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“What I do see as telling is the fact there there has been zero response to Louise 12 posting the black horse newsletter on the forum. Zilch nada.”
I’ve a lot of respect for Louise 12, but linking to newsletters buried in tweets, buried in PDFs I’m downloading from who knows where?
Post it here. The cloak and daggers **** is only mystique, and also the fact you’ll look a fool if you get something wrong and don’t have it buried beneath so making yourself believers.
It’s totally puzzling, Marlingford. I don’t know what the person plans on charging, and shame on him if it’s one of those, “Follow these tips to win!” scam books/hotlines/video series, but there’s a huge amount to horse racing that’s puzzling. I don’t know what every detail means in the form guides and I often find myself googling them.
Any time I start looking at a new sport, which happens a few times a year, I look for a guide to get me up to speed. Some of the bookies have guides trying to demystify the sport. I don’t see why someone looking for youtube followers or five quid on fivrr.com is abhorrent while someone looking to go pro as a gambler is helped.
“A lack of awareness” sounds a lot like ignorance. Of course some people would be implying “wilful ignorance.”
But that’d be applying maliciousness to people who merely dwelt at the start.
It’s absolutely precious that some fella asks how to specialize and become a pro in horse gambling, and gets people falling over themselves to help him, and another fella asks about making an online course for horse betting and gets the cold shoulder.
I absolutely despair.
I think the fact that it hasn’t been brought up by the media, or by people on here, when other cases are brought up extremely quickly is telling.
I was just coming here to say that, jackh. I’m not quite sure what bitterness smells like but there’s a fierce stink to Britain at the moment.
Today was really a case of what jockeys will do, or to be more accurate, what they’ll allow, when the stakes are at their utmost.
If we took the opinion of the “two many uses of whips” people calling for sanctions on the horses/results at least two of the winning horses today would have been disqualified.
Separately, and more importantly, it shows the rules of racing should never be so strict as some would want. They’re covering everything from low grade midweek handicaps to the best horses being urged on for everything. They’re general rules, put to a strict purpose, trying to make their best of horses, jockeys and trainers that can have a twenty furlong winner clear ahead in one races, with no competition, or four horses within a neck where the smallest detail could have changed the entire result.
If you’re willing to accept the horses, when it counts (and figuring out when it counts is part of the game) are doing their best, then you have to accept that there can never be such a rigorous interpretation that all gamesmanship, jockeying and angles are covered.
If racing according to “rules” was perfect St Mark’s Basilica should have been disqualified, or demoted, according to me. He caused Tarnawa to miss the break/gain ground at 1.5f out, the most important part of that race. I had 50p on Tarnawa. I’m annoyed that Tarnawa didn’t get a fair race, but it’s what we have and accounting for every other possibility would be chaos.
Have a few cans the night before, then when there’s nothing happening around 2am go through the cards for a track you give 50p about. Make a few notes. The next day wake up and listen to the podcasts that have come out, go through Twitter, refresh this website and read what the cranks on here have to say. Then about two hours before the meet (worst time for a favourite winning, best time to catch a drifter) place your bets and sit back and enjoy.
The BBC Radio offerings are superb. There’d be some months I’d listen to 6Music constantly. I don’t have to pay the license as I’m not in the UK, but if there was a nominal £2.50 or or £3 sub, say £30 a year or something for people outside the UK to listen to their online radio streams I’d be happy to pay it.
Irish radio isn’t bad late night, but their software is awful, and BBC Radio has something decent on at pretty much any hour.
I hope he’s learned when an animal dies in the future the correct response is gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. It’ll be pure show but it’s what people demand.
I think (and hope) that’s why it’ll be very hard for him to get his license back. Taking away someone’s entire livelihood is a massive punishment, so if another trainer is willing to employ him, take the risks, and stake his name and his ability to look after his own horses while Mahon is working for him in having him in the yard, then I’m mostly OK with that.
The guy will never (should never? maybe never?) have a horse’s wellbeing entirely be his responsibility, but if someone else, some other head trainer says, “I take responsibility for these horses and Mahon is being supervised, as an employee, for me,” then they’re the one taking the risk. And to me that seems like an “acceptable” solution. Someone isn’t ending up unemployed for life, with no real skills elsewhere (let’s assume his entire life is horses) but someone else is vouching for him.
Of course this would have to be a situation where there is actually someone taking responsibility and it isn’t just a paperwork dodge with only their name appearing on forms.
Even from a legal perspective, a body taking away someone in the industry’s entire right to earn a living, even as a supervised, managed employee is a massive punishment. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they felt if they did that it’d be challenged in the courts. Better to let him work in a proper trainer’s yard and earn a wage where someone else is the last word in horse care.
