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High Ken
You asked: "Why should any reasonable person listen to a small anti-horseracing group who’s not insubstantial earnings are from charitable donations by others who have little idea where their money goes".
Leaving aside your entirely speculative final comment, the answer is because they have a good case, which in my view was even better summarised in Robert’s post: "in good conditions and with all the safety improvements thought necessary, 12 horses fell, 7 unseated riders and 6 pulled up".
You rightly say "horses have died in the National since it began". But while true that is neither here nor there. Standards change, and things once viewed as unremarkable gradually become viewed as unacceptable and progress is made. Thus women and children once worked down mines; overt discrimination against coloured people was within my lifetime commonplace – "no blacks" signs in guest house windows etc; and we anglers live-baited for pike without giving the matter another thought (sadly some still do). Your reference to F1 is apposite – the human death toll led to great changes and so it will be with racing. The only question is whether the racing authorities take the initiative or whether horses continue to be killed in morally dubious events like the National, or flogged to win races, to the point at which Parliament takes the initiative, with in all probability less well thought through solutions to those that the racing authorities could themselves find – if they had the sense to recognise the situation.
Alderbrook
Thanks for posting the piece by Animal Aid.
I used to enjoy the National, and NH racing generally, much more than the Flat, and regularly attended meetings at Newton Abbot, Devon and Exeter (as it was called then) and the long-forgotten Buckfastleigh. But the costs in terms of equine, and of course much more importantly though fortunately much rarer human, deaths or serious injuries, have increasingly seemed much too high, and I find it hard to disagree with the basic argument of the piece you’ve reproduced.
jt3d3b
Scallywag is right re the split second ratings in the Raceform form book. There is a description of how the figures are generated in the front of the 2007 Flat Form Book. As regards weight it reads as follows:
"The ratings take no account of the effect of weight, either historically or on the day, and this component is left completely to the user’s discretion. What is shown is a speed rating represented in its purest form, rather than one that has been altered for weight using a mathematical formula that treats all types of horse as if they were the same" (page iv.)
And to give an example at random, the winner of the opening race at Folkestone on 25 September (race 5712), Blue Java, which won by a short head, was given a speed rating of 96 for that performance, with the runner up 95. The winner carried 8.07, the runner up 9.05.
This is quite different from how Raceform treated weight in relation to speed years ago, when on the Flat "The numbers at the end of each race indicate the Speed Figures of the first six after each horse has been brought to 9st. and calculations made for going, wind and distances behind winner. These are shown strictly in "past the post" order … To find Speed Figures for future races add 1 point for each 1lb. weighted below 9st. and deduct 1 point for each 1lb. and abive 9st. Highest resultant figure is best" (1987 Flat Annual, page xvi).
Dave
You wrote: "People who regularly make money gambling, aren’t gamblers because they know they are going to win".
That is a much better way of saying what I intended to convey by my phrase "an approach to betting which had proved robust enough to give good grounds for thinking it a realistic basis for making a living". One could perhaps add that they know because their approach (whatever it is) is both logical and validated in action – both are necessary for real confidence.
For many years an increasing proportion of the UK workforce has been employed in the public sector where, mostly, revenue is guaranteed. Those so employed don’t have the same first hand experience of entrepreneurship that those who are self-employed, or run small shops or commercial firms, acquire on a day by day basis.
I see betting professionally as entrepreneurship akin to all other forms of self-employment and running small scale enterprises dependent for income on meeting market requirements: there is no guaranteed revenue from the taxpayers’ pockets, and income is dependent on performance. None of these enterprises is without risk, but none is, in any useful sense of the word, a matter of gambling. All are attempts to apply capital and capability to good effect.
As is clear from earlier posts, those who bet professionally do so in a variety of ways, but a common feature seems to be that the endeavour is treated as work – as with any other trade, profession or job one has to put in the hours. So the real issue, it seems to me, is whether the work involved engages the individual and, in his or her personal circumstances, is how they prefer to spend their time.
And of course the work involved in betting professionally is as varied as the strategies that are employed. For me, the actual betting is, in a use of time sense, utterly peripheral – though I can see that for an exchange trader, for example, it would be central. The core work is maintaining my databases and analysing races. I neither love gambling (if I did I think it would be very destructive) nor betting (for me a straightforward mechanical process that takes a minute or two a couple of times a week). I enjoy the core work, especially the race analysis part as the database maintenance is undemanding routine (which is not to say that is can be done carelessly), and regard the returns as appropriate for that work.
