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Can someone explain why we have 3 all weather meetings and no jump racing tomorrow. I do not understand it. We are in the middle of the jump season with no jumping, yet we have a load of 0-55/65 races on the all weather.
To give all travelling staff from Jumps yards a rare day off in what must feel like a 24/7/365 profession at times?
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"That’s something they absolutely deserve, ID. And much more than the occasional single day off. It’ll annoy the hell out of me if it’s a day I could be watching the racing on but I’ll have to accept it for the good of others.
I think it was Milton Harris on Luck on Sunday two weeks ago who talked about how he has more morning riders in his yard than others, so his staff (a lot of whom are young) aren’t pressured as much and get to enjoy their life a bit more. His attitude was that you can’t make every day a good day, but if you have more good days than bad days the staff will reward the stable in the long run, and they’ll be happier themselves, which is what it’s about.
Any industry where the people in it, especially young people, see the game they’re in as their love and passion is ripe for exploitation. And for someone against the wall it’d be hard to resist doing so. They have to resist, though. Churning through people who’ll put up with everything because they love horses can only end in a bad way, and along the way there’ll be a big documentary on the BBC or something of 16 year old boys and girls, worked to the bone and then shat out.
Rest and relaxation can work wonders if it is used sensibly. If you take it to extremes though and relax the whole year round you can actually lose the will to work completely.
Quite a few people like myself are saying goodbye to Xmas this weekend and finally going back to the daily grind. It’s terribly hard after more than a month with your feet up. I am solidly behind the stable staff.
I don’t think giving stable staff the occasional long weekend should be conflated with “extremes” or them “relax[ing] the whole year round” and “actually lose[ing] the will to work completely.”
Given so many Sunday meetings in recent years, why does anyone race on a Monday now?
Perhaps it would be good for the industry, and the public, to have a day off, especially a day that most people barely spend any attention on?
And for those meetings that are set for Mondays, well, transfer them to Sundays (better attendances) or Tuesdays (if they must be in the working week).
Or (and this is probably very true), am I missing something? Apart from the poor impoverished betting industry, of course.
Good point, QF. I think they should have a day off and why not on a Monday? Stable staff surely have personal matters to solve, like all of us. Why not give them the chance to have a less stressful time?
I think a few blank Mondays in the winter would be a good idea but not in the summer. I don’t expect Windsor would be very pleased about giving up its lucrative Monday nights.
I agree with CAS.
On the one hand, the occasional winter (had it been frost across the land today it would have been hailed as clever race planning) Monday off gives industry staff a welcome break.
On the other you enter this 24/7/365 entertainment industry with your eyes open – or should do – and expecting the likes of Windsor to reformat a proven successful business model isn’t reasonable.
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"I’d have no problem with a six-day racing week but the idea that a designated nationwide day off would give travelling staff a welcome rest is somewhat wide of the mark isn’t it?
I stand to be corrected by someone with a database but I’d be pretty confident that few (no?) stables have runners entered seven days a week, all season; therefore, travelling staff, particularly those employed at the smaller yards, regularly have days that don’t involve hitting the highways and byways: ‘days off’ that are presumably spent engaging in the eternal grind of feeding, grooming, riding out, mucking out… which continue regardless of whether there’s racing or not
Given this unremitting claustrophobic daily grind within the walls perhaps the prospect of a day out at the races with their charge is welcome: a change is as good as a rest
Drone, granted that I didn’t work for long in a racing yard, I felt very much the way you suggest. I used to enjoy the trips to the racecourse, not quite like having a day off but a definite change of routine. Not sure whether the staff doing evening meetings at a course far from home feel the same way though.
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