at Newmarket: the Friday of the old 3-day Houghton Meeting (of blessed memory) featuring the Dewhurst, in 1987 and that was because it fell the day after the ‘Great Michael Fish Storm’ and the place was littered with debris, not due to waterlogging
The concerns about the ground at Ascot in mid-October have been voiced on here before, and that does pose a distinct threat. Do recall the old Cornwallis meeting which used to be run on the same Saturday as the final York meeting I mentioned above being run on heavy ground though not being abandoned, but wouldn’t be surprised if it had been
Given the welcome flexibility the BHA display nowadays (unlike in 1987 when the Dewhurst was lost for good) it’s quite possible Newmarket could be readied to hold Champions’ Day on the Sunday in the event of Ascot being lost on the Saturday; and whoopee, the Champion Stakes would be back at its rightful home: Across The Flat at HQ
Other than that I too believe that a surfeit of Group 1 races shoe-horned into two days is too gluttonous a feast be that on successive days as planned or a mere week apart as now, and repeat again: there was nothing wrong with the old Autumn Flat pattern; infact it was as near perfect as I and suspect many other ageing codgers could have wished for, as was most of the Flat season of my youth and middling years, except for the barren gap ‘twixt Lincoln and Craven meetings which has always been broken but hasn’t been fixed, of course
… there was nothing wrong with the old Autumn Flat pattern…
It may have taken a couple of centuries to have reached this perfect state of affairs, but I bet that none of those involved in its evolution had a degree in marketing.
Drone, if I remember right wasn’t the 1987 Dewhurst saved and moved to the Saturday card?
I remember the stands side having marker posts after the rails had been blown away by Hurricane Michael Fish!
Incidentally, with Newmarket moving to the Friday before Champions Day does that leave the way free for Cheltenham to move their "Showcase" meeting to the week before?
Also, where does the Ces fit in with this?
Drone, if I remember right wasn’t the 1987 Dewhurst saved and moved to the Saturday card?
Also, where does the Ces fit in with this?
I’ve checked and the Dewhurst wasn’t re-run. The only other year it wasn’t run since inception in 1875 was 1939 shortly after war broke out
If the schedule remains the same as in 2012 the Ces will be run on the Friday, which is hardly ideal as these big handicaps are what should be run on a Saturday, not a plethora of Group 1s
In any case, even when on the revamped Saturday of last year the famous old slog sat rather unhappily, lost and alone amidst the concentration of pattern races
It’s all a balls-up, I tell you
I thought the primary RFC objective was getting more people to come racing, and showcase the major events. Quite how this is achieved by moving a day from Saturday to Friday I can’t understand. Going to both meetings this year is easy, next year will be more difficult from a travel and holiday perspective.
So ‘in stupid idea!
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