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What a shower of shite this lot are.
The fare they offer at Brighton this afternoon: three Class 5s and 4 Class 6s. Total prizemoney on offer for the seven races just shy of £17,000.
Entry fee in the region 0f £15-18, bar sales and food sales????……….and don’t forget the race-card.
Doesn’t need a great crowd to turn up before a profit is being made.
Surely it’s not beyond the powers of the powers that be to ensure that courses have a minimum of at least one Class 4 or better on the card.
Not having a go at Brighton, on the one visit I made to the course I really enjoyed myself. A very intimate course and except for the fact that I don’t like the idea of 2-y-os going down that hill hell-for-leather, would have no problems visiting again.
Colin
far too much racing – hence the lack of quality… great leights will be banded racing once the spotlight is off.
I hold no brief for Northern racing, but in the interests of balance, Brighton staged a Sunday meeting two weeks ago with a class 2 (£16,000) sprint handicap on safe good to soft ground and got five runners.
The same card featured a class 3 with four runners and a 20L winning margin.
So you can hardly blame them for thinking, why bother?
AP
Alan, would you agree that that sort of card is the exception for Northern Racing tracks?
They have two Listed races at Bath but the rest of the fare that they offer is very low grade.
And, with respect, I don’t think your last sentence really sums up the approach of this company.
They are quite happy offering up dross for their customers.
Colin
I think the Brighton fixture two weeks ago was a Great Leighs transfer, hence the better prize money
I wonder what the future holds for NR tracks now that the Rueben brothers own them. Property development?
Brighton Council own the track and all the land.
It was leased to the late Stan Clarke’s company.
Brighton council did not have the funds to spend on the track and it was the late Stan Clarke that provided funds for the new bar, parade ring, toliets and to change the old derelict boxes into owners bars.
Racecards are free as is car parking.
I used to be a regular at Fontwell but the standard seems to have gone down even further since Northern Racing took over. With prices going up, probably to pay for added attractions (e.g. The Wurzels), it is not worth paying good money to see poor racing.
Ginge
Value Is EverythingWe rarely go to Uttoxeter these days; prefer to go to Kelso when we’re up north where we find the racing is better value and better quality….not sure if other Midlanders would agree with me.
Unfortunately, with the advent of Great Leighs racing is only going to get worse.Not there fault.
The quality a lot of the time these days is poor. I always thought all weather racing was invented for winter when a lot of meetings were called off to assist the bookies
It appears now that it is taking over which is probably what the bookies want as it is similar to the plastic (computer) racing.
I was at a local bookies the other day and I heard 2 people discussing the form of the plastic racing. I give up.
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I wonder what the future holds for NR tracks now that the Rueben brothers own them. Property development?
Given the tracks they own, and the standard of racing thereon, that might not be such a bad thing for racing’s future.
Imo, of course.I hear what your saying colin and to an extent I agree but there are two ways of looking at it.
From a punters point of view it’s a dangerous place to be as the quality of the horses can be extremely poor. Odds on fav wouldn’t get a blow in at Ascot or Goodwood and usually are a bit quirky hence not a gambling proposition.
The other way to look at it is from strictly the horse racing lovers point of view..There is not alot of differnece between watching ascot and watching Brighton if you don’t look at form and you don’t bet.
You get good finishes and good jockeyship and a race can be everybit as exciting as watching racing anywhere else.
Of course we all much prefer high class racing with form you can make something off and we all have a choice what meetings we attand.
Another point and I think a very valid one is what becomes of the useless shite that runs at these meetings if they are to stop or cater for better horses?
The do have there place Colin but I personally wouldn’t cross the road to attend one but many do
To be fair to the late Stan Clarke who formed Northern Racing when he purchased the lease to operate racing at Brighton one of the first things he learned was that the concrete beams holding the main stand together were in danger of breaking up and he had to pay for major re building work and this caused major problems and costs.
The main stand was only re built in the 1960s but they used poor concrete and it never stood the test of time.No one could have changed the nature of the course but Sir Stan Clarke did far more than most realise.
The toliets used to be a disgrace but after he took over they were exellent (Thta could be down to him starting out as a plumber when he left school) and when he arrived (normally by helicopter) he was always asking punters if they had any problems and was not a chairman to hide away from his customers.
He had a big name badge on normally with ‘Chairman’ on it and listened to his customers.In the 1930 s they used to often have 20,000 attending racing there.
Uttoxeter track is owned by Staffordshire County Council and was again in a sorry state when he took out a lease and it was Northern Racing that built the new stand.
Newcastle racetrack was also in dis-repair when Sir Stan got on a soap box and told punters to their faces he may not find them winners but he would give the Geordies a track they could be proud of.
On the charitable front Sir Stanley Clarke donated £2 million towards Racing Welfare and helped raise £8 million for the Animal Health Trust headquarters at Newmarket.
When former jounalist Phill Bell was running Brighton racecourse he introduced many ideas to improve the track and put it on a better financial footing by intoducing wedding parties, and many other events which the local council would never have done as the place was a tip and no one would have wanted to host any event there then.
He was moved then to run Fontwell Park.
My mate who attended Brighton yesterday told me soccer pundit Helen Chamberlain had it off big time when here horse won backed in from 9/1 so she must be happy with the place.
Of course we all much prefer high class racing with form you can make something of
That’s the Royal "we", I presume? Give me anything with a jumps rating over 100 and I get a nosebleed.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
Uttoxeter track is owned by Staffordshire County Council and was again in a sorry state when he took out a lease and it was Northern Racing that built the new stand.
You’re not kidding! Certainly for the first 8-10 years of my interest in racing, Uttoxeter was frequently regarded as a bit of a dirty word. The open ditch in particular seemed to attract its share of negative publicity in the mid-1980s – I seem to remember a trainer claiming in Raceform Update that one of his horses had been killed there when clattering through the fence and striking a strip of concrete embedded in front of the frame, but I don’t know if that was ever proven to be true.
I can’t really comment on the state of Uttoxeter post-Clarke, for my last two visits to the track were on September 19th 2004 (the day his death was announced) and two weeks after that on October 3rd. However, it’s plain from the number of fences omitted all year round that the drainage at the course remains flawed, and the reports I’ve had from several trusted sources haven’t been overly encouraging in other respects.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
Sadly I think there is a big difference with Northern Racing from when Stan Clarke was in charge to Northern Racing post Stan Clarke.
Yes he was a businessman but he also bought a passion for the sport to the table as well.
As Seagull pointed out he was visible and approachable and he listened.
Now there are signs around the courses saying contact Simon Clarke (Stan’s son) if you have anything you want to raise – however I cannot recall the last time I actually saw him "pressing the flesh" with the punters at one of his courses.
The NR tracks are certainly being run purely as a business with more emphasis on the bottom line. In Stan’s day, yes they were a business but he had more of an eye for what the customers wanted and he made sure they were catered for as much as possible.
I know I harp on about Fontwell, almost as much as Jeremy does about Cartmel
but it is the course where I first went racing as an adult and where I got the bug for this sport. I recall the first time I went after NR had taken it over – not without severe trepidation – fortunately it still retained its character and for that I will always be grateful to NR, sentimental old git that I am.
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