do you remember all weather jumps?

suluk

was it a horse of pipes called suluk ran up a sequence i seem to remember ?

not pipes

broke down at Southwell having won plenty races
Been talking to trainers son at Nottingham tonite he was suprised i remembered the horse

a goldmine

was it 1/14 when it broke down

Viking Flagship must be up there with the best that ran on the dirt jumps strip

Go South is one i remember winning a few

go south is the one i was thinking of..won a load from the front..i think jenkins trained it

regal somethink of pipes that won at cheltenham

yes he did

how long did it last? about 2 seasons or longer?

mexican vision, what a gamble !

The hurdles, or whatever they were supposed to be were a joke

hurdles were like brick walls

was was than the flat all weather for dirty fiddling

whatever led won, usually...the others couldnt cope with the severe kickback

once a hurdle was hit it used to fall down, meaning the second circuit sometimes resembled a flat race :)

The lingfield equitrack was a sandstorm, it was like having money delivered to you in those days on the dirt.

I remember my then favourite jockey Adrian Maguire used to clean up on them ...and I was fed up when they were discontinued because I felt it prevented hinm from winning a jockeys title -which I think he would have well deserved.
I think he rode 194 winners one year and still finished second ...three behind Dunwoody . David Nicholson also stabbed him in the back by giving winners to Dunwoody when maguire was injured .

Pridwell,later Aintree conqueror of Istabraq,ran and won at Southwell AW jumps.

yes remember backing pridwell at southwell ... it was the** poor horses that were poor jumpers and were travelling even faster than they would normally be ,also the track underlay not designed for jumping ,if it was and only horses above a certain standard raced it would be an ideal betting meduim .loved the a/w NH ,no reason why a purpose built a/w jumps track would not be safer than a turf track imo ,look at the fallers on bends recently at sandown and punch

what was the fatality rate at the time?

it was also the brush hurdles ? i think and when a flat type with little experiance of them runs right through em at the 2nd last they tended to sustain injury ,also the track was down to the underlay cause of penny pinching turds.

anyone know here i can see a video of all w jumps never seen a race

anyone got any footage, would be interesting viewing

tried youtube, nothing on there

The History of All Weather Racing
All weather racing was originally designed to cater for national hunt racing. During the late 1980's the racing authorities wanted to keep racing going throughout the winter - come rain or frost. They wanted an artificial type of surface which would provide opportunities for jumps horses to keep running whilst turf meetings were abandoned.

The reasoning was sound but things did not quite work out as expected. The surfaces used were Fibresand and Equitrack. Both of those artificial surfaces were designed to be kind to horses when landing after jumping a hurdle. But in practice all weather racing took a turn for the worst.

At the time stats showed that the rate of horses finishing lame more than doubled on the all weather surfaces. This basically put an end to all weather jump racing.

The reason for the increase in horses finishing unsound was debatable. Some said that the surfaces were fine - it was the quality of horses which caused the increase in horses pulling up. All weather racing was attracting cheaper, poorer quality horses who would have probably finished lame on a turf jumps course but were often denied runs on turf due to their lower rating. All weather racing allowed many more lower class horses to run and show how bad they were.

For whatever reason all weather jump racing was cancelled and that gave way to all weather flat racing.

Unfortunately for this type of racing it has taken a very long time to shake off the 'poor quality' racing image. Punters, and more significantly trainers and owners have long held an opinion that horses who run on the all weather are failed plodders who could not win on turf.

It took another twelve years for that opinion to change. Only when the Polytrack surface was installed at Lingfield, and a few years later at Wolverhampton, Kempton and Great Leighs, have connections realised that all weather flat racing can be a viable alternative to turf racing.

There still remains a problem with punters though. Many will not bet on all weather racing because they still perceive the quality as poor. This is despite record prize money, and more quality races including Group and Listed Class races being run on the surface

Should bring it back with bigger hurdles to slow them down!

with all the fatalities that happened, not a chance.

