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You raise an issue there Sean which for some reason there seems little serious discussion as to whether or not the B.H.A. could implement some change to the rules i.e. these late withdrawals from eight and sixteen runner fields.
This is something which affects thousands of each-way punters week in week out and yet we, as punters, appear to be doing very little to assert ourselves in a situation which constantly benefits the bookmakers. Come on everyone, stand up and be counted. Let’s not just passively accept that this rip-off can continue without even a passing glance from Racing for Change.
KenRH, you may be right that it is possible to argue a net benefit in terms of profit on the place book and that may have some tangible impact. I doubt it myself. Once you divide that benefit by 60 tracks it’s hard to see what’s in it for the individual track given the number of races we’re talking about.
Kempton ran a total of just 9 handicaps involving 16 runners as far as I can see.
16 runner fields were more common at Wolverhampton but were still responsible for only one in 11 of the handicaps run at that venue prior to the limit changing.
16 runner handicaps at Lingfield made up only 3% of the handicaps run on the AW at that track in the early noughties. From 2000 onwards if you put all those tracks together it looks like there was only a couple of hundred 16 runner handicaps run in total (less than half of one percent of racing). Winning strike rate of the jollies in such races was very poor interestingly with only 20% of market leaders winning on average.
Looking at the stalls today at Lingfield and Wolverhampton they are indeed in 7 runner blocks.
All in all then, I’m not saying your theory is wrong (of course I can’t demonstrate that) but it might be that, given the tiny number of events and the miniscule net benefit to the sport, it’s more about safety and stalls availability.
Drum, I think there are 16 runner handicaps and 8 runner races that are good for bookies and some that are bad. Is it possible that a very big player might seek to change the field size? Yes it is. I have no evidence of it happening though and again statistically (when it has been studied – R Post looked at it I think?) there was no significant trend.
- Total Posts 17716
I loved this one, seanboyce; the last sentence is particularly telling
:
http://www.racingpost.com/news/horse-racing/cotc-neil-mackenzie-ross-lingfield-attempts-to-eliminate-stands-rail-bias/720985/Perfect example isn’t it.
The stands rail there at Lingfield has a long established advantage and it has been extremely pronounced at recent meetings.
If he leaves it there he gets stick from owners and trainers, if he addresses it he gets stick from punters.
If the consensus is that you can’t win drawn low then horses will only come out of those bigger field handicaps just as we have seen at Chester and at Beverley etc now that we have self certs.
If the advantage is extreme – and it seems to be clearer than ever – we probably won’t get full fields anyway.
He’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.
Some will say, ‘we like the bias, we can see it and bet accordingly’. Others might say , why the flip should I run my horse from a low draw at a cost of hundreds of pounds when I can’t beat the horses on the rail?
Certainly there will be some animated argument about it but what will the impact be?
Guess how many races a year will see the field size reduced, based on previous 10 years of turf meetings at Lingfield? Well, it will impact an average of 7 races a year. As far as I can ascertain, only five straight course handicap races got a field of 16 or more at Lingfield last season.
My answers are much more boring, I can see why people prefer the conspiracy ideas! Be a bit boring to write the story up with the actual number of races impacted included as if it were a factor. 
He’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.
Wouldn’t it be fairer to say "He’s called a few nasty names behind his back if he does and damned if he doesn’t", given the huge disparity in influence on decision-making between punters and owners/trainers?
Surely anyone capable of the kind of remarks made at the end of that news article is either taking the p1ss or, more probably, profoundly ignorant of what is likely to motivate a punter. It’s so bad it is almost funny.
Yes, that’s a fair point and typical of the lack of awareness of punters concerns and interests. It would make little difference to the logic of the decision for the clerk I expect but you’re right that it would not even have crossed his mind how infuriating that comment would be for some!
That’s a large part of the issue here sometimes and explains why passions sometimes run so high I think.And I don’t see how any of my rants are hurt by Saturday. In fact, I feel they were supported. I feel
Stickels did a relatively good job
. In fact, better than any clerk of the course has done in the last couple of years. He
never excessively watered
, like I feared he would, and he
allowed Firm ground to be Firm on the final day
. He probably can’t actually call it Firm for other reasons. One of which might be the animal rights protesters or the BHA’s mandatory policy. Was he right to water on Wednesday? Yes, if he’s watering to, at the time, maintain Good To Firm for Thursday and allowing the ground to progress to Firm on Friday or Saturday, yes he was right.
Gingertipster, if you can water to maintain Good To Firm ground, why can’t Firm ground be maintained by watering?
Nobody wanted the clerk to water excessively Jose. And it was firm on the last day (as you say). Timeform’s assessment of the ground is good-firm Tuesday, firm Wednesday….
