- This topic has 49 replies, 27 voices, and was last updated 10 years, 4 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
I totally agree about too much racing today. There were 5 flat meetings today, but only 1 flat and 2 jumps last Sunday!
I am not keen on attending racing on Sundays, but feel that people who can only get on that day be given more meetings and better fare. The extra ones should be transferred from midweek.
Of course it won’t happen because the bookies want more midweek meetings plus 6 or even 7 on a Saturday and just 3 on Sundays.
What has happened to Bank Holiday racing? Next Monday there are only 5 meetings (3 in the north of England, 1 Midlands and 1 South). It doesn’t seem long ago (although I am getting old!!) when there were about 16 tracks offering racing, albeit some very poor fields. These were bumper days for the tracks though. I can remember going to Uttoxeter and Doncaster with my father and they were so crowded you couldn’t get anywhere near the rails. I’m afraid that the clientele that courses wish to attract now (corporate hospitality, drinking parties, music fans ..) are not the ones that want Bank Holiday racing.
Too much for whom?
If you take a gander at today’s field sizes, they are the best we’ve had for many a month (I thought some of this season’s jumps turnouts were positively worrying).
Today’s races may not be an ideal betting medium for the cognoscenti on these boards (
what ever is?
Ed) , but somebody sure as hell is supporting them!
Too much racing…too much fine wine…too many beautiful women etc etc
Sorry should have qualified that – too much
for me
– I don’t want to get a reputation as a voice of the people
Fields did indeed fill well today, as they should do on perfect Flat going on luxuriant Spring turf approaching the zenith of the Flat season. If trainers don’t get their charges out in hordes on days like yesterday when would they? Had the five meetings not filled well then that would have indicated with some certainty that there are not enough horses in training to service the fixture list IMO
Bread and butter meetings are the lifeblood of racing and it would be churlish to disagree with your premise that yesterday gave a plethora of small-timers an opportunity to give their modest horses an airing. I hope a good day was enjoyed by all. But for the neutral (me) it would have been all too much both sports-wise and betting-wise; but hey this cognoscento doesn’t dance to the beat of the bookmakers ‘competitive’ drum preferring the worryingly small NH fields of winter, both sports-wise and betting-wise
Each to their own: it’s Handicap Hunters’ Chase day at Newton Abbot, yippee!
Best Bitter and Jenny Pitman
Sorry should have qualified that – too much
for me
Which is sort of my point. Those in the "too much racing" camp seem to base their desire for less on some form of aesthetic appeal rather than the need to pragmatically service the constituency of owners, trainers and jockeys (and, yes, punters) that operate at the moment.
The argument about this being somehow off-putting from a betting angle, because of all all the ‘dross’ one has to ‘wade through’ seems a strained one, too. Surely it only takes punters a brief look at a card to have a rough idea of the sort of races they’re interested in?
As you said, yesterday provided "perfect Flat going on luxuriant Spring turf". So why not let loads of racehorses run? What else were they planning to do on a Tuesday?!
Mike
hmmm I fear that between Betlarge.com and ginger beast.com
there is a misunderstanding
Ill try and mediate
Tis simple ……
More quality racing squashed into each saturday , saturates the desire for the recreational punter , who is presumed to be free and sitting in his local betting shop with a crisp 50 pound note ready to do battle …..(before he donks it off on the virtual cartoons or the roulette machine….)
Midweek dull dross is boring the heck out of everyone else
Of course they should run some meetings like this , after all variety is the spice of life ….but could we have some of those saturday fixtures back for Midweek(or Sunday ) please , then all would be well
I rest my case M’lord
imo
Do you have a French version of the site, David?
"Le" Racing Forum.
Can you send Ricky Las Vegas and all the haters over there as well, they can whine about the six (6) meetings in France today, that will be viewed by a racecourse audience totaling the square root of **** all….. or maybe they won’t whine, afterall the PMU monopoly win skim is only 28% and it all goes back to "connections" anyway. Potless French "punters" sleep well at night though, safe in the knowledge Madam Barbe is being kept in Ferragamo. Their domination of the sport,
complete
.
Are you punting tonight at Kempton, Mike? Looking forward to it myself.
Mellish is on.
Do you have a French version of the site, David?
"Le" Racing Forum.
Can you send Ricky Las Vegas and all the haters over there as well, they can whine about the six (6) meetings in France today, that will be viewed by a racecourse audience totaling the square root of fu*k all….. or maybe they won’t whine, afterall the PMU monopoly win skim is only 28% and it all goes back to "connections" anyway. Potless French "punters" sleep well at night though, safe in the knowledge Madam Barbe is being kept in Ferragamo. Their domination of the sport,
complete
.
Are you punting tonight at Kempton, Mike? Looking forward to it myself.
Mellish is on.
I haven’t bet this year, following my failure to properly make it pay last summer. It may be something I get back into at some point.
I’ll be missing Kempers & the excellent Mellish tonight as I am indulging in plenty of leather on willow. And when I’ve finished that, I’m playing cricket (
boom, tish here all week etc
).
Your musings on France are spot on. Whilst the finances of French racing remain ostensibly healthy due to the absolute fleecing of
punteurs
, the game is hugely more of a minority sport than in the UK. I worked in the Loire Valley in the late 80s and wandered around Angers racecourse to the sound of my own footsteps on a couple of occasions. I never met anyone in France with an interest in racing.
Even today, if you look at the respective Twitter accounts of the racing dailies – The Racing Post and Paris-Turf – the former has 116k, the latter less than 4k.
