Why did Ascot add water?

EC1

EC1

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quite a strange decision to water yesterday seeing as the going was only near top side of Good ..or Good changing Good/firm if being picky...on times on Friday ...surely if they must water it should be to prevent really fast ground.

It would only have been middle of Good/Firm if they had left it alone...surely thats not to hard is it?

Instead they have created false ground which probably does more harm than genuine Good/Firm

Will we ever see proper Good/Firm at Ascot ever again?...they seem to have a big problem there since the changes..the straight dries out far quicker than the round..more so than other tracks it appears. Most tracks have this ..round slower than straight bias... but not to the degree it is there.
 
Yes, weird. Ascot has had ground problems on the flat for as long as I can remember, nothing seems to change that.

Did you see Hughie Morrison having a big row with them ? Would have been funny had it not been because it ruined the chances of two of his very fancied horses.
 
What was Morrison's quote? Something like "typical Ascot ground... Good, Soft, Good To Firm in places".
 
Gareth Flynn said:
What was Morrison's quote? Something like "typical Ascot ground... Good, Soft, Good To Firm in places".
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Hilarious, good on him for standing up to them. Not enough trainers do it and at least 3 or 4 racecourses a week give shockingly incorrect going descriptions.

His attack on Haydock was my favourite and incredibly justified.
 
I think the clerk of the course, Chris Stikels should start looking for another job. Not overly popular by all accounts.
 
A complete an utter joke….why on earth did he even consider watering considering the recent weather and the forecast heavy fog and dew each morning. Watering to prevent FIRM going is just about acceptable…anything else is a no no.
 
The one horse to have benefited from that would have been the french one. Didnt quite happen did it?

Whats EC's ratings for the ground?
 
Amazing to see the horses run so far out from the rail in places. Surely an embarrasing situation for whoever is responsible for watering. You would think they would be able to get this watering figured out by now.
 
Clerks all over the country seem to have become paranoid since that dreadful Festival meeting where we lost 9 on fast ground after a winter of soft ground.

Too far the other way now and genuine good/fast ground horses don't seem to be getting their chances - even in summer jumping, which is supposed to cater for them.
 
Wouldn´t be the first time a course watered to aid a horse. Haydock did it for Diktat in the Sprint Cup (it worked, he turned up and won).
 
They're all doing it.

Over-watering of tracks and over racing on tracks is exactly what is producing the poor ground we often have. Grass cover is often poor too down to the sheer amounts of racing hammering the ground, and the over-watering is decimating grass quality and leading not only to patches of false ground and uneven going, but adding to the list of abandoned meetings through waterlogging.

It's about time some sort of regulations were brought in concerning clerks of courses' addictions to hosepipes.
 
clivex said:
The one horse to have benefited from that would have been the french one. Didnt quite happen did it?

Whats EC's ratings for the ground?
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Clive

On Friday probably the best race to look at re the going was the race won by Laddies Poker Two

that was run in 73.1..which makes the race 2.1 seconds per mile faster than the middle of Good ground on my time calcs...which is about 1.2 seconds per mile into true G/F ground.

If you want to cross check that using the RP standard..it was 0.7sec faster than their standard..which I believe is for a mature OHR 100 horse carrying 9-0 on true Good going.......the winners is about a 91-94 horse and carried 5lb less..and is not quite fully mature...so has probably run 1.7 seconds faster than Good in their opinion..which is very similar to my 2.1 seconds per mile figure.

that isn't even close to Firm ground..that would only start about 2.8 seconds per mile fast ,,,which means that with overnight moisture to counteract any drying on Saturday...they could have totally refrained from watering and still had SAFE Good/Firm going that was never going to verge into Firm at all.
 
Never thought the day would happen when i asked for your ratings EC lol


But like so many others, I am getting cheesed off with dodgy going descriptions and pointless watering. Good stuff. Something that should be analysed and disected more by the racing press IMO
 
aye

there was a certain irony there Clive :D

to be fair..it's not difficult for these people to do these calculations...if I can do them in me front room in about 10 minutes...surely they can do the same and actually start running racecourses with at least some common sense involved.

