RaceCafe..#1...Tipsters Thread.... Share Your Fancies For Fun...Lets See Who The Best Tipsters Here Are.
scooby3051

POOR QUALITY GROUP 1's IN NZ.

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With the greatest respect to Call Sign Mav in winning the first two legs at Hastings congrats to him and all his connections as he is the best here in NZ at present, but outside him how bad is the quality available left here in NZ for the big races,I am not trying to degrade any of the horses there but look how many kiwi top liners are missing, nowadays they dont even stay for the early part of the spring they leave to prepare in OZ for the entire spring. Look at book at how many horses that used to run in these races that are now missing and going straight to OZ I think it is a precursor of things to come as more and more send their horses to race full-time in OZ and who could blame anyone doing it.. There is no incentive to keep our better horses here in NZ so the overall class of our topline races must suffer in the long term...JMO.

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Yes, certainly a worrying trend and it will continue . As the cost of buying at the sales rises due to the potential stake earnings in Aus/Asia it becomes unworkable and anything that slips through will end up there by default.

The banana republic with the pasture is alive and well.

 

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Finite supply of funds. Turnover drives prizemoney, although assets could change things in Auckland example. But for too long we have put on an unappealing product for punters.

Racing in Oz not that easy. We had one last season with a syndicator, won $70k in prizemoney and we lost money!

That said having one greatest racing jurisdictions on our doorstep is not the worst conundrum.

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Isn’t one of our major problems the handicapper and the dysfunctional model they use ?

Can anyone imagine a really good horse like Grey Way racing in NZ now ??

It couldn’t happen because under this model once you’ve won 8-10 races you’re rated over 100 ( unless Pitty trains you, then you could still be in R65 grade ) and you’re forced into either WFA racing, or retirement 

You can’t make money for the industry once you’re retired of course 

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The problem in my view, is the top down approach that has implemented wide ranging restrictive and in some cases oppressive changes that has resulted in economic decline within the industry

This results in far less horses being trained, becos smaller trainers cannot grow themselves to increase training numbers.

thus bringing to light The numbers reality, more horses being trained would result in potentially more superstars(Quality) being found

The opposite is also true, where quality is not found becos of insufficient numbers being trained.

thats my take on it!

 

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20 minutes ago, 6xes said:

The problem in my view, is the top down approach that has implemented wide ranging restrictive and in some cases oppressive changes that has resulted in economic decline within the industry

This results in far less horses being trained, becos smaller trainers cannot grow themselves to increase training numbers.

thus bringing to light The numbers reality, more horses being trained would result in potentially more superstars(Quality) being found

The opposite is also true, where quality is not found becos of insufficient numbers being trained.

thats my take on it!

 

Of course a lot of the quality is sold either as young horses or as soon as a horse shows a glimpse of ability......hundreds sold.

Costs of breeding and getting horses to the races has risen enormously over the past few decades and now are just silly compared to the stakes most horses run for...stakes are pathetic.....shocking !

Of course the stakes pool comes almost solely from betting.....with so many other betting options available now eg Sports and Aussie racing there is little chance of Stakes improving to the levels needed.

Hence the Auckland Amalgamation is our best and only option.

Slashing costs of the Administration would make a little difference.

With Australia being so close , and gambling being so strong in their DNA and their Governments supporting racing so generously.......little old NZ doesn't stand a chance.

And P4P above mentions the handicapping systems...both gallops and trots.......penalises winners and forces sales and retirement.

So we left with slow horses with resilient owners in it as a hobby. Not good betting product , often running on substandard tracks !

And one final hurdle....it's regional bias and personal interest which means NZ Racing folk can't agree on what will improve NZ Racing.

Hard to change things when folk cant agree on what and how.

For last 50 years NZ has had too many racecourses , most agreed to close some but soon changed mind when it came to which ones !

 

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2 hours ago, poundforpound said:

Isn’t one of our major problems the handicapper and the dysfunctional model they use ?

Can anyone imagine a really good horse like Grey Way racing in NZ now ??

It couldn’t happen because under this model once you’ve won 8-10 races you’re rated over 100 ( unless Pitty trains you, then you could still be in R65 grade ) and you’re forced into either WFA racing, or retirement 

You can’t make money for the industry once you’re retired of course 

Must be bloody hard handicapping such a poor bunch of horses. The poor bugger who was top weight in the open stayers race at Riccarton yesterday had only won about $80,000.