So why was it wrong for Stickels to water after racing on Tuesday? Didn’t his dicision to water early prevent it turning to HARD by Saturday?
To answer your question again: If they water to maintain firm ground, any mistake (not putting enough water on) would result in Hard ground. Which is unexceptable and may result in either an unsafe or unraceable surface. Where as if they water to maintain good-firm and make a mistake, it ends up with firm. Which is still o.k.
By mistake, I don’t mean it is the watering team’s fault. It must be exceedingly difficult to know just how much water to put on. Particularly with a possibility / probability of drying winds. I believe they did a good job at Ascot. Although the going discription was (I believe) slightly misleading, firmer than official. But that’s just an opinion of course.
Value Is Everything‘Certain courses do water to alter the ground, some in fact water Good To Firm ground to make it Good. The names Kirkland Tellwright and Seamus Buckley are the first anyone who follows this issue would think of. And of course it all relates back to one thing – Gross Profits Tax ‘
Except that GPT is what bookies pay to the Govt not to racing. I assume you mean that the levy is now profit based rather than turnover based. Unfortunately for the conspiracy theory there is no way that a clerk or a racecourse can materially benefit from that link by their own watering tactics.
The only way that individual racecourses benefit directly from generating increased off course bettingturnover
is by qualifying for incentive payments to stage meetings on days which are not popular with racegoers but which are important to drive off course turnover. How watering to thwart punters is supposed to increase interest and turnover is not clear? Such days would be moderate midweeks in general, but are particularly focussed towards the early days and the fag end of the turf season on the flat. The total amount of such incentive payments equates to only about 5% of the levy.
There are some people it seems who demand accountability from clerks and demand evidence to support the actions of a sporting authority but don’t feel any need to be either accountable or in possession of facts to make their own demands.
Had the first 6 home in the Golden Jubilee or the Britannia come from the stands side you can just imagine the ‘X files’ bs we’d have been treated to. Again, with no accountability and no evidence. We nearly had an outbreak after just 2 races on the Wednesday which doesn’t bear thinking about it terms of the damage that might have needlessly been done to the sport.Draw biases are draw biases. I don’t feel the need to start attacking a clerk of the course on the basis of a draw bias. I have no interest in doing that. If the inside draw is favoured at Chester, then so be it. However reading the Lingfield clerk attempting what he’s doing is alarming given he oversaw the Folkestone farce. Not every racecourse in Britain is a 1m 2f left handed, with a 3 furlong home straight, or something that would sound as equally as fair to many people. I never jumped on the bandwagon of the 1000 Guineas issue. I can’t be sure that was Prosser’s fault, so I’ll steer well clear of accusing him, but some trainers did have an issue with that, and they probably know better than I do.
And as for those clerks named, their records speak for themselves. Mr watering can Tellwright who also doesn’t have a clue when to abandon in the middle of the winter judged on the NH season just gone. Or Mr Goodwood, and Good in every sense of the word. The ground will be lucky to be called Good if he puts any more water on it one day.
The levy issue issue based on profits from bookmakers, well, I won’t apologise for that one. It will run and run in my mind, and many other people’s mind, for as long as the BHA continue with their overall ignorance demonstrated in your good interview with Paul Roy. Is that nut-case still planning to make bookmakers pay for showing overseas racing in their shops, something a few people might prefer to bet on rather than the BHA’s own product, although Mr Roy must feel he has the right to control whether bookmakers are allowed to benefit from Turffontein? Or maybe he should stop ATR from broadcasting Australian and American racing for fear some might bet on it.
Especially the Australian racing – that’s far too good to miss. I’d like to actually know how much British racing made from the overseas broadcasts (TVN, Sky Australia, TVG etc)from Royal Ascot, and how much Mr Roy and the BHA one profited, and two paid back to those countries governing bodies if possible at some point. Also has he spoke to Sepp Blatter about getting FIFA a good deal with our bookmakers on a "levy" style system, or has Sepp offered to donate his to the poor BHA? 
"World leaders" are the BHA, only according to the BHA though.Shouldn’t have gone off topic, and whilst the individual clerks might not benefit from it, the issue is could racing as a whole profits wise benefit from it with a few watering obsessed clerks? I think you’d know what my answer might be. If Good To Firm and faster ground produced results like at Royal Ascot forever, do you really think the BHA wouldn’t address the issue? Because the funds have been and dented, supposedly dependant on whether certain bookmakers took more than a £1 E/W, so what if they were continuously hurt on fast ground?
