TARANTULA

just to reply to critisism of new plymouth and to coreect some misconceptions .having retired after 36years leading the club i reckon i know a little about the situation. taranaki racing racing certainly arent the golden child of NZTR,in fact the club are diusappointed having been promised 2 premier racedays they havent got any.any icrease in raceday funding has been earnt not given. Taranaki has always put NZracing 1st before club interests, i believe they treat visiting owners as well as any club in NZ, their oncourse turnover throughout the year is consistant highger than most clubs as is thier corporate support. to give you an examples campbell moncur organiesd a project that rated all racedays in NZ, for industry days with specific KPIs.taranaki industry racedays ranked 1st ,2nd and had 4in top 10 of approx 200 racedays. taranaki has also proved to be arguably the most iinovative club in NZ with xtreme raceday now leading to the jericho, the in terprovincial, numerous jockeys racedays ,NZs only apprentice day and i be everyone has forgotten they ran the 1st 2 slot races in  NZ very successfully.they also were one of the first clubs to utilise twilight racedays successfully. when they are available i will report turnover from the last meeting in which weather played a major part with 7 inches of rain in the 7days prior and nearly 20 inches in the preceding month. like many taranaki believe that winter horses need the oppurtunity to run for significant stakes and that is why when entain wanted their grp3 race for ellersie the club agrred to give it to them inreturn for a super saturday stake meeting in july. re the future personally i didnt agree with the demolishing of the public stand,however NPDCwanted it and paid for the $2m plus new stabling at the track the club has also signed a lease for the next 35years with a further 33 available after this .who knows were racing will be in  60+ years ,very few of race cafe readers will be around to judge. i lovce the racing industry it has been a major part of my life and i continue to support it breeding from 2 mares and much to the chagrin  of myh wife at present i have 5horses in work 3of them i own 40% of so i am heavily invested .hope this clarified some misconceptions and look forward to some continued positivity in the industry

Congrats to Steve on getting the personality of the year award from the NZ Breeders. He is without doubt one of the best auctioneers in the world and he is also a bloody good guy, and very deserving of the award for all his many years of dedicated service to the bloodstock industry.
Congrats my old friend you thoroughly deserve all the accolades.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1AFmhrAqzT/

Lawson-Carroll recuperating after serious race fall
By Jess de Lautour, LOVERACING.NZ News Desk
Apprentice jockey Ace Lawson-Carroll is recuperating in Waikato Hospital after sustaining serious
injuries in a shocking race fall at Te Rapa on Saturday.
Lawson-Carroll was one of four riders taken to hospital after the fall, alongside Ashlee Strawbridge,
Rihaan Goyaram and Hayley Hassman. His fellow jockeys were cleared of any serious injury, but
Lawson-Carroll went into surgery on Saturday night, having an operation on his femur.
The 20-year-old is indentured to Byerley Park trainers Shaun and Emma Clotworthy, and the former
was pleased to share that Lawson-Carroll was feeling positive when they spoke on Sunday morning.
“He’s in Waikato Hospital and had an operation on his femur last night, they were a bit worried that
it may be cutting off some blood circulation so they operated on that,” he said. “I believe he has to
have an operation on his hip and his shoulder, so he’s got a couple more to go.
“We’ve spoken to him this morning and he’s pretty positive, his partner is up there with him now
and Emma’s been there today, and I think we’ll go in after the races today.
“I haven’t had a chance to talk to the surgeons yet, but when I go in, I’ll hopefully be able to have a
chat and see what sort of rehabilitation and recovery he’ll be doing.
“He’s a fit young man, with a positive attitude.”
It was an unfortunate end to a career-best season for Lawson-Carroll, having guided 51 winners and
his first at Listed level this term.
New Zealand Jockeys’ Association Executive Officer Andrew Lacy shared further updates on
Strawbridge, Goyaram and Hassman on Sunday afternoon.
“I have been in contact with each of the jockeys, and all three are doing well under the
circumstances,” he said.
“Rihaan has a pretty sore lower back at the moment and will be having an x-ray on Monday.
“Hayley has a significant haematoma on her left lower leg, thankfully there were no breaks, but she
has remained in hospital for close observation. If she continues to improve, she may be discharged
this afternoon (Sunday), but is unsure of recovery time at this stage.
“Ashlee is very battered and bruised, but her scans and x-rays have all come back clear. She will be
heading back to the fracture clinic next

Clotworthy Racing
7h ·  Sunday update Op on hip and femar done Shoulder to come The rest is looking good Ace is even watching the jumps races !! Update on Ace Came out of op late last night He is doing ok We will keep updated on how he is doing Thank you for the messages and love He is one tough customer!

