19/04/16
When you do what I do, all one has to do is stand in the background and watch the racing industry self destruct. Mainstream media tries its hardest to continually talk the thoroughbred industry up with statements like how great the Eagle Farm track is coming along, even after they all cumulatively stood there and watched Buffering working on the course proper during March and send kick-back flying everywhere. Or they totally avoided getting involved in the point I’ve raised here numerous times in recent months, as to whether the Doomben overall times for races run between 1600 and 1650 metres inclusive are accurate when if any one of them could use a stopwatch they would know I’m 100% correct. Then further down the line in Sydney there was talk that betting at The Championships one day was “up 30%”. How can anyone from the general public confirm statements like that when TABs don’t issue their fixed odds holds? “They” may as well say it was “up 200%” as no one has a way of confirming the statements that are made by racing officials in such instances. Rather than writing positive crap like betting turnover improving at The Championships “they” ought to be running a front page story showing a fleet of Caterpillar bulldozers driving up the home straight digging Randwick up. At least that way in a few years time the track might be right and punters might have some confidence betting at the venue.
On the subject of thoroughbred racetracks, last Thursday started out as any normal day, but by the time the sun had set over the horizon the Queensland thoroughbred racing industry was in a state of shock as the proposed “mid-week test meeting” on 11 May, to reintroduce the Eagle Farm track to racing had been canned. It was also advised at the same time that the first meeting back is now to be Queensland Oaks day on 4 June.
In lieu of the 11 May meeting Brisbane Racing Club CEO Dave Whimpey advised, “We’ll conduct barrier trials on the (Eagle Farm) track in late May and we’ll be ready to return to the historic track in June”. Well I’ll bet you “a pound to an inch of the billy goat derivative” that those trials won’t go ahead if it’s a soft track or have the billy goat bet that the new Eagle Farm track “will resemble a rice paddy” if they have to race on a heavy track at either of the first couple of meetings back – and that’s despite a lazy “$10 million” being “invested in the reconstruction of tracks” at Eagle Farm.
As so often happens in the racing industry, Justracing was the only media entity that accurately reported the state of the Eagle Farm track after Buffering galloped on the new course proper on 9/3/16 and threw up huge clods inferring the track had a problem. And I didn’t even need to go within cooee of Eagle Farm to make that determination. I simply had to watch the “new Eagle Farm track” being talked up on the Channel 9 news that night and read all the positive rot in the newspapers in subsequent days. To that end, on 16/3/16, I wrote the following statement on this website:
And reverting back to the Brisbane Racing Club, according to my eyes, it looks like Eagle Farm will get torn to pieces on day one if they happen to encounter a heavy track on their proposed first day back racing in May. Whilst everyone in the media was seemingly like a kid in a lolly shop watching Buffering go for a gallop on the course proper recently, one wouldn’t have to be Einstein to conclude that eight big fields on a heavy track on that particular day would have had it looking like a rice paddy in Vietnam in the wet season. The media as usual did their job of talking everything up, with statements like “it had rained heavily before the gallop” which gave an excuse for the kick-back from one horse. The only problem is that sometimes it does actually rain heavily just before and/or during a race meeting in a hardly amazing phenomena. Interesting times ahead at Eagle Farm on what I saw and I wonder does it need another 12 months to consolidate? The whole Eagle Farm saga has been such an industry joke now – what’s another 12 months? “Patience is a virtue”.
Whilst still on the Brisbane Racing Club, I noted in one of their newspaper sympathizer allies, The Courier Mail, on Page 84 last Saturday that it was stated, “Footy fans who have a ticket to the Suncorp double-header on May 14, when the Broncos play Manly and the Cowboys clash with the Storm, will receive free entry to the BTC Cup that day, with shuttle buses running from Doomben to the stadium”. I must say that I think that’s a really sad marketing strategy, as all the Brisbane Racing Club is doing via implementation of that idea, is to penalize those genuine thoroughbred racing patrons that have been supporting the Brisbane Racing Club by going to Doomben week in and week out. Those regular patrons have to pay full tote odds to get in that particular day, yet someone who has absolutely no remote idea about thoroughbred racing, but who may know something about rugby league get into Doomben for free. If that makes sense then I’ve no idea. Furthermore you can bet “London to a brick on” that all the Brisbane Racing Club sympathizers in the media will talk up “the big crowd” subsequent to the BTC Cup meeting, but the simple facts and realities of the situation will be that a large percentage of the crowd won’t have paid a solitary razoo to get in the front gate, whilst the regular racegoers will have had to part with $20 or $25 to get into the meeting. If you think it through, any dill could get a big crowd to a big race day if you let a particular demographic in for free.
And in respect of last Saturday how boring was that stupid 4000-metre race at Caulfield? What officials could have done was race out on to the track and stick a few hurdles out on the course proper between the first lap and the second lap to see if the slow horses were actually awake, or if they were just giddy from going around and were in fact asleep. The late Bert Bryant would have had some fun calling that race, but unfortunately he’s no longer in our midst so we’re left with a plethora of primarily boring racecallers of today.
But I guess one can’t expect much from metropolitan race club “officials” as gets proven on a weekly basis via various disasters that happen. Still on the Caulfield meeting from last Saturday and how pathetic was it that the Melbourne Racing Club issued overall times on the day were out in some races up to about one-and-a-half seconds or nine lengths? So the Sunday newspapers blindly went ahead and printed all the incorrect overall times, which saw a mare like Scarlet Billows nearly break Exceed and Excel’s track record, when in reality she never got within a bull’s roar of his time. Then they got told their overall times were wrong, so they officially changed the overall times of all nine races on the Racing Australia website but I can exclusively tell you they are still wrong.
Red Bomber and Bengal Cat did not run identical overall time in their respective 1600-metre races, as Red Bomber went a hell of a lot quicker overall than Bengal Cat, which all begs the question does anyone in eastern seaboard metropolitan racing actually know what they are doing? As I wrote here as recently as yesterday morning, when exclusively advising of some of the stuffed-up times emanating from the Toowoomba Cup and Weetwood Handicap meeting last Saturday, it’s just ridiculous how club officials issue such incorrect information as overall times with such monotonous regularity.
Last week I penned a story on how bad the Toowoomba Cup field was and there was an interesting aspect to the CV with the Weetwood winner Choice Bro and the runner-up Coolring, which I haven’t seen anywhere. You see Choice Bro had won just one race in the 38 months prior to last Saturday, whilst the very short priced favourite for that particular race – Coolring – had won just one race in the previous 14 months and that sole win was at 30/1 by a half head. Bet you never heard – or read – that deplorable fact about Coolring anywhere before the race from any of the “experts”, even though it was there for all to see in a form guide? Guess it was easier to talk the horse up than to mention any negative like his pathetic winning strike rate in the last 14 months.
Today on www.brisbaneracing.com.au website Bernard Kenny writes on California Chrome.