And as for your "guidelines," are you expecting a BHA enquiry into Saturday’s ground then based on times etc? Everything supports that it was Firm. As for whether the BHA have a right to produce rules and regulations on the watering issue on the basis of safety, welfare etc, or any reason anyone wants to select, I will now start campaigning strongly for jump racing to be banned on the grounds of safety and welfare anyway. It’s only right, surely? More hoses must suffer at the hands of jump racing than racing on Firm ground on the flat.
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Sean
The ‘conspiracy’ is much more than just a theory – God knows, rhere’s any amount of evidence on a number of fronts that racing has been changed to increase bookmaker profits – and as courses have imposed ‘safety limits’ that clearly have nothing to do with safety, why should they then be believed about watering that is done in the same name?RH,
If there is ‘any amount of evidence’ it should be easy to produce the one piece that is needed to prove your hypothesis.
Evidence that bookmakers margin has increased on racing and/or that overall profits have increased on horse racing as a result of what we’ve all been discussing, leading of course to an increased levy yield.
Unless I’m missing something levy yield is dropping like a stone year on year at the moment despite all these ‘punter sabotaging/bookie aiding’ initiatives. So, as I said. If that’s the plan it ain’t working.
The trouble with so many of the parts of the theory is that there is no supporting evidence but there is plenty of evidence, as I’ve shown which would contradict the theory. Taking the Lingfield straight course are we really arguing that bookmakers have forced the clerk to change the straight to prevent 16 runner handicaps being run on it? There has not been one such event during 2010 and there were only 5 in the whole of 2009. It’s a lot of trouble to go to to fix a problem that doesn’t exist for the bookies.
This thread, and others like it elsewhere was prompted by Ascot’s decision to water. Some (although not all on here) link watering to a desire to make punters lives harder. Ascot watered pre meeting and all the way through the meeting with no detrimental effect at all on punters ability to back the right horses. Make no mistake though, if we’d seen a few more upsets and a few more surprises there would be plenty who would have pointed to watering producing ‘false ground’ , ‘uneven draw bias’ etc and therefore causing such results.
If a meeting goes ahead as brilliantly as Ascot it’sdespite
watering. If anything (and these days it’s almost literally anything at all) goes wrong and that will be
because
of watering.
All of this is compounded by the attitude that Prufrock refers to. On this Jose we agree that the BHA shows such scant regard for communicating properly with punters that resentment and mistrust is allowed to grow, often without good reason. The linking of levy to profits is not a policy that I have ever agreed with not least because of the issues with perception. Issues that the BHA has done little or nothing to anticipate and address.
The fact is that racing has always needed us to lose. Always. Nothing has changed. The perception has changed though and I do think that’s an own goal for racing but I do also think that we don’t need to throw logic out the window when discussing any part of the sport that might be impacted by this. Like I say, bit of diligence and a bit of discipline will help us sort the wheat from the chaff and concentrate on those issues that really are important for punters. It’s not the case that everything a clerk does is intended to thwart us.- Total Posts 17716
Sean
For someone who doesn’t see himself as a bookmaker’s apologist, your premise that ‘levy income is going down, therefore nothing’s been done to affect it’ ranks on a similar scale to the Lingfield management calling their arbitrary solution a ‘safety’ measure.
Of course I’ve no hard evidence to say how much bookmakers benefit from not paying 4th places, in much the same way that you’ve no hard evidence to the contary. However, it’s hardly an unfounded assumption that c10,000 shops and myriad internet operations reducing their place liability by c25%, on however many races, is likely to benefit the bigger bookmakers by more than just a few bob.
There’s little doubt that 16 runner races have been engineered out at many courses, and there’s little or no sensible justification for doing so at most of them; you might not think that important, many punters view it differently, just as they do with overwatering – particularly when it has a direct impact on the result of a number of races.
As I said earlier, Ascot wouldn’t generally be one of them, but little wonder – given the proliferation of ground inconsistent with both the weather and official going reports – that punters feel they are being put away deliberately.Rh, this is what’s making it a tricky conversation I think.
You say that Lingfield’s decision is ‘arbitrary’ and has been described by the track as a ‘safety measure’.I don’t understand you when you reach that conclusion.
I say, that the way that Neil MacKenzie Ross has thought about and talked about this issue has shown a lack of understanding of both punters interests and punters perceptions.
There’s no sense at all though in which the decision is ‘arbitrary’. It’s a response to a set of circumstances that we can all see and which we can all agree exist. His argument is not one of safety but of whether racing on the flat course at Lingfield can remain tenable (and therefore under the terms laid down by the BHA in its guidance for racecourses turf flat racing in general at the course in fact) given the extreme bias under that stands rail.
I agree with Prufrock that his reference to perhaps increasing the maximum back to 15 is likely to ‘rub salt into the wound’ of those who mourn the few 16 runner handicaps that have been run on the straight course at Lingfield over the years. That he made such an utterance suggests to me a total ignorance of the betting aspect, rather than colusion with bookies.
