We're Doomed

It's a bit sad that Masterton gets allocated a winters day at Trentham for their day in the sun. And money into a race that was never going to attract a decent field. Opaki was always a chilly place for a racemeeting though. I had some cold days there over the years. And as Aaron says, the stake has only a minor affect on the field quality so we do need to start looking beyound stakes as the blunt instrument to solve all Racing's problems.

I think you would put that down to incompetence. Is anyone surprised?

His first you're was correct, the second not quite so.

I think its more the lack of open class stayers. Surely a $25,000 boost to the stake would more than make up for not giving the owners a free Tui.

Interesting the first 3 home in the 4 horse field were all owned by Arabs. British racing is probably lucky it's the Arabs into racing rather than the Russians.

Those times indicate that at least one horse in each race enjoyed the track. Distances from first to last were interesting, especially considering the fields were small and the track was consistent: 15L, 15L, 14L, 25L, 13L, 9L, 41L, 15L, and 24L. That would tend to indicate that some horses didn't handle it at all, which isn't surprising of course. At least the trainers gave it a go and now they will have a better idea which of their horses like the surface.

Very well said. He speaks total sense.

My god, that Sharrock sounds like an arrogant bastard. One can only presume they intend to sell off the land for housing to help fund the AWT. If I was a local trainer I would suggest boycotting the opening of the AWT. The best approach would be to accept for the races on opening day and then scratch everything on race morning. Show a bit of trainer power. Manawatu used to be a highly regarded club. I doubt this would have happened in the days of Bennet as President and Freeman as secretary.

Perhaps call it Waimate, or the Mills track; lots of possibilities.

Don't panic, we are finding our level in NZ. And we still have some tracks to sell off.

Sorry about resurrecting an old thread, but I have been very busy recently and wanted to comment on this one. One of the major reasons for this shambles was the poor programming of 2yo races in the South. There has only been one maiden 2yo race in the South all season, that was the first race of the season. In the NI there are maiden 2yo races all over the place. If there had been maiden 2yo races programmed properly these horses would have had a go in less pressured 7 and 8 horse races before hitting the big time in a big field in front of a massive crowd at Riccarton. You can't rea

I assumed they were probably looking to centralise at Te Awamutu.

I saw the press release on Love Racing, but didn't see any mention of a greenfields site. Perhaps there is a more extensive press release elsewhere.

I can see you don't back on the trots mule. Those would have been considered massive dividends at Alex Park.

Good exacta, you would still have got more on the quinella though. It paid $112 and for $6 you could have taken $2 units.