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Understand where Paul is coming from, racing being a leisure industry. But I enjoy the Lambourn Open Day; and for that to continue it needs a racing free bank holiday or weekend.
Value Is EverythingWent to Charlie Hills yard.
Big Bob says, "Raasekha will win the 2:40 at Kempton tomorrow".Went to Nicky Henderson’s and asked SWC why they took the ear plugs out for Long Run’s races this season? When he (long Run not Sam) had worn them to win the King George and Gold Cup the previous season. It seems they thought hearing the crowd would spur him on.
Reading between the lines, I think they knew Long Run wasn’t at his best and were trying something different. Otherwise, why change a winning system?
Hopefully, they’ll take my advice.
Ginger knows best.
Value Is EverythingAre there any sporting events today?
Somerset CCC v Middlesex is the highlight.
Gaelic Warrior Gold Cup Winner 2026
Just supposing there was racing on Good Friday, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was some low grade all-weather dirge. None of the top courses would bother.
The problem is a lot of people complain there is too much racing but the people who run racing (the bookmakers and racecourses) have fought tooth and nail against any substantive reduction in the fixture list.
Even the 2012 trimming of the list by some 80 fixtures was a huge step back from the original 200 proposed reductions.
Paul Bittar is unable to say to the racecourses – "you race when we say not when you want" so the cavalcade continues. Only a significant decline in the numbers of horses racing will slow the advance of the fixture list and, remember, the bookies would have racing in the morning and at lunchtime if they could and indeed do with the virtual product.
Should we, for example, start the turf Flat season on Good Friday and have Doncaster move its Lincoln meeting to Good Friday and Easter Saturday?
Would, for example, having the Open Days on the day BEFORE Good Friday work if that were a blank day instead?
er……do you people not realise that if you take away the Christian element, there is no Good Friday or Easter Sunday ?
therefore no holiday for you in the first place ?
all you secularists have May Day coming up…… that’s your Millennium Dome to today’s St Paul’s / Westminster Abbey, etc
Should we, for example, start the turf Flat season on Good Friday and have Doncaster move its Lincoln meeting to Good Friday and Easter Saturday?
I’ve heard worse ideas but if it happened could we have a guarantee that Doncaster would produce good fast ground instead of the overwatering that occurred last week?
Would, for example, having the Open Days on the day BEFORE Good Friday work if that were a blank day instead?
Wouldn’t people be at work? I’ve been to many Open Days and went today but don’t think the whole country should be without racing just to allow about 15,000 people to go to open days. I agree with the supply and demand line and that we should have racing today.
er……do you people not realise that if you take away the Christian element, there is no Good Friday or Easter Sunday ?
therefore no holiday for you in the first place ?
all you secularists have May Day coming up…… that’s your Millennium Dome to today’s St Paul’s / Westminster Abbey, etc
And of course, by extension, three AW meetings on Christmas Day!!Mike
er……do you people not realise that if you take away the Christian element, there is no Good Friday or Easter Sunday ?
therefore no holiday for you in the first place ?
That would not be a problem – Bank Holidays are an outdated concept introduced, as you know, to ensure workers actually had a holiday.
Why not scrap Bank Holidays and just add them to peoples annual holiday entitlement?
I would happily scrap Easter, Christmas, New Year, May Day etc, etc.
Frankly Bank Holidays are more trouble than they are worth
I don`t see the appeal of allowing Good Friday fixtures.
It would be following on from a Thursday where the courses could barely muster any runners, the flat has not got going, ground too fast for jumpers, the date moves around too much for any regular fixtures to build interest and some very thin fare to come over the weekend anyway. Not worth the upheaval.I don`t see the appeal of allowing Good Friday fixtures.
It would be following on from a Thursday where the courses could barely muster any runners, the flat has not got going, ground too fast for jumpers, the date moves around too much for any regular fixtures to build interest and some very thin fare to come over the weekend anyway. Not worth the upheaval.
Separation of church and sport?
I don`t see the appeal of allowing Good Friday fixtures.
the date moves around too much for any regular fixturesIt’s precisely because Blank Good Friday moves around so much that causes headaches for the fixture list compilers at this time of year – notably the ‘moveable feast’ of Aintree which as it includes a Friday shifts to-and-fro when Easter falls, as this year, in early April. The (former) Lincoln meeting was also affected when Easter fell in March and the Greenham when it falls in late April
If Good Friday were just another racing day then the whole fixture list ‘twixt the Vernal Equinox and April 25th would remain the same and in the same order every year
Not really because those courses that stage Easter Monday meetings do so every year because they are a bank holiday. I doubt very much having 7 meetings on an ordinary Monday would be good planning. Yes I remember the bad old days when there were 16 meetings on Easter Monday.
At least Kempton no longer runs the "Easter" Stakes!That would not be a problem – Bank Holidays are an outdated concept introduced, as you know, to ensure workers actually had a holiday.
Why not scrap Bank Holidays and just add them to peoples annual holiday entitlement?
I would happily scrap Easter, Christmas, New Year, May Day etc, etc.
Agreed, Bank Holidays have long struck me as being a patrician entitlement. They certainly had a place when paid holidays weren’t statutory but they are really little more than an annoyance now.
Birthday, Wedding Anniversary, Perth In April are personal celebrations I’d much rather take as holiday than Christmas, May Day, Easter
Not really because those courses that stage Easter Monday meetings do so every year because they are a bank holiday. I doubt very much having 7 meetings on an ordinary Monday would be good planning. Yes I remember the bad old days when there were 16 meetings on Easter Monday.
As Easter Monday racing is essentially about a plethora of subordinate ‘country’ meetings they could be added to the existing meetings on whatever Monday it may fall, and not upset the premier racing pattern. Likewise Good Friday
Off at a tangent: I am the only one to find the Christian Churches’ reliance on moon-phase to determine the date of Easter very strange. Paganism and Pantheism have no place in Monotheism do they?
Drone,
The monotheistic Judaism and Islam go by moon-phasing, so its not a function of number of gods. Moon-phasing is a feature of earthlings generally.
The western "get-away-from-moon-phasing" calendar of course is the creation not of secularists but of Christians under Pope Gregory XIII.
So perhaps odder than how Christians go about translating Easter into their own creation of 1582, is why western secularists in 2012 are using the Gregorian calendar at all.
Surely not more secular cart-before-the-horse guff – "we’ll have the holiday and the calendar, but not the reasons for them"; "we’ll have our lives, but not the reasons for them"
The history of fixing Easter starts with the fourteenth day of the moon when the Jews were commanded to sacrifice the lamb (pasch) – and first getting it to be always on a Sunday.
More info here:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05228a.htm
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…..What is perhaps most important to remember, both in the solution adopted in 325 [Council of Niceae] and in that officially put forward at the time of the reform of the Calendar by Gregory XIII [1582], is this, that the Church throughout held that the determination of Easter was primarily a matter of ecclesiastical discipline and not of astronomical science.
…. the moon according to which Easter is calculated is not the moon in the heavens nor even the mean moon, i.e. a moon traveling with the average motion of the real moon, but simply the moon of the calendar.
This calendar moon is admittedly a fiction, though it departs very little from the actual astronomical facts; but in following the simple rule given for the dependence of Easter upon the moon of the calendar, uniformity is secured for all countries of the world.
According to this rule, Easter Sunday is the first Sunday which occurs after the first full moon (or more accurately after the first fourteenth day of the moon) following the 21st of March. As a result, the earliest possible date of Easter is 22 March, the latest 25 April.
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