It isn't all about handicapping of course; the tiered racing system doesn't work, esp in the South. And the speedy types who like tight tracks no longer have the likes of Waimate, Orari, Waterlea, Hokitika, Rangiora, Waikouaiti etc to ply their trade. Grey Way won his 50th race at Orari and his 51st at Rangiora; couldn't do that these days.

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the trouble is that we can all sound like stuck records. Similar people making similar comments to the same people. Unfortunately there is no case to be made that anything said on this site will have any effect on any matter. 

Only the stupid think that doing the same thing will instigate change. That is what has been happening. I watched the Great Northern Hurdles and Steeple Chase today. What a third rate, mediocre, lacking in class presentation of what should be fantastic. And we should have been celebrating the winners...but what happens....we cut to greyhounds. And the betting dribble needs to stop. They still don't get that because people generally lose betting, it's short sighted promoting betting the way they do. This should also be an entertainment business and its about the horse. The ivory tower has inept horse power in its pillars.

But no-one will listen...or do anything....or even think about this post because no-one really cares.

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Remember when Trackside 2 was introduced so we would get better coverage of local racing?

What a joke that has become... now it's just an excuse to include more rubbish meetings from outback Australia.

The TAB website has a Trackside 3 option. Is it really that hard to have Trackside 1 with only NZ coverage, Trackside 2 with Australian premier racing coverage, and Trackside 3 with a simulcast for all other shit people bet on?

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This problem wont be fixed until there is a great uplift in Racetrack surfaces and essentially Stakes.

Take the latter - if you go to Love Racing  you will see on Trainers that there were 361 trainers, 20-21 season. If you look at around 60th in the premierships the average stakes won for the season was about 40k. so the trainer gets 4k for the years effort. If you look at the names these people are not mugs. There is real poverty  below say 20th place - with the odd exception.

That is why amalgamation like ATR is the only way out of the poverty trap the NZ industry finds itself in.

What will then happen will be a 2 tier situation for stakes that Stodge has reported on in Blighty - Ascot for real money and say Brighton for peanuts. That will cause others to amalgamate and rationalise assets or die.

Survival of the fittest - in the pack!

  

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2 hours ago, NextPlease said:

Remember when Trackside 2 was introduced so we would get better coverage of local racing?

What a joke that has become... now it's just an excuse to include more rubbish meetings from outback Australia.

The TAB website has a Trackside 3 option. Is it really that hard to have Trackside 1 with only NZ coverage, Trackside 2 with Australian premier racing coverage, and Trackside 3 with a simulcast for all other shit people bet on?

Sadly NP, most people would be locked on channel 2. If it wasn't for the fact NZ racing was mixed in with Sydney and Melbourne many people wouldn't see any NZ racing. I do agree there is no place for that Korean and US stuff; that is a very bad look.

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1 hour ago, Nerula said:

This problem wont be fixed until there is a great uplift in Racetrack surfaces and essentially Stakes.

Take the latter - if you go to Love Racing  you will see on Trainers that there were 361 trainers, 20-21 season. If you look at around 60th in the premierships the average stakes won for the season was about 40k. so the trainer gets 4k for the years effort. If you look at the names these people are not mugs. There is real poverty  below say 20th place - with the odd exception. 

 

Fix that which is above, and all Good things trickle downward!!

Isaiah 55:6-11 ,  James 1:16-17

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The fools running the racing Industry are like the morons running the country. They have no idea. A lack of quality horses is due to a lack of stakes money. Why race in Tauranga Awapuni new Plymouth or any regional track when you are racing for 20k on a premier Saturday or 10k on a mid week race. 7000 gets you to Brisbane 80 to 100 a day for a trainer and racing at Ipswich on a Friday a 1600mtr race is worth between 30 to 60k and fields are average. Eagle farm and Doomben your racing for 60 to 80 k for a maiden race so why race here. As long as the powers that be remain the same the industry will always be in decline. If you can win a race at Ellerslie your good enough to be a metro horse in Brisbane. Why stick around. Puke and Ellerslie have got it right. Terapa Matamata and Cambridge need to do the same as do Taurangs and Te aroha. Hastings Palmerston Whanganui Otaki all need to change. When egos are put aside and tracks are merged costs are reduced then stakes can be increased then its worth while racing a quality horse in this country. Till then we will pop across the ditch and enjoy the fruits of the Aussie tree       

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1 hour ago, brownboy said:

The fools running the racing Industry are like the morons running the country. They have no idea. A lack of quality horses is due to a lack of stakes money. Why race in Tauranga Awapuni new Plymouth or any regional track when you are racing for 20k on a premier Saturday or 10k on a mid week race. 7000 gets you to Brisbane 80 to 100 a day for a trainer and racing at Ipswich on a Friday a 1600mtr race is worth between 30 to 60k and fields are average. Eagle farm and Doomben your racing for 60 to 80 k for a maiden race so why race here. As long as the powers that be remain the same the industry will always be in decline. If you can win a race at Ellerslie your good enough to be a metro horse in Brisbane. Why stick around. Puke and Ellerslie have got it right. Terapa Matamata and Cambridge need to do the same as do Taurangs and Te aroha. Hastings Palmerston Whanganui Otaki all need to change. When egos are put aside and tracks are merged costs are reduced then stakes can be increased then its worth while racing a quality horse in this country. Till then we will pop across the ditch and enjoy the fruits of the Aussie tree       

Exactly !
I hope I get one fast enough ! 😆

 

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On 10/3/2021 at 9:53 PM, Nerula said:

This problem wont be fixed until there is a great uplift in Racetrack surfaces and essentially Stakes.

Take the latter - if you go to Love Racing  you will see on Trainers that there were 361 trainers, 20-21 season. If you look at around 60th in the premierships the average stakes won for the season was about 40k. so the trainer gets 4k for the years effort. If you look at the names these people are not mugs. There is real poverty  below say 20th place - with the odd exception.

That is why amalgamation like ATR is the only way out of the poverty trap the NZ industry finds itself in.

What will then happen will be a 2 tier situation for stakes that Stodge has reported on in Blighty - Ascot for real money and say Brighton for peanuts. That will cause others to amalgamate and rationalise assets or die.

Survival of the fittest - in the pack!

  

I'm not sure you even get peanuts at Brighton.

The prize money over here makes yours seem generous in comparison and it's a huge issue again in UK racing. The owner of most of the All Weather tracks, Arena Racing Company (ARC) has had a right go at the trainers (via the National Trainers Federation) and the jockeys (via the Professional Jockeys Association).

ARC wanted to run 9-race cards in the winter on its tracks and was prepared to put up the additional money to fund the ninth race but the NTF and PJA have said no claiming there is enough racing and travelling without an extra event. The racecourses always want more money and an extra race means extra income via media rights but this time they've been blocked and they aren't happy.

I wrote a lot about Champions Day at Ascot last Saturday but the money on offer was poor for the prestige of the races - the Queen Elizabeth II had a winners pot of £623,810 and the Champion Stakes £714,546. Yet the Caulfield Cup went for £1,769,662 - that's more than £1m more for the first prize while the Everest went for a stupefying £3.8 million.

Down to the bargain basement end and Newmarket staged its traditional 2-y-o race day - the feature Class 2 Nursery went for £21,860 while the Class 4 maiden went for £4,860. Tonight they are under the floodlights at Kempton and the Class 6 Nursery is going for £2,700 to the winner.

The jumpers do even worse - the Class 5 hurdle at Fontwell went for £2,342 and the Class 6 Bumper at Worcester for £1,906.

British prize money is terrible - French and Irish money isn't much better. The Arc went for £2,550,000 but the other Group 1 races such as the Lagardere and the Abbaye were only £200k each.

Then of course there's Hong Kong with a Class 3 handicap going for £84,500.

British racing survives on the patronage of a few powerful owner/breeders such as Godolphin, Coolmore and Juddmonte. If these three withdrew from British racing tomorrow, Newmarket would become a ghost town and both British and Irish racing would be devastated. This gives those parties a huge amount of control and influence - any threat to withdraw sponsorship or presence and racing caves at once. Is that healthy for the sport? It explains why Sheikh Mohammed's "behaviour" toward his wife and daughters has been ignored by the racing media. The price of crossing one of the powerful groups is to be ostracised by them and that counts for a lot.

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Drove past the Brighton track a few times. Used to train London to Brighton and drive to Dorset. I looked at the thing on the hill and thought thats rustic.

Two tier racing will get here one day (2 years?). And the wailing and gnashing will be biblical.

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It isn't just about the racing stakes, although that has a longer term effect in reinvestment in stock due to disinterest in the sport. It also isn't about the bad racing surfaces, although that may well be a determining influence to some who find racing nice horses on bad tracks unacceptable. Where we've fallen over badly is the replenishment of our breeding stock.

