After last-minute questions were raised about whether the proposal could be harmful to equine safety, New York regulators punted May 20 on a plan to finalize rule changes backers said would expand the number of owners eligible to claim Thoroughbreds.View the full article

Thats  rubbish and makes no sense at all. Imperatriz was Te Akau's flag bearer in Australia and the publicity and media attention she attracted would have been  of immense value  as Te Akau seeks to establish a profile in Australia. Why would they jeopardize that  opportunity  and sell the horse? It may be some time before they find another Imperatriz. I am sure if her health was'nt at risk she would have raced on.

And who can forget this 🤗....I wont, look who was part of the beaten brigade.... https://www.harness.org.au/racing/fields/race-fields/?mc=MX280123#MXM28012308   Cheers Iraklis

Honestly. I'm not sure greyhound racing in NZ can continue in it's current form. GRNZ has tried to reform alot but from the outside, it doesn't look anywhere near enough. Throw into the gauntlet that upwards to 80% of the nz population now think the industry should shut, it's days are numbered. Do I think this upcoming review will shut it? Probably not. Maybe in another few years, sure. Greyhound racing in NZ just doesn't have the same presence it has in Aus

Industry turned to shit a long time ago. Most people have given up trying to tidy it up now.

Leading Ascot Gold Cup (G1) contender and reigning champion Courage Mon Ami (GB) has suffered a setback according to owners Wathnan Racing. The 5-year-old has not been seen since chasing home Coltrane in the Lonsdale Cup (G2) at York in August.View the full article

No sweat don't work to hard 😀 

Absolutely, plenty of variables alright Scoob which makes this Sport so interesting,  its never plain Sailing. Everyone involved takes the good with the Bad but wouldnt have it any other way, be Boring otherwise😆 

Taupo   The Acorn doesn't fall far from the tree, Out of an unraced Daughter of Giovanna. Very nice run at latest proving Suited further, narrowly beaten by progressive Stayer. Trialled up VERY well recently.. looks best Horse now it's up to the Universe. Odds should halve if she looks the part on Raceday

Think I'll chuck my 2c in. Let's put aside emotion and it always comes down to dollars and cents. The turn over is increasing year to year and Entain didn't come on board to promote 2 codes. Winston is the racing minister and if suddenly the greys are gone, what's next on the antis agenda? I'm sure Winston can see the big picture, unfortunately for the greyhound community the media have had an agenda for a long-term project of ending it. Second off we are apparently in a cost of living crisis with over 1000 people involved  in all aspects of greyhound racing facing job and income loss. This will definitely way in on the decision. So my prediction is that Greyhound racing will stay. Tight frameworks will be put in place and I'm guessing if the smoke and mirrors kick off next election then the greyhound code will be back in the spotlight.

Feel sorry for Brad.

Terry and his mate Eddie Griffin were a couple of shysters. Is Eddie still about? Terry owned Terror To Love.

HRNZ have not updated the raceday performance information since the 18th April. Addington have raced 4 times in 9 days; 8th May  Wednesday; 7 races - field size; 11-10-12-9-12-12-11               average stake per race $11,046      less than 8=  0 10th May     Friday;    10 races                 6-11-14-13-9-8-14-12-11-13                                                $51,676                        =  1                          15th May  Wednesday  7 races               7-6-11-11-15-13-7                                                                 $10,289                        = 3 17th May   Friday        10 races               8-14-8-8-10-7-7-14-7-11                                                       $30,145                         =3 While the horse numbers have held up very well, I very much doubt we will be able to say the same about the punters! when and if, HRNZ release the figures.  

😂

I wonder if all of the owners agreed or had to try and discuss matters through Davids lawyers.

Tonton Macoute  I had a little bit to do with Tonton Macoute 54 years ago. Wasn't he owned by a guy named Wayne Ross? If Robert Dunn reads these threads, I am sure that he could confirm. 

