While some of these reasons are understandable, it does really irritate me and its why I just dont have any feeling for it. 1. Any decent horse is retired after 3 years tops thus lacking continuity and a following. 2. We are often robbed of what could be a decent race with trainers opting to race abroad!!!! (for me I was glad about what happened to Ed Dunlop with Snow Fairy because of this). Even horses such as Indian Days who i did try to follow has been racing abroad!! 3. I cant help but feel that most owners buy the top horses buy for future stud fees rather than the love of the sport and seeing their star year in and year out! Jump racing just has so much more emotion and feeling to it, had Kauto Star been a flat horse he would have been retired two years in but hes still around. Just imagine if we had multiple Derby winners in one race. Like the Chelt gold cup, grand national, champion hurdle etc etc!! Other than the Derby even now i cannot name a single top flat race where as jump racing pretty much every week there is a top race to look forward to! and you know all the top horses are going to race here! There are other reasons which i cant quite remember but bring on the new jumps season!! just 6 weeks till the first cheltenham meet!!! Im sure others will have alternative views but these are mine and like said can understand for example the leur of racing abroad where the money is better etc but still!
Yeah, I hear where you are coming from, Benny......Small Group 1 fields; multiple entries/pacemakers from Coolmore with only Godolphin and the odd other trainer standing his ground; short racing lifespan from the top horses; overall quality is declining all the time- with only a few exceptions, hardly any horses in the "all-time top ratings." Also there is too much racing and, although I see the point of All-Weather Racing, you wouldn't get me to one of those low quality meetings. Like you, I feel the Jumps has much more to offer. Having said my view, I accept everyone has his own personal preferences.
Agree with a lot of your points especially that the excitement levels are far greater! Bring on Cheltenham and also the Charlie Hall meeting
Abroad, old boy! France isn’t abroad anymore as we are all Europeans these days. You’ve made a very good case though and this is undoubtedly the reason why most racing folk attach more sentiment and emotion to the sport of NH racing rather than the flat version. Can’t wait for the NH season ‘proper’ to begin myself and if anyone wants to view Cheltenham’s season 2011/12 brochure, which they have just released, its can be seen at http://europe.nxtbook.com/nxteu/jcr/season1112/index.php#/0
Is it any wonder that many of our good horses are going abroad to race when faced with the dire prize money situation in this country?
PN, so why do we get so many small fields in Group 1 and prestigous Group 1's at that? Surely the prizemoney isn't that bad (and added value for winner)
There was a piece in the ‘Racing Post’ earlier in the week about just how many promising 2-4 year-olds are being sold out of UK yards to race in the Far East and the Middle East. There was also the additional point raised of the effect that this and International events such as the ‘Dubai Carnival’ will have on NH racing – especially juvenile and novice hurdling as horses that until very, very recently would have been sent down this avenue are now going elsewhere due to being able to earn considerably more money. The days of beasts rated 80-100+ on the level going hurdling may become less and less as a result.
I agree that stud considerations often taking precedence when it comes to a horse's career (and the reason why racing over 12 furlongs is so unfashionable these days) is something I dislike about flat racing. Can't agree about horses racing abroad though, the cosmopolitan nature of it is one of its strengths.
If you didn't like flat racing, then you would never watch it. Maybe you should change the name of the thread to reasons why I prefer jumps racing. I like both codes equally. Though both are going down hill. you say Kauto Star comes back year after year, yes that's true, but for 3 or 4 runs a season, compare that to Desert Orchid who usually had 10 miles+ on the clock for the season, before he even went to the KG. That's why Dessies 4 KGs will always rank higher than KSs, as Dessies was not wrapped in cotton wool in the build up to the race each year. KS isn't the only jumper who is wrapped in cotton wool, they all are, last season most of the established names had very few runs, Denman 3 runs, Long Run 3 runs, Imperial Commander 2 runs, Master Minded 4 runs, Big Zeb 4 runs, Big Bucks 4 runs. The 2 mile hurdlers run abit more, but still nothing like as many times as they used to. So yes the top horse's stay in training, but what use is that, if you hardly ever get to see them
Kauto Star has run 37 times, yes it's not as much as Desert Orchid et al, but 'hardly ever get to see them'?
Owners and trainers do shoot themselves in the foot with this. Many of them would rather get their best animals well handicapped rather than risk ruining their mark by finishing close up in a Gp1 they know they can't win, so you end up with 4 runners in the King George, one of the top middle distance races.
Why not take Group races out of the handicapping system i.e. any runs in a group race are not considered for handicap ratings? Any horse who ran well in a group 1 would not then be lumbered with a fanciful rating back in handicap company but will of course be priced accordingly by those bookie chappies
I agree that small fields in G1s are disappointing and I'm amazed more small time trainers don't throw something in the race to a) have a chance of a bit of place money and b) give the owners a big day out. However you do have the flip side, as happened in this year's Derby, that an inexperienced horse (or one that is simply out of its depth ability wise) can be dangerous to the rest of the field. On the prize money front, yes it is better in comparison to our own races, but compared to those abroad? Take a premier mile race: 2000 Guineas (Nemarket) total prize fund £198,695 with £75,320 to the winner Jaques Le Marois total prize fund £295,551 with £118,241 to the winner
I don’t think we would ever see a situation where trainers with handicap-level horses would enter them to chase sixth-place prize money in a Group 1, but there are plenty of Pattern-race quality horses that were stood in their boxes when the Eclipse and the King George were run and will be stood in their boxes when the Irish Champion Stakes is run. If the owners are not prepared to compete, they forfeit any right to complain about prize money levels. Where do you draw the line? If you exempt all Pattern races, they will then want all the Pattern penalties removing so that Group 1 winners can run un-penalised in Group 2 races. There are quite a lot of Pattern races in France where there are no penalties and this leads to uncompetitive races; however the French don’t mind as their State betting monopoly wins a fixed percentage every day whether the winner returns 1/10 or 10/1. When there is top-class competitive racing, nobody shows up. The 20,000 Brits and Irish make the huge crowd on Arc Sunday. Next Sunday there will be more people at Ffos Las than Longchamp despite the six Pattern races on the Arc Trials card. Also, trainers with useless horses will want selling plates and claiming races exempted from handicapping at the other end of the system. Eventually there will be no handicaps at all. We all know that those handicap ‘good things’ frequently get turned over but they also create races that, from a betting perspective, are unappealing to the majority of punters, which results in a fall in turnover. Who pays the Levy that funds quite a substantial part of racing? Answer: those bookie chappies, who pay Levy according to their turnover. Racing is unlikely to consider cutting off the hand that feeds it (although you could suggest that to RFC!).
