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Horse weighting scales can cost between £1000 and £2600 a set.
RTS can take them from course to course if money is that tight.
The read-outs are digitalised and can be wirelessly transmitted to an office.
Does not involve much manpower cost at all these days.
Hong Kong and Japan do all this a matter of routine punter information and for racing integrity.
People do not bet if the information is missing, so there it is regarded as essential betting information.The real cost in £Ms is to the punters who are put away thinking a horse has no chance, but it is now 40 pounds lighter than when it last raced in a handicap.
Conversely, the hot favourite on last meeting’s form is now 40 pounds heavier and unbeknown to the public has no chance.The going stick is pushed in to a prescribed depth – the pushing in speed is not relevant.
The going stick is the best we have to date and is very credible.
Most UK natural soil profiles vary every few feet around the track and across the track – so it actually is practically impossible to grade. Watering and absorbed moisture content is another variable in soil behaviour. The Clerk takes about 22 readings a furlong and averages those out.
The BHA should enforce the production of Turftrax going maps as “soft in places” does not tell you where or how much. That would get you nearer to your grading each section suggestion and the Clerks already collect all the data – the majority just do not publish it as going maps. They should forbid clerks /jockeys from giving any “opinions” on what the going might be. These random guesses just add to the whole mess of confusion.The soil has to be tested to about 14 inches deep for the ground that supports a galloping horse hoof and the shear test shows how the grass roots are binding the topsoil section. A harrow would wreck the turf if going into such depths and all the divot repairs would be pulled out.
One way to get a better prediction of the actual going is to stable 5 retired racehorses at the course and time them at full gallop speed over various sections. This was done in New Zealand. There are other ways.
If the bearing pressure of soft soil is 1/4 ton per square foot then when the horse foot impact is 2 tons it would mean the size of the foot would need to be 8 square feet to avoid sinking into the soil. As the foot contact area is about 1/10th of a square foot it is too small by a factor of 80 to have nay “floating” effect.
As others have stated, it is a round action – not placing the foot at an angle to the ground (digging a larger divot) – and the suction action to overcome as the foot is pulled out that counts. A bigger horse (with bigger feet) would be at an advantage solely because it has greater muscle power to pull the foot out.
The Going Stick itself is consistent.
The soil make up of every track changes around the track and reading depend on the sub-soil which can be clay, sandy loams or chalk. This is why the readings are as BHA states – only to be be taken for that track.The Clerks were allowed to over-rule the Going Stick readings from day one as BHA thought they were the experts. Sedgefield is even allowed not to have a going stick for readings required by BHA’s own rules of racing. They have been allowed to wait for the mark 2 going stick which may or may not ever arrive.
Going Maps (data already collected but not published at most courses) should also be essential evidence as some races are run entirely on a different going than others at the course and some have dramatic changes of going over the race distance.
Clerks even over-rule their own official goings by changing the going after the first race quite often. BHA should put a stop to that as the Clerks cannot have it both ways and the official going changes the form book beaten length values. When you look at the Racing Post going corrections they indicate not only that the official going is way out but the changes after the first race onwards are even more the wrong way.Horses can race safely over a wide range of going. If declared and fit they should run or not be allowed to race for 2 months – no self certs only course vet certificates. It is a bit bizarre that a horse declared on good going can be withdrawn as the official going on the day is Soft but the race-times indicate that it is Good going. The horse declared because it is Soft have actually run on Good going without any harm or the trainers even noticing. Bizarrely, if they had known it was Good they would have withdrawn the horses.
I think racecourses do a lot of the right things.
It is the racing product that is the possibly unsolvable problem.
So many races in these days of wall to wall racing have absolutely no meaning in the scheme of things. They are largely totally forgotten within a few minutes of the next race starting.The 6 races at a typical flat meeting last a total of about 10 minutes.
Of those 10 minutes about 2 minutes could be called exciting if there is a contested finish.
At courses like Newmarket the final 2 minutes is all you are likely to see yourself at all, exciting or not
That is in a racegoer time of say 5 hours, 2 hours total traveling time and 3 hours of “racing” – or more accurately non-racing. So the actual racing is about 3% of the total time. At a football match the action for most would be over 40% of the total time spent.