This is a great post from FB.....some need to take a moment to think before they open their mouths.
Tim Wilson-Askew · 9h · 
Just a personal perspective. Huge appreciation that tonight all jockeys involved are alive and talking. The impact that comes from these sort of falls are and can be entirely life altering or ending. My mother - before I born was involved in a tragic accident very similar to this today. She was placed in an induced coma for 6 weeks. And to this day still struggles with everyday life. She had to learn to walk, talk and do everything that is learnt from a young age as a teenager. If my family had not of been such a formidable team of people. I would not be here. So to the people hiding behind anonymous posts, discrediting or making such horrible statements grow some balls say your shit publicly and take a step back. Before you choose to make discussion or judgments, if you have not been in the position of the running of a race. You can not fathom what immediate actions, decisions or thoughts are made or need to be made. There is a sickening amount of disgrace that is placed in some this industry groups and pages mostly primarily made by punters who I would presume have a grudge because their ‘bet’ did not go they way they wanted. Jockeys receive messages from people pulling them apart daily and weekly when all they go out to do is ride their heart out. Along with industry based chitter chatter. That is disgusting. Jockeys; choose their career and job based of a passion and talent. They do not get on a horse and ride a race with the intent to injure their peers and colleagues. This is just too soon and there should never be allegations thrown around by people sitting on the outside or sidelines. Just go about your own business. Let these humans and their families heal and just be thankful that this industry hasn’t lost another soul yet again. It’s been a very tough ride for families and teams in recent times here in NZ. If you’ve placed a significant bet and lost your money and that’s your grudge - that’s on you. Tonight 4 jockeys are alive after a race day fall that nobody ever wants to happen. And the only thing that should be discussed is that fact that those families and riders are not mourning another loss. We are all in this together.

On top of that is the discretionary dollar that has been stretched too far between different forms of betting. We live in a world clamouring for your money from all directions, and the days of Harness being a great night out when nothing else was offered are long gone. As Nelli said a multicultural Auckland , most of whom have no interest in Harness. 

I'm not sure you were wise to say that.
HRNZ will say; "haha, we see what the problem is. The SI has far too many clubs and meetings given its population, whereas the NI needs heaps more clubs and meetings to make the most of its population."

This season, the one that ends next week, had seven Clubs that held races where the average Field size was less than 9.0, only two of them covered Funding, Wairarapa with 1 meeting & 4 races, and Kaikoura with 2 meetings & 18 races.
Auckland, Waikato BOP, Manawatu, Northern Southland & Kapiti Coast, all made significant loss's, while the figures for Auckland and Cambridge have not been finalized yet, the combined loss will be over $7,000,000.
Small Fields are a recipe for financial disaster.

CEO Brad    " We need to get the North Island pumping "
Your dreaming mate!!  that boat sailed decades ago.
The North Island has over 4 million people, and only 6 Harness racing clubs.
The South Island has only 1.24 million people but 31 Harness racing clubs
Only 1 NI club covered costs, and they only had 4 races at a gallops meeting.
14 SI clubs had positive results, led by Methven with a GBR/Funding of 165%
At the moment, the North Island has had 852 races, but lost more money than the South Island who have had 1773 races.

