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I was surprised at the negative reaction by Ted Walsh on RTÉ and by many regular racegoers to the new layout of the racecard at Punchestown this week, produced by the Racing Post.
Those who have the advantage of carrying all the point-to-point form around in their head might be upset that it is now available to the paying customer in the racecard for the first time. Seven form figures is a big improvement on three. I assume that the official ratings shown for horses that ran from out of the handicap on recent starts are now correct; this was a long-standing error in the old layout.
The distance of past races has been changed during the week from furlongs (e.g.24) to miles (e.g.3m).
One peculiarity is the units in which prizemoney is measured. The value of Hurricane Fly's last win at Leopardstown was given as "59K", but the Irish Form Book says he collected EUR71,500. I presume that means that the euro is no more and we've gone back to using sterling!
Those who have the advantage of carrying all the point-to-point form around in their head might be upset that it is now available to the paying customer in the racecard for the first time. Seven form figures is a big improvement on three. I assume that the official ratings shown for horses that ran from out of the handicap on recent starts are now correct; this was a long-standing error in the old layout.
The distance of past races has been changed during the week from furlongs (e.g.24) to miles (e.g.3m).
One peculiarity is the units in which prizemoney is measured. The value of Hurricane Fly's last win at Leopardstown was given as "59K", but the Irish Form Book says he collected EUR71,500. I presume that means that the euro is no more and we've gone back to using sterling!
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The previous card was absolutely useless (unless it had changed a lot from what I saw last year, in the interim at other tracks), so it is amazing that there is any negative reaction of additional information is included in the Racing Post version.
I never buy a racecard so may not be the right person to issue a verdict on it, but it would be interesting to know what exactly people liked abou the previous version and dislike about the replacement.
I never buy a racecard so may not be the right person to issue a verdict on it, but it would be interesting to know what exactly people liked abou the previous version and dislike about the replacement.
The challenge seems to be to include as much information as possible about a horse's previous run in a single line without using so many unexplained abbreviations as to make it incomprehensible to the casual racegoer.
A guide to the abbreviations (including some rather obscure ones for already obscure point-to-point courses, e.g. Ylo for Killaloe!) may be hidden away somewhere in the middle of the many pages of advertisements, but I didn't find it!
A guide to the abbreviations (including some rather obscure ones for already obscure point-to-point courses, e.g. Ylo for Killaloe!) may be hidden away somewhere in the middle of the many pages of advertisements, but I didn't find it!
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