Flat racing has so much wrong with it right now:
It's always had it's main problem - the horses are only around for five minutes before they become stud/hurdlers/dogmeat/glue. It's hard to come to care about any of the horses, and the endless waves of new horses make it unusual to find races where you know the nuances of all the horses (unlike jumps racing).
It's also always had uncommunicative trainers. However, for the last couple of years Paul Nicholls and a few others have shown us what we should reasonably expect from the likes of Stoute and O'Brien. Their apparent deep-seated antipathy towards me as a punter has led eventually to a deep-seated antipathy towards them from me.
Add to the mix an unending summer diet of tight, moderate, handicaps of around 10 runners where it's impossible to keep on top of the form, or to care about any of the horses.
Garnish with clerks overwatering, seemingly under instructions to make the above races even more unfathomable, either by providing false ground, or by messing with draw biases.
And yesterday the icing on the cake. The 1000 Guineas, a Classic for fuck's sake, had a 15 length draw bias only a handful of jockeys seemed to know about.
The Derby was the first race I ever went to. The 2000 Guineas the first race on which I had a proper man-sized bet. Now I find I just can't be bothered with it. Sad.
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Couldn't agree more,Toots! To have a Classic with a draw bias like that is ridiculous. Can't wait for the jumping season to start !
ReplyDeleteJohn
Tooting you seem to have summed up the current malaise using the appropriate short procreative verb to describe a sport that is sinking to a slow agonising death. Some of the cavalrymen, now dead in their graves, who started the whiskery thing must be turning.
ReplyDeleteThere are ways to fathom the seemingly unfathomable but one needs quite a lot of candle time. The fox I use to select winners is getting quite long in the tooth and often scratches his head. When he goes God help me !
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