chiknsmack

The type of horse (ie. sprinter) that is suited by the 2yo schedule isn't suited by the 3yo one, which is all about Guineas/KM 3yo/Kiwi, Guineas/Filly of the Year Series/Oaks, or Guineas/WFA/Derby. It's the same reason Bellatrix Star went straight to Melbourne at 3; she wasn't going to get 1600m so the better opportunities were over there. If we want continuity of our best 2yos also being our benchmark 3yos we either need to tweak the 2yo schedule (Ellerslie Sires' back to 1400m, Manawatu Sires' to 1600m) to favour horses who are also suited by the 3yo schedule, or tweak the 3yo schedule to add more 3yo sprints. There's also the upside of out best horses going to Oz; if they perform well over there they frank the form of our races. If Return to Conquer wins the Coolmore it makes those 2yo races he won here look like proper group races and not "soft NZ form" as they're widely perceived. It could also be interpreted as a positive that all the extra cash isn't keeping these topliners here; it could mean the cash is being spread more widely rather than only going into the pockets of those at the top. If the money's not keeping top 2yos here, perhaps it is instead encouraging people to keep racing R65s and keep buying/breeding in the hopes of finding something better than that level (with the expectation that if you miss and end up with a horse who is only average it can tick along and pay for itself). That's a better outcome than it all going to Te Akau or Aussie raiders. Throw in uncertainty around the Spring Triple Crown and the fact that Te Akau have an Aussie stable and so, for the good of their business, want to be winning things in Melbourne in the spring, and it just makes too much sense - regardless of dollars - to send all three of those you named straight to Melbourne.

Equineline has 339 foals of racing age from 136 mares. 140 runners (41% r/f), 87 winners (26% w/f, 62% w/r), 6 stakeswinners (1.8% sw/f, 4.3%sw/r). I can't find one of the SW, but the others are Sharp 'N' Smart, Swiss Exile (G2w 2yo in QLD), Stormy (G2w 2yo in NZ), and Grand Impact and Aitch Two Oh (both G3w spring 3yos in VIC).

There's a couple of obvious opportunities here. The first is that the weekend news tends to be slow and so there's room for Trackside to throw together five minutes of reporting/reviews on a Saturday's racing and offer it to TVNZ to pad out the sports news on a Saturday or Sunday night. We have the footage, we have interesting stories, if we give them a package lock-stock where they don't have to do any work it'd suit them fine. Five minutes a week on the news would be a start to lifting the profile of the sport. The other option is to have a big Lotto jackpot-style bet type (dare I say Race-O?) on a Saturday, with the last race run at 5:50pm. From 5:30 to 6:00 we can have a program on TV1 of which the first half is replays of the first legs of the Race-O/Pick 6/Triple Trio/whatever and the last 15 minutes is the live broadcast of the last leg and congratulating whoever won the million-dollar jackpot. You get hype from the jackpot-style bet type, you get racing in front of free-to-air eyes right before the news, you get racing back into the consciousness of the average Kiwi, you expand the social license, the industry doesn't die in a few years when Entain start taking half the betting revenue for themselves and we have a Green Party Minister of Racing emboldened by the banning of greyhound racing and looking for more scalps to take.

Suits the syndicators too. Buy a horse at 1, get it up and running at 2, aim for black type at 3 if it's any good, then move it on and get those owners back into another. We're capable of producing Melbourne Cup winners, in that we still have the mares and the stallions (Almanzor, Shocking, Redwood, Tarzino, Reliable Man, even Super Seth with a Derby winner the other day) to get elite runners over ground. We just have no path for the ones that aren't Cups class; it's rare enough that you'll see a R65 over 2400m, never mind 3200m. So there's no demand for them; they generally take time to get up and running and if they're broadly average there's no races for them. The problem is solvable, though it appears the powers that be aren't all that interested; their big move in recent years is to add a big money 1500m 3yo race to Derby Day to detract from one of the few races beyond 2400m that could be hyped as THE race. But it makes sense for us as an industry to try; we're at a disadvantage compared to Australia when it comes to breeding 2yos and sprinters, we're at a disadvantage to Europe when it comes to breeding older stayers (though we could still compete if we wanted to), but there's a perfect niche where we already have the stock and the knowledge to succeed; Derby 3yos who progress to tackle Cups. (I will applaud NZTR for letting 2yos into open-age maidens from April onwards; a staying 2yo gets far more benefit from running against his elders at 1600m or 2000m than from being run off its feet over shorter. The type of horse we should be directing all our efforts towards producing - the early-maturing stayer - is certainly helped by such opportunities.)