Totally agree with Lamour.  Only a small % of 2yos have the physical and mental precocity to handle serious racing so young. Any shift in that within the NZ horse population will come from breeding and genetics, not 2yo stakes and bonuses. There were some rather poor deductions made from the research behind this 2yo push namely those that race young have more career race starts (of course - because they were early maturing in the first place!!) and that racing horses young helps build robustness (ignoring that the research was largely based on northern hemisphere data where horses are in barns over winter). Our NZ youngsters are paddock-reared and based on my experience, are in and out of "education" from the time they are broken in till they start racing (or prove they won't make it). I do believe there should be 2yo racing (and have raced top 2yos), but we don't need to throw so many $$ to so few. Like most experienced owners, I trust my trainer to make the best decisions for my horses long term welfare and racing success.

It’s well and truly evident now that the 2 year olds bonus is not working.  HRNZ must discontinue this immediately. We have a 4 horse field tonight which effectively has a $27k stake & will run at a massive lose.  The truth is only a certain percentage of horses are suitable to race at 2 years old & with the number of horses we are breeding we can’t fill 2 years old fields.  No amount of bonus will change that.  I hate to see money being thrown at owners for no effect when we desperately need fiscal responsibility from HRNZ so they are in as good a financial position as possible once the revenue sharing with Entain kicks in in 3 years time. 

I’m a bit worried about this idea of using money from the TAB payment for geo blocking to develop a new training facility.  Of the $100m the Harness share will be about $20mil.  That should be shared evenly across New Zealand.  I would be very annoyed if it was all spent on one training centre in the north.  Fair enough if Auckland spend their fair share of the payment on that but Canterbury & Southland need their share as well.   Hopefully they can access the regional development fund. 

Do not think it has been mentioned yet…….
The $70m is gross …take off sale fees, lawyers,incidentals ?
That would increase the debt amount left over ?
If the above is correct.  ….SORRY.

Do not think it has been mentioned yet…….
The $70m is gross …take off sale fees, lawyers,incidentals ?
That would increase the debt amount left over ?
If the above is correct.  ….SORRY.

Do not think it has been mentioned yet…….
The $70m is gross …take off sale fees, lawyers,incidentals ?
That would increase the debt amount left over ?
If the above is correct.  ….SORRY.

That would be the polite interpretation!

Five Million Dollars!!!!
That's the LOSS this season from racing at Alexandra Park, this was the result of HRNZ funding the ATC racing to the tune of $10 million.
They probably won't mention this figure at their meeting today, it will be all about the $84m owed to Westpac, and the Directors desire to have members approval to sell what ever they want, for what ever they can get, with out further reference to members.
JMK has ruled out the sale of Alexandra Park, so there will be no discussion on that, which is ridiculous, any competent Board would have ALL options on the table for consideration, when you have debts of this magnitude.
 
 

Before Entain came in we know that NZTR were pretty much insolvent , they arrived and threw LOTTO amounts of money around with the largest amount going to NZTR . 
So with this current situation the thing I can't get my head around I, is this , if this was your business and you had run it into the position of insolvency and someone comes along and gives you a large cash injection , wouldn't you make sure you change the way you had been running the company to ensure you didn't get into that position again ???
It seems to me , and I may well just be completely wrong , but they appear to have just chucked some of the windfall at buying mountains of glitter and tried to dress up the turd , wouldn't you try and change some of the business model that got you into the trouble , ask some experts to analyze your business and find some real world solutions ? Make significant changes to the way it was done , try something different .
So instead they have fundamentally changed nothing other than throw money at big races and invented/copied another couple of big name races , meanwhile the parts of your business that actually weren't hurting your business you put in a folder and put in the drawer . 
Maybe it's just me , but I know it's not , I believe the whole way we run our industry needs a complete overhaul , calendar , programming , stakes , track management , industry participant involvement , and countless other things . But no , they just keep following the same path .
Now do we blame the current management , or the previous , or the one previous to that , how many of them really knew the NZ racing industry and could come in with knowledge to change things significantly , it's like the John Messara thing , what did he really know about NZ racing , no more than what he was told .
Until this changes I have no faith that the industry ailments improve . You have to understand the problems to fix them , and throwing money at the top end isn't going to fix anything and shows how little they truly understand the base problems .
 

