Saturday, May 14, 2011
WELL, at least that report released by the Strategic Marketing Group on Tuesday provides plenty of food for thought.
Like most reports it’s good, irritating, and, at times, puzzling. The puzzling bit comes with this notion of a two-tier fixture list.
The idea seems to be to categorise the game into "premier’ and "standard’ racedays.
What follows when that is sorted out, apparently, is the premier meetings would head to the weekend and the standard ones would populate midweek.
I know I’m far from the sharpest card in the pack, but cannot get my head around this particular concept at all.
I mean essentially there isn’t much wrong with the current fixture list, except that there is not enough racing in the winter.
We’re crying out for another track which can take that type of hardship, and we need to open Dundalk through the winter months.
To go making wholesale changes to the fixture list as we know it, perhaps that’s not the plan at all, would be to mess with tradition and surely not to be taken lightly.
There are a couple of recommendations which should be adopted. Certainly, giving the Punchestown festival a permanent date on the last Tuesday of April is one.
Ending the flat season at the Leopardstown November Handicap meeting is also a good idea, as is having a winter series of all-weather racing at Dundalk.
The group recommendation that under 18’s should be left in for nothing, except at designated festivals, is positive and an investment in the future.
Leave them in free all of the time, I say.
The principal irritation, for me, comes with the idea of having 25 minute intervals between races.
It seems that is to be trialled at Dundalk in the near future. In a manner of speaking hasn’t it already been trialled at Dundalk and failed miserably?
Dundalk usually starts at 6.30pm, then runs a race every half an hour, before ending with just a 25 minute gap between the sixth and seventh contests.
It has been a topic of conversation more than once in the press rooms as to why Dundalk bothers to pretend to finish at 9.25.
In the five meetings they have held so far this year, for instance, prior to last night, the final race has been off at 9.28, 9.30, 9.29, 9.39 and 9.29.
Who wants to cram racing into just 25 minute breaks?
Anyone who is familiar with the betting ring in this country will be aware that 30 minutes, or more, is fine.
Betting rings in Ireland can be the most entertaining places on God’s earth, places where you meet all sorts of characters, who are capable of treating success and failure with equal style.
One of the more controversial recommendations of the report is to allow bets at the home meeting in the on-course betting shop and to allow online and betting exchanges at racecourses.
I seem to remember on-course bookmakers going on strike many years ago when punters were allowed to bet on the home meeting at the on-course betting shop.
The bookmakers won that argument.
If HRI finally decide to run with this then the reaction of the bookmakers will be more than interesting.
Anyway, the report is out there now and you cannot crab the efforts of the Strategic Marketing Group.
It has clearly done its best and HRI has a blueprint off which it can work. Where it will all lead remains to be seen, but you have to say it is better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all!
Carlton on course for Epsom glory
THE next couple of weeks are surely going to be the most memorable in the long life of the Queen of England!
Imagine, getting to visit this delightful land of ours and then returning home to a first ever success in the Epsom Derby.
The evidence of the Dante at York on Thursday tells us that whatever finishes in front of the Queen’s Carlton House will almost certainly win the Derby.
Carlton House, with only two races under his belt, was simply too good for Seville, having shrugged off his share of problems.
He was reluctant enough to load and then pulled like a train in the early stages. Bred to stay longer than your mother-in-law, he should have been unsuited by the funereal pace of the race.
But he overcame all of his difficulties and was easily the best horse in the contest, by the time the line was reached.
An end-to-end gallop at Epsom, which is more than likely, could change everything, but somehow you just doubt it.
Ballydoyle’s Seville, backed as if defeat was out of the question, looked ordinary enough and their Recital did not impress in the Derrinstown at Leopardstown last Sunday. They have other possibilities as well, of course, but when you have three or four Derby horses then, often, the reality is you have none!
Ad Idem should not have been allowed run
At Punchestown a week yesterday a horse called Ad Idem dropped its jockey at the start and then galloped riderless for a while.
Now, he was set to contest a very valuable handicap chase and you could understand the desire of connections that he should take part.
But surely he should never have been allowed to run and was beaten even before getting to the first fence.
Ad Idem was far from being a no-hoper and went off a 9-1 shot.
There would have been plenty all over the country who backed him and they got no run whatsoever for their money.
He was never competitive and out of contention when pulled up. If you backed him - I didn’t - it had to leave a very sour taste.
In similar circumstances in future the time has surely come for the stewards to exercise their muscle and withdraw a horse in that kind of a situation.
It is what the punters deserve.
Punters in the Red again
At Killarney last August Aidan O’Brien gave Admiral Of The Red his one and only outing as a juvenile.
An easy to back 12-1 shot, the son of Galileo showed virtually nothing in trailing home 9th of 14 finishers behind Kevin Prendergast’s Mawaakef. Leaving Killarney that Friday evening, I doubt anyone gave him even the slightest thought.
Fast-forward to Leopardstown last Sunday and a step up in trip for Admiral Of The Red of some three and a half furlongs.
He went off the 3-1 favourite, popped away in front and won comfortably, by four and a half lengths. Hard game or what!
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