You don’t understand me when I reach that conclusion.
We may, as the phrase goes, have to agree to differ on this one.
What we can agree on though perhaps is that there will always be a question mark over motives for any action becauase of the profit/levy relationship. I can certainly see that.
As I’ve said, I would also agree that insufficient effort has been made to either anticipate or address that factor.
I’d also agree -obviously- that a lot of work has been done to make the sport fit in with bookmakers scheduling and shop opening and so forth.
I think we’re coming from different starting points entirely on the whole question of watering which is why we’re unlikely to find too much common ground on that issue perhaps.
I’d also agree that there have been some almighty cock ups by clerks at different times. In fairness to NMR at Folkestone, he wouldn’t deny that either.
If we shout conspiracy every time anyone takes any action at all though we’re not in a very strong position when attempting to tackle other matters would be my take on it.
Beautiful day out there!- Total Posts 17716
You say that Lingfield’s decision is ‘arbitrary’ and has been described by the track as a ‘safety measure’.
I don’t understand you when you reach that conclusion.
Sean
"The safety limit for all races on the straight has been reduced from 18 to 14, but Mackenzie-Ross said there is scope for it to go back up to 15."
Clearly, it has been described as a safety measure, and it’s arbitrary in the sense that it can be changed at whim, (though, God forbid, not to the number that would pay an extra place.
).
Keep smiling,
RH.The safety limit is reduced by virtue of the rail moving not the other way round. The motivation for moving the rail was to eliminate the bias, not to reduce the safety maximum. So, he moves the rail to get rid of bias. This narrows the track. There are safety limits defined by the BHA’s guidelines for racecourses under the current rules of racing, not by the clerks.
If the track was still wide enough for 18, the safety max would not have kicked in but it has. He’s reducing to 14, with some further work presumably he can get to 15.
Like I’ve said, there’s been no race run on the straight in 2010 with more than 15 runners and only 5 such races in the whole of 2009. There’s lots that’s going on in the sport that I’m concerned about but Mackenzie Ross moving the rail at Lingfield isn’t one of those things, for me at any rate.So it was FIRM AFTER watering. So what would it have been had they not watered? Might I guess officially Firm, UNOFFICIALLY HARD.
Can you be sure about that Ginger?
I’d contend that light watering on turf that is exposed to a strong sun and keenish wind – as Ascot was last week – wouldn’t prevent the ground drying out any more slowly than had it been left alone, as the majority of the applied water would simply evaporate from the surface rather than ‘get in’ to a depth that would survive a day’s sun ‘n’wind. Think summer showers; the moisture is gone as soon as the sun returns
My earlier posts may have given the impression that I’m against
any
watering of tracks and I plead guilty to charges of unnecessary exaggeration to emphasise a point
While I’d rather have that than excessive watering, particularly outside of the high summer months, I don’t have a particular problem with irrigation in the run up to a meeting, if and only if it is deemed necessary to maintain grass growth, certainly not to influence going
The infield of my local track York during a parched summer can resemble a dust bowl with only the lonely dandelions being green and no one would want the course itself to be like that of course. So pre-meeting irrigation and turf maintenance is a must in those circumstances; that is no more than the groundstaff doing their jobs correctly
If there’s sufficient water in the root zone of grass to allow top growth then in my view there’s no call to irrigate, which unless applied at a volume sufficient to penetrate that root zone is pointless (other than it providing an ephemeral ‘softening’ of the top inch or two) and counterproductive in the longer term as it makes the turf ever more dependent on artificial irrigation due to surface rooting
You obviously can’t irrigate heavily during a meeting and light overnight sprinkling is a waste of time (IMO) so by all means water before the meeting if it is necessary to maintain top growth but once a meeting is underway leave well alone
There you go Clerks and Groundstaff: prepare the track properly before a meeting and let nature take its course during it with hospepipe left padlocked on its reel
Time for an experiment BHA?
No, I couldn’t be sure Drone, which is why I said "guess", but there was a distinct possibility or even probability of very firm / hard ground come the final day (without watering).
Do agree, watering prior to a meeting is best (in perfect circumstances);
when the forecast is easy to decipher
. There’s often a chance of rain around (say 10%); if it happens to fall on already watered ground it’s often described as "false". A lot of horses don’t act on it, and the clerk gets a bo….king from owners, trainers and punters alike.
Fact is, closer to a meeting the clerk waters, the more accurate a forecast is. Therefore, the best option is often to wait.
Value Is Everything
:
Be a bit boring to write the story up with the actual number of races impacted included as if it were a factor. 
"World leaders" are the BHA, only according to the BHA though.
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