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Bachelors
Think your 3yo hurdlers thread is excellent. Well written and thoughtful.
I do love a novices’ hurdle although not so much the juvenile ones. Some of the early-season Irish ones make me wince with the rawness of the jumping on show.
Mike
Wolfie pipe dream Im afraid
some good news though , more and more punters are finding the congested saturdays a turn off ….some of those will stop betting
I know 3 betting shop punters , they only go on saturdays , all 3 have stopped , reason given , too much going on , cannot possibly win !!!
I will be amazed if football betting… doesn’t tower over horse racing between now and the middle of May
Dont worry , racing will always have its support , but 20 years from now , where will its core customers come from ???,,,it will be a small part of the bookies menu …no terrestrial coverage , pay per view ,or pay racing channels , in an industry dominated by AW tracks , turf flat racing will be a very small pond ….apathy kills , but for goodness sake dont tell the BHA …
.THEY ARE FAR TOO BUSY
Good points Ricky. Doubtless there will remain a hard core of support for racing despite the many and various distractions.
In order to remain interested in an activity there has to be a measure of success, I play golf badly but occasionally I will hit a respectable drive or an accurate chip, that keeps me interested. It’s so difficult these days for newcomers to racing to experience the satisfaction of backing a winner by the time honoured tradition of studying form, they get fed up and they lose interest after a few weeks. Since most fans want to bet and win they will only tolerate a small total loss before quitting. This is the primary cause of people deserting the game. Until racing involves every runner in a race giving their all in an attempt to win, it will be a downward trend which is a great pity.It’s so difficult these days for newcomers to racing to experience the satisfaction of backing a winner by the time honoured tradition of studying form, they get fed up and they lose interest after a few weeks.
But this has always been the case. Profit margins on horse-racing nowadays are generally regarded to be around 15% to the bookmaker, this being backed up by William Hills’ 2013 results.
When I was working for Stanley Racing in the early/mid-80’s, over-the-counter horse racing returns were 83%, so 17% to the bookmaker. Telephone business (which accounted for very little) was a couple of points lower.
Give or take a natural variance of a percentage point here or there, bookmakers are making the exact same margins – or maybe slightly less – as they were thirty years’ ago (and presumably were in the intervening years).
What is ‘putting people off’ is not your imagined endless litany of bent races (it’s virtually certain that far more shenanigans went on years ago due to the lack of any modern testing, filming and security) but the sheer choice now available to the punter, particularly in football which is a vastly more popular sport than racing.
Furthermore, betting on sport is easy. Any football fan walking down the road probably has an opinion on Chelsea v Man Utd, whilst having a view on The St Leger will require more time and effort.
It’s interesting that you use the pejorative term ‘anorak’ to anyone who actually applies themselves to the sport. There’s a lot of that type of sneering nowadays – scientists are referred to as ‘geeks’ or ‘boffins’ whilst a footballer is a ‘genius’. Racing’s real challenge is to attract new punters to a complex sport in these dumbed-down times.
Mike
In these days of widespread corruption in every institution from banking to policing can it be that only racing is honest? You will point out correctly that there have always been crooks in racing but in line with modern Britain there must be a darn sight more today.
Well done, 7 winners between mid June and the end of August.
Thank you
And I though I was struggling.
Well, those seven winners came from eight selections. Perhaps if you were more selective and stayed away from whatever it is you bet on, your strike rate would also improve… I mean it would be asking too much of you to match my amazing 87.5% strike rate but, you know, you could still take a page out of my book.
(Still not as obnoxious as Ginger)
Loving your thread Sejad.
Nice to read someone who knows what he’s talking about.Value Is EverythingWoolf
I don’t envy you your existence. It must be such a trial waking up in the morning to a world that is so full of baddies, and one round every corner you turn. Woe is you! oe, woe and thrice woe, etc. etc.
Still, if you want a boycott then lead on….
(Time passes)
Right then lads, now there’s a decent collection of cards at Scottish meetings in September, if anyone cares to join me?
Rob
Rob. If you aware that skulduggery is all around you then its easier to avoid being mugged. Woe is not me, woe is the gullible fool who invests his hard earned today in the animal that will not be trying for another week or so.
What about those of us who enjoy racing as a sport rather than a series of betting mediums? Should we boycott it as well?
I’ll be going to Perth a week on Monday Rob. Hopefully there’ll be bigger fields than they’ve had so far this summer.
skulduggery is all around you
That was the hit Wet Wet Wet
should
have had.
Mike
Gaelic Warrior Gold Cup Winner 2026
I trust people, those who have not calculated how much they can gain by mugging me. Racing is financed by mugs.
What about those of us who enjoy racing as a sport rather than a series of betting mediums? Should we boycott it as well?
I’ll be going to Perth a week on Monday Rob. Hopefully there’ll be bigger fields than they’ve had so far this summer.
No, is the short answer, yours is an innocent pleasure.
In these days of widespread corruption in every institution from banking to policing can it be that only racing is honest? You will point out correctly that there have always been crooks in racing but in line with modern Britain there must be a darn sight more today.
Agree, but folks are looking at the wrong end of the telescope.
The real corruption is within the higher echelons of racing. The race results prove that time and time again. Of course no one is saying they are shipping drugs over by helicopter – that would never happen.a late night read for Bill as he burns the midnight oil on his slow boat to China. As he turns over the pages of the report entitled WHO CHEATS AND WHO WINS he tucks into his Bah Kut Teh soup with its unusual additive – potent mushrooms, all served by a splendidly dressed gentleman wearing long, silken, oriental, purple robes, he refers to as Mr Wee….
After the loss, Bill and his mentor Mr Wee said that they sometimes saw deep intelligence and creativity in the machine’s moves, suggesting that during the second game, human horse players had intervened on behalf of the machine with its code name Ginger, which would be a violation of the rules. IBM denied that it cheated, saying the only human intervention occurred between games. The rules provided for the developers to modify the program between games, an opportunity they said they used to shore up weaknesses in Ginger’s play that were revealed during the course of the match.The machine’s strength was it reactions without temper or temperament using pure logic and memory to assist it in its capability of 200 million calculations a minute and ability to guess up to seventeen of billion’s possible replies or arguments. Billion requested printouts of the machine’s log files but IBM refused, although the company later published the logs on the Internet. Billion demanded a rematch, but IBM refused and dismantled the horse calculating machine which was based and functioned on hardware. A software version of Ginger was later made and he returned in a more jovial less hard hitting format but still possessing the old ability to wear an opponent down.
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