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Ah yes, I’m looking forward to Haydock’s PREMIER raceday tomorrow, the one with four class 5 3 year old races. PREMIER.
I wonder if we would have had some free to view racing today if these Premier Racedays did not exist. The BHA were monitoring this in the week and should have taken action before it was too late.
The more I know the less I understand.
We might have had some sand racing. Not really my bag personally and I probably wouldn’t have tuned in but it would have been better than nothing for some people. That said Premier Racedays have had minimal positive impact on the sport overall and probably some negative impact from what I’ve seen since they’ve been in place.
Literally a year ago in this thread I said this would happen and they’d end up with no terrestrial racing. I’m surprised its taken a year to happen
Richard Hoiles has it right, he said there needs to be a window for the ‘big’ race of the day where there is no racing 15 minutes either side of said race so that punters, media, racegoers at other meetings etc etc are glued to that race. Not this two hour window which, I don’t really understand anyway, as too many times this year during the flat season (especially) the big races of the day were immediately preceded and succeeded by other races.
On today’s events, well, personally I’m just glad the weather has chosen this particularly bland Saturday of racing to strike and then hopefully leaves the good ones alone.
“On today’s events, well, personally I’m just glad the weather has chosen this particularly bland Saturday of racing to strike”
Well yeah except the grade 1 Lawlor’s of Naas and a decent G2 novice chase with some Arkle horses in it are prolly gonna cop it.
Although agree it could be worse.It shouldn’t be too difficult to have a couple of “Premier” meetings on a Saturday afternoon… Plus one AW meeting in the afternoon just in case.
If they think there’s too much “Premier Racing” on the Saturday move some to Sunday or even midweek.
Value Is EverythingThat said, it might do some gamblers good to have a Saturday off.
Value Is EverythingHopefully its just a one off and they learn from it but it wouldn’t surprise you if we’re in similar waters again this winter. I get what you’re saying Ginge but if people want a gamble on a Saturday there is plenty of other sport to gamble on. Its a big shop window for the more casual racing fans, I got into the sport mainly just following Channel 4 racing as it was then for at least a year, didn’t really follow it outside of those terrestrial windows. It was very much a form of escapism etc on the weekend… if it had not been on terrestrial tv for a couple of weeks running I might never have returned to it in those early months.
I’ve had to pinch myself the BHA are actually taking positive action.
The more I know the less I understand.
As mentioned on “Luck On Sunday”.
Premier Racing Window: 2pm to 4pm.
Time of Group 1 July Cup: 4.35pm.
And 2 Irish meetings took place between 2.00 and 5.00 last Saturday which people would be betting on and were being shown in the betting shops and on Racing TV. I’m with Lydia regards the so called Super Saturday, another word beginning with S should replace Super.
For those wanting to bet Super Saturday must be a complete mare but I would guess for the non betting fraternity seeing all those races might be good but i would still argue that a big part of racing is seeing as many of the horses beforehand in the paddock so that you could get a little info about them rather than being bombarded with race after race after race with very little to no build up time inbetween.
Although I guess for some of the TRF community it would be good in that it means that you don’t see as much of the presenters as you would on a normal one meeting TV coverage day. Personally, it is too much but given that there are always a number of the races that hold zero interest for me, I tend to take note of the races I am interested in seeing and tune in at those times……to be fair I was also switching between the racing/Tour de France/Wimbledon so it wasn’t as big a deal overall.
But like a lot of British Racing it is very much a model that needs to be overhauled – I think there is very much a case for the whole July Meeting to go back to being fully a midweek meeting, it didn’t really help that the July Cup wasn’t exactly a stellar renewal with an headline grabbing star………to be honest on the whole the meeting was a bit meh with regards to quality races (with a few exceptions) although the combined attendances I believe over the whole 3 day meeting were up 6% on last year and were the biggest since Covid, so that is a positive for sure.
Three days of guaranteed sunshine would be a major contributor to the crowd figures. Not to mention that the Saturday numbers have steadily improved since they introduced music after racing.
2 premier meetings on Saturday including the King George yet 2 other meetings throughout the afternoon at Chester & Newcastle. The prize money at Newcastle is pathetic. The Beeswing 5 grand to the winner lol and a race there 5 minutes after the scheduled start of the King George.
How hopeless are the BHA allowing racecourses to get away with this nonsense?King George also outside the 2-4 window.bit of a gap before it but will be filled with Irish racing no doubt.
How can SSR cover the big race properly when they will have to rush straight off to a sand pit race?I’m surprised the racing league meetings aren’t classed as premier meetings …. Maybe because there evening meetings …
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