No professional is going to waste so much of his working time when he can watch most all meetings on tv. If bookmakers will not accept bets then he must also have ready access to the exchanges. So course apart from fast pictures do not cater for the professionals that might be more interested in he races than the bars.I would guess some 95% of racecourse attendees are just out for an outside social event in pleasant surroundings. They may go once or twice a year or never again. Not many actually have a bet at all and those that do it is a £5 as they have no real clue about any of the horses they have never ever heard about. Desert Orchid was an exception and he had a mass fan following, and Frankel to a lesser extent (2 major attraction horses in 30 years that were allowed to race many times) but the general public remain totally in the dark about the actual racing.
The BHA/racecourses take the attendance to mean that these are all racing fans and the sport is healthy – largely they are deluded.Darren Lawlor
Commercial & Broadcast Manager
Horse Racing Ireland, told me at the end of January:“All Irish racecourses have now been GPS mapped. An In-Running data product will be launched later in 2017 and will form part of an offering to bookmakers.”
There will be updates in the coming weeks with more details.What is needed is for the Irish Turf Club to publish the GPS mapping results and agreed amendments.
Without that, general confusion is inevitable. Some are using the accurate distances, some the about distances, some have not amended anything as no instructions given and the racing media gives out anything in between.I presume the “offering to bookmakers” has not gone down well as they likely do not want to pay anything at all.
It should really be the racecourses providing this as a service to their customers. The cost of GPS sectionals is a fraction of what it once was.Using advised prices to pretend a profit has been reached each month is yet another scam.
For example, February 2017 ended with a claimed net £2 profit, to advised prices.
The biggest winner was Robot Boy which was advised at 16/1. Its starting price however was 10/1.
So the mythical £2 net profit immediately becomes a £4 loss, and this was just one horse.
UK companies are really going to struggle unless they give up this compulsive deception of or outright lying to customers on each and every issue. There will be no one left who trusts a thing they say, and ATR is one of the better guys.
I may be crazy but I’m beginning to wonder how much the exact race distance matters!
When studying form for an upcoming race the exact distance with rail movements is now available but in the horses’ past form only the general distance is given. So, not having time to keep a record of the ultra exact distance every past race was run over, there is no point in me taking into account the exact distance for the upcoming race – I’m better off comparing like with like and just using the general distance.
This got me thinking. Hardly any races are run at a breakneck gallop from the off. For example, if a race is over 3m 1f 17y instead of 3m 1f 203y (at the same track) is it really going to make any difference to the outcome? The horses set off at varying yards behind the tape, probably run at the same pace pattern notwithstanding the yardage difference, and far short of top speed for a substantial but varying proportion of the race. I suppose sectional timing would be revealing but isn’t it more about each runner’s tactical speed at certain crucial moments? Along with a myriad of other factors such as luck in running, jockeyship, a slight error here or there, the exact degree of, say, good to soft on one day compared to good to soft on another, what side of the hay a horse got out of that morning, etc., etc…
There are too many overall factors to predict precisely (in terms of a numerical rating) how each horse will run and what will be the exact lengths between horses at the finish. It’s just something that’s impossible to quantify because of the variables. That doesn’t stop me/us trying but what we are doing is coming up with a general figure, an educated guess. Seen in that light how important really are the exact yardages? Aren’t they just one minor factor?
Does it never occur to you that people who are concerned for correct race distances already know all the issues you have written, but still require them? Why do they require them? Does no lightbulb come on that indicates you might have completely missed the point? Uneducated people do not make educated guesses.
I can understand your frustration, but Betfair’s position on cases like this will always be to recall the bets if technical issues on the site have made a market available when it should be closed. We do have written terms on our site that outline this. Just as an FYI, if a punter places a bet in error and gets in touch with us before the event starts, we may use discretion and void the bets for them depending on the situation.
Is there anything else I can help you with today?Betfair’s position should be to comply with the UK Gambling Act which is now obligatory for all UK betting.
Only the Gambling Commission are allowed in law to cancel bets – no one else – whatever their Terms and Conditions may say. There is no discretion allowed – a bet once made is recoverable in UK law.
The Gambling Act also deems as valid bets on events the result of which are known – so again Betfair are acting illegally.
Betfair are completely out of order here and fortumately for cheated punters the investigations into unfair and unlawful T&Cs is going to hit bookmakers hard in back payments for illegally welshed bets.The Oxford Dictionary definition of relegate is:
Assign an inferior rank or position to:
(British) Transfer (a sports team) to a lower division of a league:There is absolutely no mention of the words “points or table position”.
