Horses First Racing
Click here for our current race entries courtesy of The Racing Post
It's been a quiet week or so and i would be hopeful of a return to the winners enclosure soon. IVORY SILK is a chance today at Sandown though i have to give a word of warning that she is not the easiest horse to keep happy at the moment. My preferred option would be to find a nice race on the all weather but they just aren't forthcoming.
I love this mare but she does have some problems and she can be her own worst enemy at home. She will be ridden patiently today and hopefully get home hard up the hill.
Tomorrow Leonaldo can go to Wolvs and again i would only be hopeful rather than bullish about his chances. He is returning from a lay off and will come on from the run provided he comes out of it well.
Yesterday PRECIOUS CITIZEN ran an honest 4th at Chepstow. She appears a touch timid and David Cox and i will have a chat today about her future.
DJANGO REINHARDT was bitterly disappointing finishing very tamely last night at Kempton. I may give him a run at a longer trip now but his days here are surely now numbered.
On a controversial note i found it rather disappointing to see in Australia the jockeys went on strike over the new whip rules introduced bringing them more in line with the rules here in the UK. Whatever their views on the matter, surely the losers are the owners and trainers that have paid to have the horses taken to the races only to see the jockeys pull the pin after the third race. I would guess many had travelled some distance to see their horse race. As far as i see it the problem is with the Australian Racing Board and not the poor stakeholders such as the owners and trainers. Without going into depth i am surprised that after only a month or so of the new rules the jockeys there have decided it is too difficult to adapt to the new regulations. I would be pretty sure they all weren't wanting to go about the matter by striking.
I am not going into a debate on the relative merits of their argument, just the way they dealt with it. Times are tough in racing at the moment due to the economic climate and hitting the owners in the pocket in this manner is showing a lack of respect and understanding in my opinion.I hope it gets sorted out soon.
Whether racing in England, Ireland or Australia it seems to me that there is too much separation of power and the various stakeholders don't work closely enough together to achieve what's best for the industry as a whole. Events such as this don't help the public perception, jockeys and trainers have a responsibility to promote the industry in any way they can. No one stakeholder, be it jockey, trainer, owner, breeder, punter etc, can be ignored as without any ONE of them the whole ball game collapses.
I had an interesting conversation with someone yesterday who backed Precious Citizen each way and was gutted to just miss out on a return on her running fourth. I explained that as there were 16 runners she would have been paid out on the place however she was not aware of this and threw the ticket in the bin. We have many new owners to the industry and it is worth pointing out that in races with 16 or more runners the bookies will pay out to 4th place.
Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.
To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.
Copyright � 2007 Horses First Racing Limited. Registered Office: The Beeches, Sutton Veny, Warminster, Wiltshire, BA12 7BY
Company No. 04575458. All rights reserved. Designed by DentonsCreative