The Trainers' Association. It's their job to stick up for trainers, so every time there's an abandonment, every time there's a flaw in the schedule (no races south of Ashburton for six weeks, one 2yo race in the SI before the Karaka Million), and every time a club tries to make life difficult for a "trouble maker" the TA should be all over NZTR and asking/telling them to fix it. Winter Cup trial abandoned? The TA should've been straight onto NZTR giving them 24 hours to line up a turf meeting between now and Oamaru to run the race. If the TA won't do this, the trainers should be straight onto the TA telling them to do their job. If the trainers won't do this then, like @Tesio said, the trainers need to either grow a pair or just keep getting bent over.

What have those in power been saying when you've been bringing these rule breaches up to them? The RIU have always addressed my questions and complaints pretty promptly.

The dam is Zamrud (Emerald). Sugarloaf is a type of gemstone cut. Though maybe I'm being led astray by the second-highest rater, named Juwelier.

The "lost rider" and "pulled up" runners competed in the race, so get paid. The disqualified runners are considered to have not competed in the race, so don't. Rule 1102: "If a horse placed by a Judge in a Race is disqualified pursuant to these Rules after running that Race, then for the purposes of placings it shall be regarded as if it did not start the Race and the placings will be altered accordingly."

Smug will have to be a bet next time; took the long way home and still won. The DQ looks a bit harsh really.

That's $185 ex gst, and NZTR throw in another $15 ex gst. https://nztr.co.nz/sites/nztrindustry/files/2024-07/NZTR Riding Fees 2024-26_0.pdf

Trentham 2-7 The Republican.

Except they do contribute to the NZ industry. https://www.dia.govt.nz/Racing-Policy---Point-of-Consumption-Charges

Before Singapore shut down Fortuna picked up a few "Colts Syndicate" rejects off Inglis Digital and had some fun with them. There's a chance to do the same for a few years before racing shuts down here too; not competing in the mid-six-figure range like yesterday's saletopper ($1.4m yearling flop sold to HK for $500k) but $60k for a midweek maiden winner in Sydney who can win a few races over a few years here.

On pedigree you can see why they sent him north; Justify over Fastnet over Cape Cross seems perfect for Galileo mares. He won't get many of them though without reverse shuttling. A Slipper-placed son of a global super-stallion, who may or may not have been mismanaged and so been even better than his record, for $15k doesn't seem a bad deal.

Both Coolmore horses sweated up badly, then the pacemaker ran them along with the stablemate on his back and they both went too hard. Odd tactics, though I'm personally never upset to see a plan involving pacemakers go awry. Scandinavia in the 3yo 2800m Gr. 2 was somewhat impressive; three-wide no cover the trip and he was entitled to fold but he was fighting on better than anything late. One Look stood out as a very pretty mare (though there have been a stack of impressive-looking horses on both days), and I'm now in the See the Fire fanclub (I love her pedigree). On Day 1 Tadej (6th in the Coventry at 100/1) looked like a big, scopy horse who might want further than the typical Ardad. Trackside had (I think) Jack Dawling, Simon Mapletoft, and Graham Cunningham, with maybe one or two others - we heard from Rishi Persad (maybe?) a couple of times - and with calls from Ian Bartlett and Stuart Machin.