I don’t want to stress this too much as it’s not something I’m totally on board with but people make the same argument about prison. “Three years? Far too soft!” Whereas, as it was in this case, judges and lawyers (and more involved) actually know how shitty prison really is, and how long three years actually is, especially when you’re being deprived of all normal freedoms.
I can guarantee they’re taking the same approach with this trainer. It’s a man (deservedly) losing his entire business. At most he’ll be able to work for other people, other people who take responsibility for him and his behaviour, while earning a “simple” wage, rather than charting his own course with his own business. That is a big punishment. As I said, it’s a deserved one, but people really underestimate how severe of an impact losing all your clients is, not being able to pay for your yard, not being able to pay for staff, and simply being out of the head trainer game for years and years. This is on top of the idea that he has no guarantee that he will get his license back after the ban is up, as the IHRB has said. It’s going to take a lot of people vouching for him saying he’s changed to get it again, and the same people telling owners to go with him, and more people with money behind him investing in a “tainted” trainer, and even then it’s almost a certainty he’ll have plenty of random inspections, presuming he is allowed to train again.
It is not easy to come back from that unless you’re independently wealthy or have some secret backers. A multiple year ban, essentially losing your business, with no guarantee you’ll get it back, is a severe punishment, and whether the number is three, or five years, it doesn’t really matter.
“I don’t drink (as in alcohol) but shall nevertheless be looking out for FiftyP’s selection.”
They’d go just as well with a strong cup of tea on a cold morning or chilly evening.
Something passed onto me by my father was that a Chocolate Gold Grain goes very well with a hot whiskey. He discovered this from other riders after they’d go out on cold winter mornings.
They have the perfect mixture of not being too sweet in the biscuit (grain from the biscuit, grain from the whiskey, perfect,) with the chocolate offsetting that, to go with the nip of the booze.
I’m not sure they’re available in Britain, but if you’re ever at an Irish winter meet, buy a pack in the local SuperValu and bring them with you to the pub for your hot whiskey after.
For all you (some of you) profess to be serious racing fans you really want to be spoon fed things. Racing (along with baseball) is probably the sport with the highest amount of information available to any fan. There’s form (free,) pedigrees (this might cost for real depth,) analysis on things like times, speeds, and previous races (both free and paid for,) there’s a fair amount of people willing to offer their opinion (pro or random punter,) you can watch a huge amount of recent races (I think if you have a funded betting account with one of the big boys this is “free.” Maybe even the RP or RacingTV offer it if you just sign up without paying,) there’s books of which horses to follow, former jockeys, breeders, industry insiders, and trainers all giving opinions, etc. Why exactly do you need ITV to provide you with what’d be at most five minutes of, no matter how hard they try, pretty superficial information.
Sure, they could do better with (I’m guessing) jockey and trainer interviews, but you can find any comments from a significant win or loss online after a day. And sure, the parade ring could be shown better, but I find the parade ring on TV can’t give you the same information you’d get in real life from being able to follow a horse in person. Five minutes, ten horses, maybe twenty, that’s anything from 15 to 30 seconds on a horse, and even then the angles won’t be right, the camera won’t be able to track them, the horse will be in the wrong place, you won’t have the in-person awareness to spot a horse kicking up a fuss. (My personal wish is that each race day you could get a minute’s clip of every horse in their box in the stables, with no tack on, and no-one leading them, them just turning and taking a few steps. That’d tell you a lot more than a few seconds of TV-parade ring-ing. Then the horses going to and at the start will tell all the rest you need, even though you’ve already probably got your bet on.)
It’s ridiculous what you want from a station that’s trying to appeal to a broad range of interests and experience. You lot are supposedly the clued in fans (far more clued in than I claim to be.) Don’t be relying on a commercial TV station when there’s a wealth of information available for you if you spend ten minutes, one day, setting up your bookmarks after a bit of googling.
I don’t watch ITV on the weekends because I’m not interested in British racing that much, and I have RTV for the Irish racing. However I do watch ITV for Cheltenham and the like. Partly because it’s a satellite feed, and so just that bit faster and better quality than my RTV stream. But also because they try to give an impression of the buzz of the festival.
I’m fine watching a dedicated Irish feed on RTV most of the time. During any downtime I occupy myself with the computer, so it’s not a case me needing added buzz for 90% of what I watch, but Cheltenham is huge. I’ve never been but I imagine if I was there I’d be taking in everything between races. ITV can’t do this, but they do try and get across some of the atmosphere and add colour.
I don’t care about Saturday or Sunday racing on ITV, like I said, but for big events I want things to feel like a big event. I’ve already made my mind up about who I’m picking in the race, I don’t need anything extra there (I don’t watch previews or anything.) So if someone wants to feel like they’re at an event on a Saturday or Sunday, that’s what ITV is going to provide most of the time.
