Cliff Williams, Contributing Editor
Horses leaving the starting gates at Caymanas Park. - File
RECENTLY A very experienced and consequently knowledgeable racing man, who has been a major investor in the industry, has been pointing out to this writer a number of areas in which he has been observing an increasing decline in standards with respect to certain expectations during the conduct of race meetings these days.
A major source of annoyance to this particular gentleman is the increasing regularity with the horses not being paraded in an orderly manner in front of the stands and then cantered down to the start.
Since he has brought it to my attention I have been observing more carefully what goes on and he is absolutely right that this protocol is observed more in the breach.
There was a time when the parade was executed perfectly with the horses going as far as a hundred metres from the winning post so that one had time to look, but the operation stewards have allowed the jockeys to do as they please.
Invariably, the horses are saddled late and this is one of the reasons why there is no organised parade so that a proper comparison of the horses in the fields, so affected in terms of conditioning, can be done easily.
Another problem irking this racing man is the absence of genuine handicap races and with this I concur completely.
In spite of the claiming system, it is still possible to have handicap races as one thing that simply cannot change is that each horse in training has a rating, whether an exercise to determine this is carried out or not.
In fact I have a very good idea of
the rating of all the horses currently in training as I do a reassessment at the end of each raceday.
CLASSIFICATION
Simply put, the ability of a horse
can be expressed in figures for rating and classification, so there is no need to be offering a lot of races where, more often than not, half the starters have no chance to succeed at the weights to be carried and consequently attract little or no betting.
I have made the point in the past that the system as it operates currently leaves too many horses uncompetitive in their respective fields, as many have to give away weight to superior horses.
This has a severe negative impact on the betting, and although it is difficult to quantify, I am sure that it has cost the promoting company a great deal in terms of sales turnover.
It is sales that determine the viability of a promoting company and anything that reduces its ability to maximise this is inimical to its survival.
In any event, a system of weight allotment that has automatic penalties for races won in the past, irrespective of the quality of the opposition the victories came against, is clearly idiotic.
How can the date that a horse last won make sense as a factor determining what weight it carries in its next race?
None of the proponents of the obviously flawed Jamaica claiming system have been able to present a persuasive argument in answer to this and other questions, simply because they cannot.
Frankly, in the interest of the promoting company, I think it is high time for the establishment of a system to allow horses to compete at the proper handicaps as this does not prevent, and is certainly not incompatible with horses competing with claiming tags.
This is definitely a way of enhancing the attractiveness of the racing product.
The new investors are going to have to take a serious look at this as there are far too many instances where gifts of substantial purses are being made to some fortunate owners at the expense of the viability of the promoting company.
The foregoing highlights just a few of the issues and I will be looking at some other important ones in future columns as the industry cannot go forward with such a culturally flawed method of operating.
