All-Weather Racing and The Freeze

S

stodge

At the Start
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Now that milder weather has arrived and racing is returning to what passes for normal, how do we think the AW has responded to the last two weeks ?

The overwhelming positive for me has to be the evolution of the All-Bumper card at Southwell and the proposed cards at Lingfield and Kempton. I see no reason why in the future "replacement" AW fixtures shouldn't include at least one and possibly more Bumper races.

This would finally allow the AW tracks to do what they were supposed to originally - not just to provide an alternative to NH racing when the latter can't take place but to provide an option for trainers wishing to get a run into horses which have missed turf opportunities.

This all bodes well for the future.

On the downside has to be the fact that as time has gone on and particularly with the emergence of replacement fixtures, it's become clear that the horse population just isn't there to sustain three AW fixtures per day for a week or more.

Yesterday's card at Lingfield was frankly terrible for a midwinter Saturday and the quality of other cards has suffered as time has gone on. IF we are to have three AW fixtures during a freeze-up, one has to be a Bumper card. Two AW fixtures is sustainable in the medium term, three clearly isn't.

We have also seen AW fixtures lost to the weather and other factors. The lesson is it's all very well having an AW track but if spectators, horses and even staff can't get to the track, there's not much point. There are potential lessons to be learnt about the possibility of overnighting horses, stable staff and racecourse staff but I think there's a more general lesson that All Weather doesn't mean "Any Weather".

Finally, after a month or so devoid of action, the chorus among northern trainers calling for an AW track in the north has grown and it's argue to argue against that. There were plans for something at Sedgefield if memory serves but the obvious location is somewhere in Yorkshire or Lancashire but I can't see any of the existing venues giving up their turf courses for a Polytrack.
 
It's beyond belief that there isn't an AW track in the North. Attendances at the Yorkshire tracks are always very good and a decent AW track on the outskirts of Leeds with a weekend evening fixture would be very well attended I suspect.

I'd also like to see the UK branch out from just Polytrack and Fibresand and new AW tracks use either Pro-Ride, Cushion or Tapeta so we have more variation and surfaces to prep horses on for international assignments.
 
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That there is no racetrack between Wetherby/Doncaster/York and Haydock seems strange. I'm not sure about potential venues though.
 
Can I ask a really stupid question, which seems a touch flippant in light of Stodge's sensible opening post...

Given that all weather now takes place on artificial surfaces, not dirt, why do they persist with that awful dirty brown colour for the surface? Why not make it green so it fits in with its surroundings and looks more recognisable on the television?
 
I imagine that would be due to cost, Bets. You'd have to dye the stuff, and that means zillions of tons of it, and then you'd have it fading in patches in sunny weather, etc., and people moaning about how nasty that looked! You'd also have to ensure that the dye didn't come off permanently onto sweaty jockeys' breeks or precious silks, let alone dye the horses! I suspect it might be very costly. And talking of dirty brown - you do watch NH in the winter, don't you? What colour do the jockeys and horses come back most of the time? "Awful dirty brown" - in the shade of the county's soil - nearly black, reddish, or milk chocolate. I wouldn't worry too much about the aesthetics of the AW!

I'm not sure who coined the phrase 'all weather' but it's quite true of the track's consistency. You can ride on it in all weathers - but only if you can get horses, riders, and other staff to the courses, relying on the useless British, clearly not all-weather roads! I'm a bit fed up with people slagging off the surface/s and saying snarkily "they're not all weather, really, are they?" when they are. You can run on them in a snowstorm (as has been demonstrated), in sleet and hail, in pouring rain, in summer heat, through howling winds and, as long as you keep the harrowing team going, turning over the snow so that it doesn't settle, horses manage just fine. Now, just ensure that Britain's roadways can cope, and their trains don't slide to a halt because of the wrong sort of snowflakes on the line, and there's every chance that it will continue to put on racing. But NOT when it's scuppered by the lack of ambulances, mandatory medical staff, clear roads, and trains - all totally outside of any mere racecourse's control.

Personally, Stodge, I don't particularly want to be overnighted in the stable block, thanks - and neither do the other 100-150 casual staff who go to help put on the meetings. I don't see Arena Leisure granting us all free rooms and meals in their onsite hotels (given that Lingfield's isn't completed yet, that would be difficult), and when the day's done, how do you guarantee us a safe trip home? You seem to think that if the staff can be accommodated, then somehow the weather will magically clear up and we can all be sent home like good little oiks after the last race. But not if the roads have frozen over, and the gritters haven't got to them - as we've seen. Spend three nights locked in so you can go racing? No, thanks. I like my casual work at the racecourses, but I'm not going to be told to reorganise my life, or put it at risk, so that 30 punters can slither in to watch what you've decried as poor fare anyway.
 
betsmate said:
That there is no racetrack between Wetherby/Doncaster/York and Haydock seems strange. I'm not sure about potential venues though.
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There's just been an application for a casino, racecourse, shopping/sports complex turned down at Boothstown Betsmate - would be pretty close to Haydock (15 minute drive tops) but that would be another racecourse in the NW if they can get planning permission.
 
That's the one I mentioned above - been in the pipeline for quite a while (3 or 4 years) and Haydock were discussing an AW course sometime in the 1990's too (though I guess that's gone with the addition of the new sprint course). IIRC they were going to operate a loop and then a straight mile (extending past the current 6f start) for all-weather racing.
 
