do you remember all weather jumps?

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

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

was it 1/14 when it broke down

Go South is one i remember winning a few

regal somethink of pipes that won at cheltenham

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

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

was was than the flat all weather for dirty fiddling

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

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 .

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

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 got any footage, would be interesting viewing

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

with all the fatalities that happened, not a chance.

https://youtu.be/cGNWLxYIOkQ

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.

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

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