To water for Saturday was surely the sign of an incompetent who would be shown the door in any other job

every season now we have this..it must be a nightmare for trainers and owners that have horses that want geniune good/firm ground....most of our races in future will only be run on loose topped ground by the looks of it

as mentioned in this thread as well..the damage that watering does is ridiculous..great lumps of sodden turf kicked off of dry undersoil must be trashing the surfaces beyond belief.

we talk about this regularly on here ...and other racing forums also talk lots about it...but no one seems bothered from within the racing world..surely someone with some clout can bend some ears.
 
I'm one of the firrst to object to inaccurate going descriptions. It's not something that's particularly difficult to get right, and the fundamental reason it's inaccurate is so courses don't have swaythes of non-runners. They still work fromm the basis that if the horsebox turns up the horse will run. Unfortuntely trainers and owners work on the same basis which perpetuates the problem.

Of course the answer is simple. An accurate reading should be taken with 90 minutes of the first race, but until racecourses are forced to do this we will have to continue to guess. Quite staggering considering it wouldn't take an industrial revelution to sort it out.

Some facts and perspective regarding Ascot are important though. The drainage there has played havoc in the straight. Not only has it created a draw bias which they can only correct through differential watering either side of the straight finish, drainage around the rest of the course is also massively different. The finishing straight compared to Swinley Bottom when they have rain can be several going descriptions different, with the rest of the course some variation in between. Given these facts artificial watering is essential. Chris Stickels is taking plenty of flack , but I would suggest he has the most challenging ground managing and maintenance job in the UK right now.
 
Tom Segal has been having a pop at Ascot as an impossible course to win on ever since it re-opened now for some time..... well ever since it re-opened as it happened. Urm....... might have phrased that better. Leaving that aside, it's been my most successful course since.

Learn how to calculate your own going corrections in running folks;) Admittedly it means swerving the opening affairs, but with the possible exception of Longchamp and the Curragh at a stretch, I can't think there's a course that more routinely puts out as much misleading going descriptions. I personally don't mind it, so long as they're racing there the next day, as it's one of the few places I think I can get a bit of an edge.

And as Maruco is only interested in a horse that jumps over an obstacle, he will be equally aware that one of the biggest offenders (any top 5 list) is his own Mecca
 
Shadow Leader said:
Over-watering of tracks and over racing on tracks is exactly what is producing the poor ground we often have. Grass cover is often poor too down to the sheer amounts of racing hammering the ground, and the over-watering is decimating grass quality and leading not only to patches of false ground and uneven going, but adding to the list of abandoned meetings through waterlogging.
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Shadow - would the deteriorating quality of the ground be the cause of the trend I've noticed this season for hurdling times being so much slower (in seconds per furlong) than chase times, even on ground given as good to firm?

Or would it be the way the different races are being ridden?

(I keep speed ratings and have not seen anything like the differences in going calculations between chase and hurdle tracks as have occurred this year.)
 
Sorry redhead, I'm no expert (not even close!) on race timings. I really wouldn't know why hurdling times would be different to chasing ones, bar that they are run on different tracks and a lot of hurdling tracks also form part of the flat tracks so take more of a hammering throughout the year. Bumpers are also run on the hurdle tracks so in the main, they tend to be used more than the chasing tracks.
 
Thanks Shadow - just a thought that occurred when you mentioned the actual quality of ground and grass. It does seem a more likely explanation for a difference in some cases of 5 or 6 seconds per furlong between chase and hurdles races.

I've never seen such a disparity in 15 years of my records and when it became a regular feature of this year's ratings, I began to get a bit worried that my own calculations were going awry.

Thanks again.
 
Quite a few since late March, Gareth. Currently at work, so no access to records, but will post later.

Obviously some things like rebuilding and rail movements have to be allowed for, but I've never seen such glaring discrepancies before. In quite a lot of cases I'm having to make 2 going factor calculations to avoid having all the chasers rated as potential Grade I winners and any potentially good hurdlers being rated as platers!

Either something has changed ground/trackwise that I haven't picked up on, or all the hurdle races are being run so fast that the finishing times are being affected - which doesn't seem that likely.
 
Gareth Flynn said:
Which courses are you seeing it at redhead?
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Various courses have hurdle and chase tracks which vary enormously in their topography, not to mention the measurement of distance being occasionally ambiguous. Fontwell, Kelso, Ludlow and Sandown are tracks where the courses diverge entirely and where times cannot be easily compared.
 
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