Time and time again I will remind people that over the last 100 or so years NZ has imported bloodstock that it could afford. I recently bought an old stallion publication and went through the stallions that were standing. Honestly, I wouldn't have given you two bob for a lot of them.

Horses like Pakistan, Copenhagen

 

Sovereign Edition

image.png.464660fa2c6a1c9c915fd6555c3fa236.png

Foxbridge

image.png.faf1002e65147ce63982fec7b0e98104.png

Oncidium

image.png.9b718e8d50c5ad9d36044297a4b7ec5c.png

Battle Wagon

image.png.ba876a95c89f56af2409d426f8bcd924.png

Le Filou

image.png.166b7a1a23523e95443cbc14a3564c2c.png

 and other stallions like Volksraad, Noble Bijou, St Ledger and Martial make up the genetics of our thoroughbred base. The real shame is that our esteemed leaders haven't even bothered to get all the data together about our stallion forbears in one place so that a bloke like me can get into looking at these images and get the info. I dragged these images off the web.

Back to the story, this is the genetic make up of our breed. How can that compete today? They were quite well bred, but weren't top class race horses. Some of them are down right ugly but the most important thing is, are they relevant today? The type of horse that succeeds to day is quite different from the yesteryear. People have become impatient, the distance of the racing has decreased, the feed is different, the training conditions different, the racing surfaces and venues....different. You've got imported race horses racing in Australia that are rated 120+ and we expect to be able to compete with our genetic base being produced by horses who weren't even rated!!

So you might ask, how do we improve this? Buy better stallions? A bit hit and miss for me but you're still relying on the stallions genetics to dominate. So we've got to reach for the broodmare band in order to pick things up. The importation of mares into NZ, where the mare is closely related to horses rated better than 120+, has produced most of our headline racehorses in recent times. Zabeel was out of an imported mare, as was Octagonal and that whole family, Waverley Star, Eastern Joy and more recently Tavistock. 

If we produce a program to import international mares, whose stallion lineage are all champion international stallions, whose female families are closely related to horses rated 120+, then we will see more proper group one winners in NZ. Quite simple really

 

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That's not really the central issue although it is a very compelling argument. Stakes are pathetic in the UK but the breeding industry and sales are booming. The rest of the World is sourcing horses from there because they have a defined pattern of racing (good handicapping and staging), two rating systems that keep each other and the industry honest, and the best bloodstock in the World. A bloke like P4P may disagree because we always debate this, but sprinters aside, there is a valid argument that through franking the form and the UK pattern identifies a bench marked validation process that identifies the merits of most horses in the UK and Europe.

This means that the intrinsic value of any horse is established, especially after those horses have been competing so successfully in other jurisdictions like Australia and the US. Why do you think almost 60 yearlings were sold to US based clients in the recent sales? Why do you think the Book 1 sales averaged 230,000 guineas ($442,000) where 44 yearlings made over a $1m when the average racing stakes is much like ours but in UK currency? It's all about the prestige and the ability to place horses in a pecking order. The number of Aussie people buying yearlings was amazing.  

So if we injected 200 well credentialed European mares in NZ, what would the effect be on our racing/ breeding over the next 20 years? The standard of our racing? The prestige of those horses also going to Aussie to compete? 

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@Berri- I won't re-quote your post but there's nothing with which anyone could disagree.

The Tatts Book 1 sale is the best of the best - top lot was a colt by Sea The Stars out of So Mi Dar (so related to Too Darn Hot among others) who went for £1,250,000 to American interests while Coolmore picked up a Frankel colt for £925,000.

I wonder if NZ should seek to emulate what Japan did with Sunday Silence - bring over a couple of good stallions and hope to breed future stallions from him. Sunday Silence produced Deep Impact and we all know how profound his impact has been on Japanese and world racing.

As you say, the bloodstock industry is instrumental to maintaining the quality of UK racing. We have the best in the world running up here albeit racing for peanuts. The problem is the next level down - the decent horses of Group 3, Listed or just below Listed class. They can race for more money in America, Hong Kong, Australia and Meydan so that's what happens. We keep the best and the worst and the middle is sucked away to other countries.

The Meydan Carnival in January and February attracts horses from Japan, the US, South Africa, Latin America and Hong Kong as well as Europe. The Carnival handicaps go for £70k a time - British handicaps of a similar level £25k at best. 

On Saturday, the Group 1 races at Doncaster and Saint-Cloud are worth £120k to the winning owner - the Moonee Valley Gold Cup, a Group2, goes for £338k.

I'm surprised we have any horses left sometimes.

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