What to make of Iffraaj, whose son Audience sprang a surprise by making all to win the Lockinge Stakes at Newbury on Saturday, when he appeared to be in the race only to guarantee a strong pace for stablemate Inspiral?   The Darley stalwart defies analysis, really. His career has been a series of peaks and troughs, and not where they might have been expected: periods of stealthy progress that came to a juddering halt for no reason. He is the stallion ranks’ Mr Inconsistent.   Iffraaj got off to a fine start. He was given a warm reception by breeders when he was retired to Kildangan Stud, partly due to his racing record – a progressive sprint handicapper who eventually excelled over seven furlongs, the distance over which he won the Lennox Stakes and back-to-back Park Stakes – but perhaps more because of his pedigree, being by Zafonic out of Pastorale, a winning Nureyev half-sister to Kildangan’s then bright young thing, Cape Cross.   His first crop of 105 named foals, conceived at an advertised fee of €12,000, yielded 38 two-year-old winners in 2010, beating the previous freshman record of 35 set by Invincible Spirit four years earlier. The highlight was a certain Wootton Bassett, the £46,000 Doncaster yearling who was unbeaten in five starts for Richard Fahey, taking in two scores in lucrative sales races and culminating in Group 1 success in the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere.   Iffraaj’s fee was raised to €15,000 on the back of that showing, having dipped as low as €6,000 in his fourth season. Few could have argued that the hike was unreasonable, as it looked for all the world as though he would be a boon for commercial breeders.   However, he then promptly endured a quiet sophomore season, exacerbated by Wootton Bassett appearing not to have trained on, finishing unplaced on all his four starts at three.    That left Stay Alive, winner of the Group 3 Premio Regina Elena in Italy, as his highest earner that year (with less than £75,000 in the bank) and Cai Shen, a Listed-placed conditions race winner, as his joint-best performer on Racing Post Ratings with Wootton Bassett (on an unexceptional mark of 109).   There wasn’t much excitement among Iffraaj’s second crop of 85 named juveniles, either. His fee was swiftly brought back down to €10,000 after that disappointment.   Matters didn’t improve in his third season with runners in the northern hemisphere. It took only £35,651 for Cai Shen to be his sire’s highest earner, and he didn’t even win. The same horse’s mark of 112 for finishing fourth in the Summer Mile was also enough to make him the best runner on RPRs that year.    And, once again, there was little to write home about with his 60 named third-crop three-year-olds. His fee remained at €10,000, with deals presumably going a fair amount lower.   Iffraaj was back with a bang in the following year, though. Never one to cleave to convention, it was all thanks to the outstanding performance of his 97 named two-year-olds, who were bred off his lowest ever fee of €6,000.   They included the agonisingly short-lived Fillies’ Mile and Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf heroine Chriselliam, Queen Mary Stakes and Moyglare Stud Stakes victress Rizeena, and five-length Cornwallis Stakes winner and narrowly beaten Middle Park Stakes runner-up Hot Streak.   Iffraaj was subsequently once again the talk of the industry, and his fee returned to €25,000.   He maintained his popularity in the following year with Rizeena adding the Coronation Stakes to her tally and Hot Streak notching a victory in the Temple Stakes, in the sad absence of Chriselliam, but there was a warning that he wasn’t going to stick to the script in the 121 named two-year-olds bred in the afterglow of his record-breaking freshman season not producing a superstar. The four-times Group 2-placed Jungle Cat was the best.   Kildangan Stud’s patrons could be forgiven for not knowing where they stood with Iffraaj by that point. The stallion was switched to Dalham Hall Stud to refresh his image in the following year, with his fee held at £22,500.   Then he went and confused us again. The crop conceived after his first-season sire exploits at a fee of €15,000 was no great shakes – Judicial, Jungle Cat and Muffri’Ha were the only ones to eventually post Group successes, although Latharnach ran second in the St James’s Palace Stakes – but the next generation bred after his second-season downturn at a fee of €10,000, numbering 109, was another vintage.   It contained his highest-ever rated runner in the exceptional miler Ribchester – Fahey getting a tune out of the sire again – and four other Group winners, including two very high-class fillies in Nathra and The Black Princess.    Iffraaj’s fee was maintained at £22,500 in 2016, with Ribchester, Jungle Cat, Nathra, Muffri’Ha and Latharnach running well simultaneously later that year, although the sire couldn’t repeat the trick with that season’s two-year-old crop, also conceived at a €10,000 fee though comprising only 52 named foals. It yielded not one single stakes winner as a juvenile – and only one, French Listed scorer Araaja, at three or older as it turned out.   Nevertheless, Ribchester’s emergence as a star at three elevated Iffraaj to a £27,500 fee in 2017, and his brilliance at four nudged his price even higher to £40,000 in 2018.    But the only Group winners among the sire’s eighth crop of 121 named foals bred immediately after Chriselliam, Hot Streak and Rizeena’s two-year-old season at a more than doubled fee of €25,000 were Beshaayir, Chilean and Mythical Magic, none of whom qualified for celebrity status.   