I was a student in the 90s and Suluk went lame and cost me an acca for a tidy sum. He was 1-14 on the day and it was a lesson well learned, i'd lost out on a massive win (with my £1 lunch money) to gain an extra couple of hundred or so. Never again at odds on let alone 1-14, you couldn't buy money, at least not on AW hurdles.

https://youtu.be/cGNWLxYIOkQ

In the old days of the tote 10 to follow you actually named your horses, not picked from their list.

Suluk headed all of my entries and I appeared in the top 60ish in the RP (or SL?) approaching Chelt festival. I had picked ex-hunter chaser Rushing Wild the winner of the previous seasons Foxhunters at Chelt by miles and had now moved to Martin Pipe.

It lead most of the way in the Gold Cup only to be beaten by Jodami - really spoilt my day as I reckon I would have moved into the top 5

koi , cheers for that link. You'd have thought a deeply harrowed fibresand surface was safer than some of the summer jumps tracks they race on today. I never enjoyed watching on Lingfield's equitrack as they went too fast and there were some horror falls. I never heard the lameness/fatality rate comparisons between the two tracks.

Brilliant great to see that in all its glory thanks Koikeeper , some crowd there that day...

Should be AW jumps with grass take off and landings ( with under soil heating to keep the frost at bay )  Hurdle and Chase. Race all year round with virtually no cancellations

Also floodlight jumps all year round, no omitted hurdles/fences in the winter with low sun

nothing to do with casualties or bad for horses the bookies got hammered and they stopped it by any excuse they could not win races set up they pulled the plug on it thats the real truth

Yep, they took a pasting all right

it was like printing money i thought at the time its too easy this wont last long, they got well stuffed big time it was the easiest racing we could ever bet and win on, they stopped it alrigh some excuses but we all know the real reason and thats why it will never come back seem to remember 3 or 4 runner races most of the time

Approx 1992 I was involved with a dubious set of owners/trainer. Night before racing got the nod to back Wiltoski & Soda Popinski in A/W hurdles at Southwell, win singles and ew double. Told not to back them before 10am, it was only really independents that put up prices before lunchtime on those sort of races so we were a bit limited. Got all prices from 16s & 20s on both of them, both bolted in at around 3-1 & 7-2. I bought a house with my share.
28 year aftertime


Jockey & trainer warned off soon after!

know all, are you implying all the races were fixed, else surely simple bookmaking would make it profitable for layers.

DG, I see it was the Campbells, can't say I remember them.

I think Lingfield was equitrack in those days. The stopwatch ruled. Serial winners just kept coming back again and again. Got out in front and they never saw them again. Back in the day when you could get a few quid on the night before. So many small books came and went. Starbet, betabet were a couple, not a clue how to price a race up. All good things come to an end tho, they didn't last too long.

Reg Hollinshead trained Suluk.

No freezing cold January day at Southwell was complete without Stuart Holder driving Steve Wynne(5) to the course, and then betting £1,000 to £200 ON Suluk to canter home in the claiming hurdle, which he always did. Well, apart from the afternoon he went lame at 14s ON, of course. Still, he returned a fortnight later to win a seller at 4/6.

Year after year the thing would run up a sequence of half a dozen consecutive wins at long odds on while every other punter on the track was trying to warm up with a cup of tea.

The extraordinary thing was that the horse was an entire too. I don't think anything it went on to sire ever even got placed.

i remember well graham bradley blatantly stopping every horse he rode on there

It was so bad that Dale McKeown was the champion jockey!

Cheers for that link Koikeeper...surprising how much a mans voice can change over time

Bartletts commentating voice was so much better then than the glass shattering one he offers up nowadays.

I used to be around the Brooke Sanders stable ( Double Dutch and Calapez ) she was lethal around Lingfield with Dale riding. Remember being told to back a horse called Big Finish in a 3 or 4 horse race at about 1/10 but do it on the tote (with bookie not pool). Once it won it paid something like 3/1 against as they had bet big stakes on the other 3 horses to manipulate the odds.
All the bookies withheld for a week or so but then had to pay up.