In an English Court where a contract is made between corporation and customer, more weight is put on the corporation being the professional side and an expectation that they have the resources to ensure their side of the contract is water tight and they can fully look after their interests. The customer is at a disadvantage not usually having such resources and also, in any case, it is not practice that the customer can impose any terms and conditions onto the bookmaker. It is a one-way, unfair contract situation, which is illegal under the Gambling Act (unfair T&Cs now under investigation) and Unfair Terms law. The Juge will see that, and all things being otherwise equal, rebalance by weighing things towards the side of the punter.
The Judge would further tend to sympathise with the customer if the bookmaker had not specified any particular terms on the bet in question. This may be why Corals are trying to paint the claimant as an ex-bookmaker and semi-professional (an undefined status).
The punter would probably have asked for a bet with say the Oxford Dictionary meaning of the term “relegation”.
The odds setter was probably not giving too much thought to the bet other than it was just another easy money mug bet. The odds offered were likely given for a points only relegation which was a mistake by the professional side and a message not conveyed to the punter at the time. They offered the odds for the bet asked for and the punter took those odds in good faith.I can’t see that the Judge has any option but to come down at least half way on the side of the punter with all costs to be carried by the bookmaker – the negligent party.
yeats, Rust set up the HBF which produced those accounts closure stats.
Would you care, for once, to answer my question? What would you do if you owned the business?
Before internet betting and when horse racing was the major betting sport these type of restrictions were rare.
You could bet quite large sums in any shop as they hedged money off. If you won you could bet unrestricted the next day and the next day at the same shop – your money was as good as anybody elses. Arbs were as they should be today – totally irrelevant – they could not care less. The bookmaker managed his profits by the over-round, hedging and pushing the SPs down with tiny amounts of money on course. Winners were seen as a good advertisement to attract others in to try their luck.
Bookmakers have decided to get rid of their expert odds compilers and track Betfair prices. They have decided to use over harsh and inflexible banning methods. Pinnacle have not adopted that model and take large bets from anybody and ban nobody.
So the present “me too” method reduces profits by trying to cut out winners or mostly anyone who looks as if he might win.
Betfred are now easing off restrictions and are reopening banned accounts but it has taken them 5 years to realise it was reducing profits, not maximising them.There are alternative ways for bookmakers to make good money without restrictions and these ways have been used successfully since the 1700s. They seem to have no idea of making books anymore.
I doubt that Bookmakers of all people would lose customers inadvertently, they want our money and they are incredibly efficient at pocketing it.
This is exactly what they have been doing for the past 5 years.
Only 1 customer in 200 consistently wins even a modest amount each year.
Each new customer costs up to £900 to attract.
To stop the 1 in 200 winner, they ban 80 in 200 customers mostly long before they have recouped the £900.
Traders do not care, they would rather cut a customer out than get a bollicking for laying someone sharp. Senior management are no longer ex-bookies and do not seem to have a clue as to what is going on in their name.
Betfred announced they have now realised the balls up they have made on restrictions and are easing off.
Corals soon found they made good profits laying everyone on TV races.Fairly clear which way it was going once the Newcastle result came in and pretty much confirmed by Sunderland, thankfully got out of most of my bets.
Can’t believe so many people were taken in by lies.
Just hope the young aren’t hit if recession hits (or should that be “when”?).
The poor say “it couldn’t get any worse than it is already”…. Oh it can!
Some people must have been so disappointed, voting to return to the 1950’s/60’s on Thursday, only to wake up on Friday and find themselves still pensioners.
It seems turkeys really do vote for Christmas.
Not only voted for Christmas but got told the next day they “misunderstood” that Vote Leave actually have no plans to reduce migration at all, just choose different migrants; the bus advert extra money for the NHS also was a “mistake” – there is no money; Vote Leave Boris in no hurry to leave EU and may not even start talks until 2020; “we want to be able to elect or kick out our own politicians – so Cameron kicks himself out after promising and elected to stay on to 2020; “get our democracy back” means an elitist Bullingdon Boy will likely be your next PM with the UK having absolutely no say. UK will be better off from day one- £ falls 30%.
The biggest con of the public in UK election history.