It was a similar story with his ninth crop of 128 named foals, the first conceived in Britain, at that fee of £22,500. Breeders had the right to expect more than just four Pattern winners, none of whom – Forest Of Dean, Hostess, Kitty Marion or Land Of Legends – exactly set the pulse racing.   So it went on. Iffraaj’s tenth crop of 96 named foals, bred off a £22,500 fee again, produced three Pattern winners, two of whom, Luncies and Only The Brave, struck at Group 3 level, with the other, Powerful Breeze, holding abundant promise having finished a head second in the Fillies’ Mile at two, but never raced again.   Iffraaj even had the temerity to come up with just the one Pattern winner in his 11th crop, comprising 123 named foals bred off the Ribchester-inflated fee of £27,500, in the shape of French dual Group 3 scorer Fast Raaj. His 12th generation of 123 named foals, bred off his highest fee of £40,000, has at least featured two Group winners, and very good ones too, in man of the moment Audience and multiple Group 1-placed My Prospero.   For fear of sounding churlish, they are out of highly accomplished mares, though. Cheveley Park Stud homebred Audience is a half-brother to Group 3 winners Dark Lady and Esquire out of Ladyship, a Listed-winning daughter of Oasis Dream and earlier Lockinge winner Peeress, while My Prospero is a half-brother to high-class pair My Astra and My Oberon out of the Group 3-winning Sea The Stars mare My Titania.   Iffraaj’s 13th crop of 74 named foals bred off a £35,000 fee, now aged four, has no Group winners or even Listed winners yet. Capannelle Group 3 third The Blades is the only black-type performer among their number.   The wait continues for a stakes horse of any kind from the sire’s 14th crop of 60 named foals bred off a £30,000 fee, now aged three. Joseph O’Brien’s wide-margin Galway and Roscommon winner Stromberg looks to have some class, though.   Iffraaj appears to be winding down at Dalham Hall Stud in recent years, having gone from covering 104 mares at a fee of £20,000 in 2021 to 83 at a fee of £17,500 in 2022 and just 26 at a fee of £15,000 last year. He was advertised at £10,000 this season.   It might sound like I’m being harsh on poor old Iffraaj, who showed with Ribchester that he was able to get one out of the top drawer, but not to have come up with a stakes winner in his three or four-year-old crops at those fees is just not good enough, and the erratic manner in which he has delivered his best horses throughout his career had made him impossible to predict for breeders and buyers.   It has been the same in the second generation. It’s either feast or famine with his stallion sons, with Wootton Bassett rising from covering small numbers at modest fees in France to a big-money takeover bid by Coolmore and serving elite books at six-figure fees in the last four years on the back of supplying a host of high-class horses headed by Almanzor and King Of Steel, but Hot Streak and Ribchester being bitter disappointments.   He doesn’t have an especially good track record as a broodmare sire, either. US Grade 2 winner Neptune’s Storm is his highest earner in the northern hemisphere in that department, while Al Mubhir, Breathtaking Look, Castle Star, Embesto and Skardu are among the other classy performers his daughters have produced.   The frustrating Iffraaj was far more reliable south of the Equator, having shuttled to Haunui Farm in New Zealand for 12 seasons until 2019. Those trips resulted in him siring great horses such as Fix, Gingernuts, Jon Snow, Turn Me Loose, Western Empire and Wyndspelle, as well as Meleka Belle, who became dam of 14-time Group 1 winner and dual NZ horse of the year Melody Belle.   As it happens, Mr Inconsistent is having the last laugh in Europe too, and not just with Audience defying his supposed role as pacemaker to land the Lockinge at the weekend (the first Group 1 victory for a progeny of Iffraaj on the continent since Ribchester took the Prix du Moulin in 2017, by the by).   In spite of his successes coming in fits and starts, he is responsible for the growth of a flourishing new sire-line, thanks to Wootton Bassett, who already has at least six sons at stud in Europe and presumably more to come, with King Of Steel and ace juvenile talents Al Riffa, Bucanero Fuerte, River Tiber and Unquestionable available for duty.   In fact, European studs could be flooded with Wootton Bassett sons in the near future. His first Coolmore-conceived two-year-olds, the result of him covering a huge, star-studded book of mares, compete this year and there are already two exciting unbeaten colts among them in Benevento and Camille Pissarro.   Iffraaj has always been full of surprises. How typical of him to make us wait six and a half years between European Group 1 winners while changing the direction of breeding at the same time. I told you: he defies analysis. P.S. Copy and pasted as always, certainly not my writings.

Debatable whether you can come from last at Addington when the track is running quick.

Yes they are not analysts at all. They will be part of the same crew that work out of a building like the filipino phone operators do who do all the comment for the Aussie bookmaker sites. People that know some horse racing jargon but basically just data entry operators producing words that school kids could do. Most of these people were bank tellers in a previous life.

Ha Ha! Was going to say something about 3 hours ago but didn't have my helmet nearby.😆Almost as good as Trial/Trail