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Another symptom of the saturation of racing fixtures, that still hasn’t been adequately addressed by the toothless BHA.
BHA confirms transfer of Sedgefield fixture on Wednesday 19 February to Doncaster
Turf courses clearly cannot cope with the amount of fixtures being staged. Sedgefield recently had their turn into the home straight remodelled and transferred a number of fixtures to allow it time to recover. They removed a fence from the back straight this season (will it come back next season?). Uttoxeter have had their second last fence out of commission most of this season. Bangor had to remove a fence last Friday and Ffos Las omitted one the day before. This week, Lingfield missed their second last and Hereford removed their last fence today (it had been missing for an extended period not so long ago). There will always be unavoidable instances, in cases of extreme weather, but it seems to be just a routine occurrence these days.
It’s about time there were consequences for racecourses who cannot stage a fixture with the full compliment of obstacles. Presumably they still receive their full media rights income however many obstacles are omitted.
The BHA do hold the rights to allocate a number of fixtures that are not owned by the racecourses. I would withhold these fixtures from the worst offending courses, even if it meant only having a couple of meetings a day on occasions.
....and you've got to look a long way back for anything else.
ITVs drone cam didn’t do Ascots course any favours on Saturday,it looked in an awful state from above and they don’t stage anymore racing than 40 years ago.
Mind you the course doesn’t get the best of care during The Royal Meeting with marquees and tracking cars on it,not to mention “champions day” on the hurdle course.Walking the Kelso course before racing on Friday the outside line they have used recently was starting to look worn in places. However, they have saved the inside line pristine ground on both hurdles and chase track and rails will be moved in for the Morebattle fixture on March 1st. Similar pattern of course management every year, and it works.
Over watering doesn’t help especially when you then get a lot of rain on top of that which then means that the ground has a higher water level so when its raced on it gets churned up much more easily and makes repair work that much harder to do and leaves less time for tracks to recover before another meeting rolls around.
Mismanagement on a grand scale with too much scheduled racing on tracks that are excessively over watered that produce racing where finishes are often slow motion affairs with horses out on their feet running up and down on the same spot with winning/placed distances being measured in seconds rather than lengths.
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