Chris Cook wrote a piece in The Guardian a couple of years back lamenting the lack of attendance even at Longchamp. He cited an early season Sunday meeting with group races on the card that pulled just 3000 punters, despite the course offering free entry. It would be hard to imagine this drawing anything less than a five-figure crowd + at Ascot, even with stiff entry prices. It’s just a different culture, I guess.
Mike
Chris Cook wrote a piece in The Guardian a couple of years back lamenting the lack of attendance even at Longchamp. He cited an early season Sunday meeting with group races on the card that pulled just 3000 punters, despite the course offering free entry. It would be hard to imagine this drawing anything less than a five-figure crowd + at Ascot, even with stiff entry prices. It’s just a different culture, I guess.
Mike
A British man had a horse running in the Northumberland Plate.
A French man had a horse on his dinner plate.
C’est La Vie
Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.
Simple question time, with only two possible answers.
The purpose of horse racing is:
a) to see which horse can cover the distance from A to B first
b) to try to make money on the outcome, almost certainly losing in the long run because the odds are stacked against you through dishonest connections and rapacious bookmakers.
Edit: answers on a postcard to the usual address.
hmmm I fear that between Betlarge.com and ginger beast.com
there is a misunderstanding
Not in the slightest, I completely agree with Ginge & Drone’s point that too much quality has moved to a Saturday.
I would presume the reason for this is to placate the racecourses, Channel 4 advertisers and race sponsors who prefer the increased profile a Saturday has to offer. It’s just the commercial way of things, I’m afraid.
The exception to this is the likes of the mega-meetings such as Cheltenham and Royal Ascot which are so important they are still very attractive at any time of the week.
Mike
I would presume the reason for this is to placate the racecourses, Channel 4 advertisers and race sponsors who prefer the increased profile a Saturday has to offer. It’s just the commercial way of things, I’m afraid.
The exception to this is the likes of the mega-meetings such as Cheltenham and Royal Ascot which are so important they are still very attractive at any time of the week.
So how long before we have a Cheltenham "Super Saturday" with all four of the top championship events on the same day ?
8/11 before 2024
evens 2024 or laterWhat is Cav the bore on about ???? French racing is in France…this forum is mostly about racing in blighty ….with some Oirish racing thrown in …..(mostly )
Can you whine at someone else please boring
cheers
Which is sort of my point. Those in the "too much racing" camp seem to base their desire for less on some form of aesthetic appeal rather than the need to pragmatically service the constituency of owners, trainers and jockeys (and, yes, punters) that operate at the moment.
Flat racing, for me, has indeed lost much of it’s aesthetic appeal; I refer you to my earlier remarks about the loss of Goodwood’s midweek Predominate meeting and the splendid succession of similar events through May. The compelling attraction, unique to racing viz ‘big events’ during the working week has all but gone and I find it quite sad
Aestheticism should not be construed as snobbism, which I’m sure many who are content with a mountain of the mundane would choose to accuse me of. Something special has been lost; the lustre tarnished, that’s all
Something of the chicken-and-egg regarding the number of meetings required to service the growing population of lesser-light horses: which begat which? And is a squat pyramid of ability preferable to a slim pyramid?
As for punters welcoming and needing all this mundanity, well is this actually true? I wouldn’t for one moment dare correlate unequivocally the erosion of market share that race-betting is undergoing with the barrage of said mundanity – it’s more involved than that – but if this punter is typical, which he probably isn’t, it’s certainly a contributory factor
Just a couple of points.
A quick look at the fixture list will suggest those paid to argue the case for mediocrity don’t need any help from those arguing the case just for the sake of it.
Disagree entirely with the idea that Saturday is saturated with quality. It is saturated with ‘impossible’ handicaps and that is why the current Scoop 6 has reached ridiculous levels. On a Saturday you are lucky if you can find two non-handicaps on a seven race card. Ginger is one of the very few on here who has found a successful method but for me you shouldn’t have to be continually backing more than one horse in a race to generate a reasonable profit.
Slightly off topic but this Saturday there are meetings at Beverley and Catterick, who’s stupid idea was it to have two Yorkshire racecourses race on the same day?
I don’t have a problem with mediocrity as you can have a cracking finish between two horses rated in the 50s or between two horses rated in the 120s. I enjoy watching racing from the likes of Beverley and Hamilton as much as Goodwood or Newmarket.
British racing’s biggest selling point is it’s variety. With racecourses as different as Chester and Newmarket on the flat and Cartmel and Cheltenham over jumps there is enough diversity in the types of racing run to keep everyone happy. The big danger now is the risk of AW racing taking over the calendar and leading us down the road towards the snoozefest that is American racing.
The difficulty of compiling the fixture list is trying to keep owners, trainers, bookmakers, broadcasters, punters and racegoers happy. Good luck to anyone trying to sort that lot out!!
In my opinion there are too many big races on saturdays which means that races that deserve to make the headlines that day are overshadowed by a card elsewhere. Meanwhile sunday racing is crying out for more big events.
When I started this thread about eighteen months ago I went with the title "Too much racing?". With emphasis on the ? question mark.
Are we any further forward now? I don’t think we are.
As most folks have picked up upon all the major races (bar the summer festivals) are congregated into a three hour spell on a Saturday afternoon.
Last Tuesday we had 5 flat turf meetings throughout the country. The next day we had 1.5 turf meetings. Where’s the balance?
Yesterday we had both Catterick and Beverley racing in the afternoon in the North. If a trainer has runners at both meetings how can he attend both? Which set of owners will he upset by heading to the other meeting?
Today we had no turf flat meetings. Couldn’t one or two of those Tuesday meetings be moved to today?
Race planning is a complete mess.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.