WTF

[befair]

Another case of pointlessly duplicated races; a 2 mile, 1 furlong Grade 2 hurdle, and then half-an-hour later, at the same course, a 2 + half-mile grade 2 hurdle.
You could not make it up

[robnorth]

OK, two Grade 2 hurdles over significantly different distances. Your point is?

[graysonscolumn]

OK, two Grade 2 hurdles over significantly different distances.

Not only that, but two hurdles which have co-existed on the same card as Graded events since 2006, and before that as one Graded contest and one Class B contest for many, many years (back in the days when the Relkeel Hurdle was the Lonesome Glory Hurdle (Sport of Kings Challenge)).

There’s a danger in the prevailing climate of assuming no historical precedent exists for instances of small fields in high-class races, but the 1990s were full of them. Where this specific fixture is concerned, the 1998 renewals of the Lonesome Glory and Bula Hurdles (as they were then) mustered just six and five starters between them, and the entire six-race card only 39 (one third of which in the Tripleprint Gold Cup).

And all that on good ground and on only the second day all term that the New Course had been used. Were attitudes to big races cutting up the same then as today, I imagine there’d have been hell on.

gc

Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.

[ivanjica]

There’s a danger in the prevailing climate of assuming no historical precedent exists for instances of small fields in high-class races, but the 1990s were full of them.

Good point. I am of the firm opinion that an orchestrated attempt is being made by bookmakers to control the sport.

In the same week we started with news the bookmaker owned SIS had experienced a major dip in profits. Then we read bookmaker press releases that small field NH races are turning punters away from the sport? Really?

I am a punter, and love nothing better than a 4 or 5 runner Novice Chase. IN fact its where historically I have made significantly greater profits than on any other race type.

It is high time that our sports controlling bodies "grow a set" and start dictating terms to bookies and not the other way around.

SIS CEO Gary Smith maintains he has walked away from 2017 renegotiations with racecourses for media rights because in the current climate the tracks are asking for too much. Is it not strange that at precisely the same time Smith makes his veiled threat bookmakers are sabre rattling and threatening to turn their backs on the sport because punters won’t stand for small field races and have plenty of other sports upon which they can wager?

Instead of selling just media rights, the racecourses should be selling the right to form betting markets on their events. I am not sure what the legalities are, but if it is not currently legal to make such a charge then the courses need to lobby Parliament for a change in the law and pdq.

I have no doubt that if tomorrow the bookies were forced to pay for the privilege of forming betting markets on horse races they would change their tune.

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