I'm sure your figures are much more accurate than mine Leggy. My calculations were very much back of the envelope  stuff, with quite a bit of averaging. I don't have the time to add up the exact numbers of meetings involved etc. My numbers were based on the following:
I worked on $12,000 per 8 race card during the summer months to get to $20,000 minimums and $24,000 per 8 race card at winter meetings. I figured this might cost in the vicinity of $2.9-$3m over the course of the year.
To fund this I suggested getting rid of the twilight bonus which currently costs $52,000 per meeting. Over say 20 meetings this would save just over $1m.
I would then suggest knocking $500,000 each off the 3yo sweepstake and the slot. I don't know the exact figures, but a lot of the slot stake is funded by the industry not the slot holders. That would save another $1m.
I would also knock $250,000 each off the Oaks, Derby, 4yo race and Bonecrusher. All $1m+ races. That saves another $1m.
Then there are at least 10 other races that could easily have $100,000 each knocked off them without anyone noticing and without any affect on the field quality. I refer to races like the Group 2 Levin Classic currently $400,000, Herbie Dyke, $700,000, HB 2,000m WFA currently $550,000. I am not suggesting knocking any Group 1 back below $400,000.
In addition to the above there are also the endless bonuses like the Legarto bonus which aren't included in advertised stakes. I haven't delved into them, but I would scrap the lot, probably saving another $1m, which could be used to boost the West Coast New Year races.
That is a total of $4m savings, $5m if you include the bonuses, to fund the $3m needed to bring minimums all year round up to $20,000.
I could well be a few hundred thousands out, but I do have a day job and I don't have the resources that NZTR have to fine turn the exact figures. And I might modestly suggest that even if I am a few hundred thousand out I haven't made as a big a cock up of the whole show as NZTR has over the last few years.

Just wanted to let everyone know we lost one of our  best members to Huntingtons disease on Friday.
Joan or D Burrows (Joan) as she was known here was always one of our best tipsters and competed in all our comps over the years often being successful, bit always right ups near the top end.
Joan and husband Darryl were lifelong soulmates for over 54 years and Darryl had been her care giver in recent years.Together they have bred and raced many successful horses over the years and loved doing this together.
I just wanted to take the time to let Darryl know we are all thinking of him here at this sad time, and we will honor Joan with a Spring competition in her memory.
Fly high Joan you now are free of the pain after the horrible disease and we know you will always be watching over Darryl helping him to hopefully find some winners.
Thoughts with Darryl, his friends and family at this time, may Joan forever RIP.

The total number of race days and race numbers is probably ok. It is the distribution that is wrong. The continual 4, 5 and 6 horse fields in the NI while horses are continually balloted and eliminated in the SI is, to put it frankly, a disgrace.
I don't know if everyone is aware, but this horrible looking meeting at New Plymouth today has the highest minimum stakes of the entire winter. NZTR budgeted $100,000 to boost all stakes at this meeting in addition to the $110,000 they put into the Cup. They have saved a few dollars with there being no interest in the $60,000 race and being only just able to scrape up enough horses for 7 races.
For some reason New Plymouth has more meetings with random boosted stakes curtesy of NZTR than any other track in the country. For a club that races on a very ordinary track that they don't even own, and invariably on wet conditions, they seem to be the favourite child of NZTR.

That is the biggest problem trying to make an informed decision regarding this sort of thing, we just have no idea what turnovers are.
Many years ago the low grade meetings always used to run at a profit and the excess was used to help fund the flash meetings. Now, it sounds like all meetings run at a loss, and especially the flash meetings which need massive subsidisation. We don't really get any information regarding the breakdown of how stakes are funded.
It almost sounds like a ponzi scheme these days, with industry income bearing very little relationship to industry expenditure.

It's something I have always been keen on .
Believe it or not before I got my first job at a thoroughbred stud I actually talked to Charlie Hunter about a job and he said he didn't have anything but would ask around , nothing came of it but I often wonder what might have been .
I have always followed it , right back in the days of Captain Harcourt , Noodlum , and my favorites back then Scottish Lustre and Trusty Scott .
And I actually looked up the Woodlands stud website a couple of weeks ago to see if they were doing any horses .