Changed the rules on tote betting after that coup.

know all, are you implying all the races were fixed, else surely simple bookmaking would make it profitable for layers

it was seriously bent the majority of the races were imo lol seem to recall the small fields 3-4 runners lots of races where the leader went off in front and the rest just let it win it was farcical lol you just knew they wont allow this to continue it was easy for any punter, it was also very poor horses running like sellers everyday might be why there could have been a few more injuries but im 100% certain they got together with the bookies and concocted the story to finish it, we knew before they injury stories started to appear that they could not allow this to continue as the punters were winning big, the jockeys were also well involved completely bent imo

From what you have both said above I'm starting to wonder how lame Suluk really was then the day he cost me money. Not very probably, since he was back out again and winning 2 weeks later.

I remember a horse called something like Altobelli, won at a big price when we were told it would win.

Suluk was lame on the day, he had an abcess on his foot that oozed puss when his shoe was removed in the vets box

tip1uk knows!!!!!


Welcome back, been missing longer than Terry Waite.

Southwell was relatively straight, because it attracted horses from both the North and the South, and thus not as easy to fix. Lingfield, though, where every jockey, trainer, owner and layer knew each other from going to the same track day-in day-out, became just a cesspit by the end. They didn't even bother to hide it. Barrie Wright, the jockey, would be in the bar with the punters cheering home the winners, not caring who was watching. The journalists were quite happy to turn a blind eye too.

You got races like this one:

https://www.racingpost.com/results/393/lingfield-aw/1992-01-14/44026

Three runners, but basically a match, with the Ian Campbell horse odds-on, and Nigel Coleman's mount easy to back. But calamity! The saddle slipped on the Campbell horse the moment the tapes went up. What to do? Ann Stokell's horse (20/1) barely clambered over the first two hurdles, so that one was out of the equation. All the seven-pound claimer on the favourite could do was cling on and hope for the best. Coleman, meanwhile, held his mount up at a respectful distance, and despite the horse pulling its way up to challenge the favourite at the last, did not go past.

I remember watching the race in the Tote Credit office at Folkestone with Eddie Fremantle, who was still working on the Life at the time. Neither of us could believe what we were seeing. Fremantle rang up the Life journalist at Lingfield asking what he was going to do about it. You couldn't just ignore that. Ah well, came the reply, Coleman's mount didn't find as much as expected. Just one of those things, eh?

Now, that may have been the case. But it would have been nice for the hack in question at least to have asked Coleman for his version of events.

Looks like the winner above was owned by a certain Gay Kelleway.

This was the race they manipulated the tote so Big Finish paid 3/1 against. The other 4 runners were basically tailed off the whole race.

https://www.racingpost.com/results/393/lingfield-aw/1990-01-17/32967

Suluk   the legend

I had a small share in as runner on it back in the day. Philip Hobbs had a 40 share syndicate, their first horse was Midfielder who was very good but I bought in the next year when we had a real dud called Bold Bostonian. Philip decided on a novice hurdle on the AW as a last resort. Fortunately my next horse there was 25% of Faustino who won 5 races.

My favourite bet of all time happened at Southwell - Cosmic Dancer II.  Needed 2m6f with blinkers on at Southwell - couldn't win under other circumstances.  Lyn's Return had a very profitable season at Lingfield one year and I think also raced on the snow abroad.

I remember that day Hibore - 19 fecking 90!!!

I know...where has the time gone.

Brooke Sanders..anyone know where she is now ? Double Dutch is still one of my fav horses.

Calapaez - a top-class front-running juvenile hurdler trained by Brooke Sanders, went on to become a tough 3m handicap chaser:

Remember him well where in heaven's name does time go!

Cracking footage that. Thought it was Bartlett. How different he sounds now. Just look at the crowds.