I'm the opposite; I'm an average (ie. losing) punter in the SI and borderline breakeven in the NI. As we've seen in the thread there are many different approaches and many ways to skin the punting cat that can work. Kelly is great, but depending on what your "Betting Account Balance" in the calculator is you may want to go all the way to conservative. If BAB is the money you have to spend on a Saturday and if you lose it it's no big deal, that's different than if BAB is your punting bankroll and if you lose it you're done with punting forever. For reference with respect to the latter, when I used to bet on sports options like over/under where the likelihood of winning is around 50% (I bet when I thought that what I was backing was 53% or better) and the odds around $1.91, even with an expected high strikerate (and therefore low chance of a long string of losses in a row) I still only bet 0.25 Kelly with a max bet of 2% of my bankroll. If I was betting on horses with a fixed bankroll I'd be cranking that slider as far to the conservative side as it can go. If it was just your Saturday fun money you were risking, you could go harder. Nowadays my betting on horses is more basic ("I think this horse will win/I think it's value, but I'm not going to the trouble of framing a market to calculate the overlay") so my staking is based on their price. I back everything to win X (say, $100 with a max bet of $100). So anything $2 or shorter gets backed for $100, $3 shots get $50 (50 x 3 = $150, minus your $50 stake = $100 profit), $5 shots get $25 (25 x 5 = $125, minus $25 stake = $100 profit) and so on. When I'm backing something at double-figures I'll either half the bet (so back it to win $50 instead of $100) or back it for the place to win $100. Again, more than one way to skin a cat.

For sure. It's not an attack on you or the site; in fact all the issues are so minor that I hadn't even bothered mentioning them before Ohokaman had the same issue and I could help him out by clearing it up. Apologies for cluttering up the Ascot thread with this.

It could be, though Ohokaman is having the same issue. It could be on my end; I use Brave browser which I imagine isn't all that common amongst 'Cafers though it is based on Chromium so maybe other Chromium-based users would have the same issue. The other issue I've been having with the forum refreshing every 90-120s or so is when I'm typing up a reply the page refreshes and the box where I'm typing the message gets minimised. I don't lose my work; when I open it again my post is there as I left it, so it's a minor issue (as are the others).

If you're watching on the forum (ie. just clicking play and watching without going to YouTube instead) it's because the forum refreshes the page every 90-120s. It's been a problem since the forum update. These refreshes are also the reason you'll be reading a thread with five posts, a message will come up saying there's five new posts and you can click to see them, you click to see them and you're now on a thread with the original five posts followed by those same five posts again.

They're not allowed to look for experts in h*ndicapping; that word is a slur against the differently-abled. Though I did see they're advertising a role for an Internal Officer in charge of "Equine Impost Equity", so maybe they'll find an expert for that EIEIO role who can help with handicapping rider-mass diversity. (You could also argue that the folx behind this "gender-neutral terminology" push are in fact "experts in programming".)

It's supposed to be in the Rocket Propelled Grenade Racing Programme Guide; it is for the ones at Cambridge in late July (cutoff 28 April) but not for the two at New Plymouth in mid-July. The cutoff for the corresponding New Plymouth races last season was June 1. You shouldn't have to chase it up with NZTR, but in this case it looks like the definitive answer is "chase it up with NZTR".

He was at a dead stop in front of the fence, with two riderless horses around him (one being grabbed by a jockey, one with its jockey - who later limped back to scale - on the ground in front of the fence). If there was more room at the jump to spin around and try again maybe he could've been quicker about it, but in the confined spaces around that jump leaving the centre of the course it would've been irresponsible to risk arcing up the riderless horses by not waiting for them to be restrained and for the fallen rider to be up and out of the way. Off the video the incident happened around 2:30. At 2:54 Portia Matthews clicks Uncle Charlie up to a gallop beside the thin rail on that part of the steeplechase track, and at 3:11 they take the jump at the end of the thin rail and back onto the main course (which was the first jump of the race). The next time we see Catch and Release he's galloping along beside the thin rail at 3:25 (not sure exactly what part; it's a different camera angle than with Uncle Charlie), and George tells us he's jumping that start fence again at 3:47. So at that point he's 36s behind (not "minutes"). And again, it'd have been irresponsible to throw caution to the wind and immediately take another run at that jump with the whole shambles going on, so that's a pretty quick turnaround.

Also a couple of Group placegetters down south. NZ 2000 Guineas 2nd Meritable, inbred 2x2 to full siblings Redoute's Choice and Monsoon Wedding, with Encosta De Lago (who has an all-too-rare daughter of Northern Dancer on his damline) in between. And Brisbane Sires' 2nd Snapback, from the family of Thorn Park and with his first two dams by More Than Ready and Flying Spur (two more stallions who have daughters of ND behind them).

The ratings are based on their best run, not their overall CV. They've rated the English 2000 Guineas (not the Irish, which was run after May 4th) and the Kentucky Derby as stronger races than whichever of Via Sistina's wins got her her rating (probably the QEII since she went 2s faster than in the Ranvet).

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