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Cheltenham Gloom

As a matter of curiosity, can I ask to what extent is racing covered in the general Irish print media? TV? Radio?

I remember as a third-year pupil buying the Scottish Daily Express (wouldn't wipe my arse with it these days) before I got on the bus because it had the single page pullout which lent itself to folding and hiding inside a school jotter.

Which papers even cover racing these days?

ITV racing is the dick in the dyke of British racing. (No prizes for guessing who I think the dick is.)

What's the relationship in Ireland between the bookmakers and the industry? Over here they are bleeding the sport dry.

Is Irish grazing ground and/or feed of a higher quality than in the UK?

Racing in France isn't as popular and meetings sparsely attended but the hoses seem better and the prize money is considerably better. You never hear of French courses having to put on Edith Piaf tribute acts after racing in order to increase income.
It gets decent media coverage

Notably the examiner which prints sum of of Colm's work and the weekly Ruby Walsh column. Are some other racing writers.

The main sport shows on the radio do dedicate a small bit of time to racing.

Ruby Walsh is in fact a host on one of the shows and of course Jane mangan gets involved.
 
I don't listen to podcasts since I watched one two or three years back for the first time in the lead-up to Cheltenham or somewhere. It was an RP one. The people involved are irrelevant in the sense that the problem is that you have to listen to it all, which might be half an hour or more, to glean whatever information is being relayed, and at the end of it all you might decide it's been 90% waffle and bluster.

I'd much rather have a hard-copy piece I can skim and scan in a minute or two to pick the info I need.
 
As Granger correctly points out the coverage in the Irish Examiner is absolutely outstanding, and they allocate plenty of space to long form features.
 
I don’t think the concentration of good horses in Ireland is just down to differences in prize money and tax treatment.

A large part of it is down to the special talents of one person and the team he has assembled. It’s not just English trainers that are feeling the pinch, look what’s happening even to Gordon Elliott’s stable with his big money backing from Gigginstown and Bective Stud.

But English NH trainers as a group are very complacent and unadventurous. How many of them would even consider running a horse in France or Ireland, never mind Australia, the US or Japan?* Irish Racing is a smaller world, so trainers have always had to be more enterprising. And now, if they are to survive in the face of WPM they have to be very professional.

Gavin Cromwell, for example, has won Group races on the flat in France and England as well as making his way into the inner circle of jump racing. Meanwhile I remember Dan Skelton saying in an interview that he was more interested in winning races at his local tracks than taking horses to the likes of Punchestown.

Things will never be the same again after WPM has moved on, but the seesaw will start to balance itself. It is in the long term interests of the sport in both our countries that it does.

* This remark doesn’t apply to British flat trainers, by the way.
 
I don't listen to podcasts since I watched one two or three years back for the first time in the lead-up to Cheltenham or somewhere. It was an RP one. The people involved are irrelevant in the sense that the problem is that you have to listen to it all, which might be half an hour or more, to glean whatever information is being relayed, and at the end of it all you might decide it's been 90% waffle and bluster.

I'd much rather have a hard-copy piece I can skim and scan in a minute or two to pick the info I need.
You ever read the Irish Field Mo?
 
I have no problem with where they are trained but I do have a problem with one yard having so much of the power. I suppose I've never seemed to have the same ill feelings towards the Ballydoyle operation as I do the Mullins yard.

I think there had been numerous things that had irked me but I think when I looked at the Triumph and saw wow Willie doesn't have one of the first 3 in the betting, so he sends 11 unexposed 4 years olds. I passed comment on another forum prior to the race that it'd be a brave man to be lumping on either of the favourites will Willie sending that many as at least one of them would probably turn out to be good enough and as it turns out it did. It's certainly not sour grapes from me as I wasn't on either of the first couple in the betting.

It wafted me back to last year when he took the title and sent a host of unexposed 2 and a half milers to the Scottish national and did he have 4 out of the first 6 home or something stupid like that.

I quite like Mullins as a man from what I've seen of him anyway even with all the shenanigans of where his horses are running at the festival each year but I hate to see this domination from a single yard when I think there are so many smaller yards trainers busting a gut day in day out who'd benefit from a few more good horses.
I would like to limit the number of runners a trainer can have in race to about 25% of the field then you'd have a bit less of the best horses all ending up in a few super yards.
 
Thanks for sharing that data. Am I correct in thinking it includes flat as well as NH races?
 
Which yards are winning all the prize money?? I don't think this very good for the sport or punters

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Yeah but if for example you have 6 out of 8 runners out of one yard then to me it feels like they're buying the race and as a backer I suspect in those scenarios you don't know which have really been sent out to win
 
Personally I think it's more of an issue when there are multiple horses in a race under the same ownership, much more treacherous.
 
Eventually I'll get me shit together and do the same thing for owners, but too much real life stuff gets in the way
 
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