Presuming he or she had already found an approach to betting which had proved robust enough to give good grounds for thinking it a realistic basis for making a living, my advice to anyone considering betting professionally is to think first and foremost about what, for them, that is going to mean on a day to day basis. And are they going to be happy doing that, compared with the other options open to them?
Jinnyi
Do you happen to know whether all relevant trainers (ie those who send horses to Yarmouth), and through them relevant owners, were consulted about the idea of a one race boycott before it was announced? And if so, did Mrs D and her owners agree to the idea?
I don’t know what the answers are, but unless they are are both "yes", there seems to me no reasonable basis for criticism from the likes of Mark Johnston. Mrs D and her owners have every right to decide what is, and what is not, in their best interests and to act accordingly.
Goodlife
I, too, am old enough to remember Ken Hussey and his ratings and he was, I think, a friend, as well as a colleague, of Tony Peach, the editor of the Sporting Chronicle Handicap Book and thus the chap responsible for selecting for publication the initial VDW letters.
Goodlife
I have a copy of an article by VDW dated 10 October 1981 in which he discussed an approach on the lines you mention, with the same 7 courses listed. In that article he suggests noting 2yos with a speed figure of around 70 and above and lists the 1980 qualifiers – just 13.
The number of qualifiers VDW found suggests that any qualifying speed figure should be near the top of the range. If one could find a ranking of last seasons’ best 2yo performances as measured by speed figures one could perhaps just take the top 15 or so.
aaronizneez
The vicarious interest taken in other people’s sexual pecadillos being what it is, you are probably right re Alan Clark. But for me he will be remembered for being able to capture the essence of issues in a nutshell and express them in forthright terms, as with his advice to Mrs Thatcher on the community charge:
"The only objection to the tax, as far as I can see (and as I did in fact point out, to the manifest irritation of the Lady and all eleven other Ministers present except the Chancellor, is that no one will pay. It’ll be like jay-walking.
And by "no one" I mean all the slobs, yobs, drifters, junkies, free-loaders, claimants, and criminals on day-release, who make their living by exploitation of the benefit system and overload the local authority system. As usual the burden will fall on the thrifty, the prudent, the responsible, those of "fixed address", who patiently support society and the follies of the chattering class."
aaronizneez
As one of those who has posted positively about Big Mac on this thread, for me it is certainly not a matter of being "comfortable with the image JM portrays of the sport". For that I would be looking to someone like Tony McCoy who epitomises hard-working, courageous, highly skilled professionalism.
Quite often, I find Mac’s conduct downright embarrassing, particularly his on screen attitude towards women. But he is prepared to speak out controversially on significant issues when he judges it appropriate. For me, he is to racing what the late Alan Clark was to politics: neither a person one would want to be in charge of anything, but both worth their weight in gold (considerable, in Mac’s case!) in a world of non-thinking, non-boat rockers.
Maxilon
I agree with your sentiments, and would add one further point. By focusing on issues such as corruption within racing, changes in how starting prices are fixed and whip abuse, Mac raises issues that precious few racing insiders seem to want aired and yet are important to the average punter and, in the whip abuse example, the wider public.
Mac clearly sees that in a changing society it is becoming less and less acceptable to see horses apparently flogged over the last furlong or so of a race. The fact that some (? many) racing professionals argue that the horses are not hurt cuts little or no ice with many viewers. And just as the physical punishment of children, which unless done in a brutal way was not an issue of public concern thirty years ago, has in recent years become a matter of political discussion and legislative proposals, so will whipping racehorses. Mac recognises that, and by focusing on the hypocrisy of the relatively minor penalty for flagrant abuse of even the current rules on the matter, he does a service.
Best of luck with your efforts in tracking the programme down.
You could do worse than email Tony Peach, ex letters editor of the Sporting Chronicle Handicap book – you’ll find his email address as one of the "links" at Browzers. Moss Publications is Tony’s publishing company, so he obviously had some contact with Healy and conceivably may be able to help you.
I know Healy’s booklet in which he describes his weights right approach. I hadn’t realised he had also issued a computer programme and can’t help with that. But if there has been some confusion and it is the booklet you want it is published by Moss Publications and available from Browzers and probably other specialist racing bookshops.
"There is of course nothing inherently wrong with betting coups; they are part of the sport. But they cannot be set up with preparatory false runs."
It will be interesting to see how the racing authorities choose to interpret "preparatory false runs" in the future. Running a horse on going he has amply demonstrated he can’t handle, or over the "wrong" trip, or on the wrong type of course?