I'd love us to have a Tapeta track - the stuff's the best of the evolution of artificial surfaces so far, it seems, with better tolerations of heat, wet, and cold than what's available at present. There's no doubt that the NW needs an AW track. It's not so much that there's 'too much' AW racing, it's that there's too much loaded in the Midlands and South. There are plenty of nice horses oop nawth who'd be great all-year animals, given the chance. And it wouldn't mean that a grass course dug it all up, either - Lingfield is both a full-fixture list's worth of Flat on turf, a small NH card, plus the AW, so there's no reason why a big enough venue could keep the grass and just add the AW to it. I think we can see what a boon it'd be to NH trainers in the region, too, for keeping their horses' lungs open with a few twirls round during poor weather when NH tracks demonstrate how non-AW they are!
 
Quite strange really: the amount of people who slag off AW, who really don't like it, in fact, 'hate it', all have an opinion ergo: sneaky looking going on.
 
:lol::lol: Ain't that the truth, Turtle! In fact (coughs discreetly), one of the contributors above was a long-term Annual Member at Lingfield... oh, yes! Thing is, if folks don't like it, they don't have to attend the meetings, watch it on tv, or even slide their eyes over the cards in the RP or the Evenin' Stannard. They can just look at NH until the Flat turf season bowls round, as they used to do before the first AW courses started up 20 years ago. But NO! - keep watching it, and have a moan. That's as perverse as deliberately tuning in to Big Brother and complaining about how crass it is. There's nowt so queer as folk, bah gum!
 
I love the AW but I wish we'd improve the standards to prepare horses for international campaigns etc. Horses like Jaconet and Dansant would be very competitive in some decent races on synthetics in the States yet their owners aren't encouraged to make the jump by anyone.

I just find it hard to look through everyday AW cards and pick one or two out as they are just usually the same old animals taking it in turns to beat one another. The Saturday afternoon meetings at Lingfield and 3 or 4 other races in the week are really only worth looking at.
 
Irish Stamp said:
There's just been an application for a casino, racecourse, shopping/sports complex turned down at Boothstown Betsmate - would be pretty close to Haydock (15 minute drive tops) but that would be another racecourse in the NW if they can get planning permission.
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Interesting - it's a shame that it is just beyond the Metrolink.

However I was thinking more of a 12f turf course that hosted only G3 and above flat racing, close to the centre of Leeds!
 
Wasn't a friend of Warbler's trying to get an application through for this sort of thingy just outside Blackpool, and had it rejected? There seems to be a very short-sighted attitude to this north of the Watford Gap. It would bring in loads of work -first, to construct the track itself and, if it were to be an entirely new, fresh course not allied to an existing one, a really big offering of construction and related jobs, followed by hundreds of permanent jobs within retail, catering, management, front of house, cashiers - masses of positions would be needed, particularly if it were operating into the early hours of the morning, requiring shift workers. Then there'd be all the nice local contracts for cleaning and maintenance, everything that underpins the running of a very large commercial spread. I can't imagine that Councils are so short-sighted as to turn down such opportunities. Perhaps they're riddled with Methodists who think that anything stronger than Irn Bru and a game of Snap is likely to cause the downfall of Western society.
 
Gamla Stan said:
I love the AW but I wish we'd improve the standards to prepare horses for international campaigns etc. Horses like Jaconet and Dansant would be very competitive in some decent races on synthetics in the States yet their owners aren't encouraged to make the jump by anyone.
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Is that the same Dansant that has tried and failed to come up to the required level in the Santa Anita Handicap?
 
davidjohnson said:
Is that the same Dansant that has tried and failed to come up to the required level in the Santa Anita Handicap?
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Watch the ride back, it's bloody atrocious!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8DEX0lqG6g

That is also the top top level, what I'm saying is that he could win some decent graded fare out on synthetics at a better standard that he can pick up over here and for much better prize money too.
 
A Response...

Seems my comments further up the thread drew a bit of a response from Krizon and I do feel the need to set the record straight.

1) You took my words "There are potential lessons to be learnt" as meaning "Racecourses should" when it comes to looking at issues of overnighting. The context was emphatically NOT that racecourse staff would be forced to overnight at tracks in times of bad weather but rather that racecourses could look at the option of providing emergency accommodation to staff in the event of a sudden deterioration in conditions.

As the ambulance episode on January 7th showed, the decision can be taken out of a course's hands.

2) As you well know, I have attended Bandit meetings at Lingfield so I think I'm pretty well entitled to know what bad racing is when I see it. In addition, I'm not in a position to pick and choose which days I attend.

I thought the card on Saturday was poor because the course has been trying to boost the quality of the winter Saturday meetings. The decision to make the 7-furlong Class 3 a Conditions race rather than a handicap was baffling but the Class 2 10-furlong handicap was a good race.

The maides suffered because there have been plenty of opportunities for 3-y-o at Kempton and Wolverhampton and there just isn't the population of early season 3-y-o to go round for the number of races being framed. To be honest, another Class 5 or 6 handicap would have been preferrable.

The lesson of the last two weeks is that, Dunkirk spirit and ATR plaudits notwithstanding, the AW can probably only hold two fixtures per day for a limited period and trying to do three a day just to keep the betting shops happy is not viable for more than a few days.

Let's hope the NH meeting on Monday next survives the rain and snow forecast.
 
There won't be many early season 3 y.o.'s or even early or late season 2 y.o.'s after the battering breeders have taken for the past two years, so count yourself lucky that there'll be anything to turn out in 2011. Racing talks with forked tongue - there are bleats about overproducing the animals, then shrieks that the fields aren't big enough. Unless breeders are going to be subsidised (no chance of that), like farmers, then there'll be a continuing reduction in foal production for a while yet. Get used to seeing old horses Zimmering round the AW for a few years, because that'll be the main fare on offer.
 
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