Agree with all of that , especially the bonus thing , doesn't have to be that but something has to be done . We need fresh ideas .
As for lower stakes affecting the group status , the group status is an illusion , a G1 here is a G1 in name only , it holds no real legitimacy in the world racing .
I don't think those at the top believe we will run out of owners or horses , maybe not completely but another 20% of both could make it interesting .
I know you say you are finishing up , I'm the same , 2 to go , and others here are thinking the same .
I know of one couple who breed 3/4 every year and currently have 3/4 in training and are seriously looking at giving it away , more so after some of the media releases last week .
So in our small circle that's a few owners and horses missing , increase that exponentially through the whole industry and 20% might end up being light .

Big topic and where to start . I like most on here and from talking to other racing people feel that there should be a more even share of the distribution and that the current situation of huge high end stakes is achieving nothing , certainly not improving the quality of these fields nor increase the numbers in those races .
We have a limited number of top quality horses , for obvious reasons , attrition from yearling sales , RTR sale and of course the high numbers sold from trials and race performance severely curtail the number of top quality horses left here to race . Yet again we see both our leading 3yo's heading off shore to new owners yet still I see nothing coming out of head quarters on a solution to this .
I have always believed that in anything , you work to the cut of your cloth , and in this instance IMO the top end races need to top out at 350k . So G1s 350k , G2s 200k , G3s 140k and listed 100k . I should add and this will be a topic for another thread , but the amount of Black Type races should be greatly reduced , there are far too many BT races that simply don't stack up , we continue deluding ourselves that our racing is stronger than it is , it's time to get realistic .
This above stakes won't change the quantity or quality of horses competing , IMO it won't drive these horses to race overseas because of this , if they're good enough they will be going anyway and in many instances these horses considered good enough often go straight over , i.e. the TA horses this spring .
I haven't got figures on what this might save but as WD said along with stopping this subsidizing of sales races there should be a substantial amount of extra money available to top up the lower tier racing , which is the racing that underpins our whole industry , the vast majority of turnover comes from our everyday racing and the owners that support that end of our industry deserve more reward and it may well keep a lot more in racing horses . It also gives these owners some respect that they are contributing to the industry . I don't live with this if the horse isn't good enough and your not happy , get out , in the past that's what many have been told and done exactly that , hence our shortage of owners , and yet again I don't see a real push to rectify this within NZTR .
For what it's worth I'm a believer in a fair shake for everybody , I believe that if someone is prepared to put money into a racehorse and the associated costs then they are contributing to the industry producing a product , no product , no industry , and even if they have a poor horse and they are racing it then he should be rewarded for that , even if it is only the current $150 for not running in the top 5 , that owner should feel that the industry respects his efforts . Most owners go in knowing that getting a top horse is slim but live in the hope that they will get lucky . So we need to show them hey you didn't get lucky this time but don't walk away , have another crack , and we don't help that by having lower end stakes that are poor .
I would like to see a minimum stake starting with a 2 , preferably 25k or at least working toward that figure quickly , then going up 5k per grade , 30k for R65 , 35k for R75 , 40k for R85 and 50k for open races . And of course increasing over time . Now I haven't try to work the figures and someone will say it's not sustainable , maybe , but this should be an aim in quick time .
Now to help with those figures I believe something has to change with the amount of races we have , of poor quality and numbers , so I would propose we either reduce race days , which clearly Entain wouldn't be up for or reduce the number of races we have on a card , the large number of races we have with single figure runners has grown exponentially over the last few seasons . One thing that would help in sorting programming would be NZTR having a register of horses in work where trainers have to , as in required to maintain where horses are at in their preparation . We don't have Australian numbers so this or something like shouldn't be hard . Or maybe it will .
I have stated many times that I believe the strength of any sport is the strength of it's base . When I first got into the industry back in '82 the base was huge , but has slowly eroded . Well currently IMO the whole pyramid has been flipped on it's head and is rocking perilously , and close to tipping over .
 Now I have mentioned above the ratings 65, 75 etc , but I think something needs to change there as well , and I'll post my thoughts on that later .