Irish Sports
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08 Sep 12
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By Pat Keane irishexaminer.ie
Saturday, September 08, 2012
And so back to Killarney we trundled on Tuesday.
This really was a puzzle. The four-day Killarney meeting was due to run from last Wednesday week to the following Saturday.
But Wednesday was lost to the weather and so the natural progression surely was to start on the Thursday and end on the Sunday.
But when it comes to the politics of racing in this country then anything is possible. The decision was then made, much to the surprise of most observers, that Killarney wouldn’t race last Sunday and instead wait for Tuesday of this week.
It didn’t seem to make much sense, but we thought, because Dundalk was on last Sunday as well HRI, perhaps, concluded that running two all-flat meetings on the same day wasn’t a good idea. The Trainers’ Association might even agree with such a sentiment.
But then we arrived in Kerry on Tuesday to discover the main reason was that Turf Club officials wouldn’t have been available to oversee racing on Sunday, rosters and all that sort of thing you know. There’s no mystery here, it was as simple as that.
Such a scenario was quite ridiculous and for Killarney not to race on Sunday was clearly economic madness.
Killarney is a hugely popular track, with a go-ahead management and a setting that is breathtaking.
The racing was excellent, weather superb, catering first-class and attendances, in the main, quite healthy.
Last Saturday, for instance, was deemed Ladies’ Day and grabbed an audience in excess of 3,000. That was impressive.
All logic dictated that the feel-good factor should have been allowed spill into Sunday. But no, the public was told to go home and come back next Tuesday.
But, of course, most didn’t. Tuesday was sparsely populated, they deserved far better, there was no atmosphere and just 20 bookmakers were standing.
If the meeting had taken place on Sunday several thousand would have been on site and it would have been a case of win-win all round.
And then you have to ask yourself about the type of card that was foisted on Killarney on Tuesday.
The way it was framed tells us that the people who are responsible for such things have little understanding of what the punter wants.
Do not ask the Irish punter to go to a meeting where the last four races are those necessary evils, handicaps. The first three contests were maidens, but why wasn’t the programme framed as follows: handicap, maiden, handicap, maiden, handicap, handicap and finish with a maiden.
Punters and bookmakers alike in this country, in my experience, detest handicaps. Punters, at least those who know what they’re at, won’t bet on them, on the basis it is simply too difficult to find the winner.
And bookmakers don’t want them either. They hold little or nothing in such races and having to go say 5-1 or 6-1 the field isn’t a very attractive proposition.
Racing in Ireland should nearly always end with a non-handicap. Punters and layers will then come out to play and may the best man win.
Let’s have a quick look at one of the handicaps at Killarney on Tuesday to emphasise just how pathetic betting on such a race can be.
Here’s the business Daragh Fitzpatrick did on the contest won by Van Rooney. In total he issued just eight tickets.
He had €20 for Van Rooney, €100 for Loreto, €150 for Maundy Money and €30 for Lord Kenmare.
He did not take as much as a cent on any of the other eight horses in the race. Fitzpatrick held just €300 and, somehow, managed to win €160.
Berkie Browne held €250 and John Harney a whopping €47. That’s how sad the betting ring in Ireland has become and yet the people who run the game think that racing on a Tuesday, in preference to a Sunday, is fine and there is nothing wrong with having four handicaps in-a-row.
On the Thursday of Killarney, Joseph O’Brien put up 2lbs overweight on Greek Goddess, who won a maiden by three parts of a length.
Last Tuesday at Killarney he again weighed out 2lbs in excess of his allotted weight aboard Purple, who scrambled to win another maiden by half a length. O’Brien weighed in, I gather, 3lbs over. It is something that has happened repeatedly this season.
If he weighs out almost 3lbs over, but not quite, then that will be registered as 2lbs. When you hear he is putting up 2lbs over then chances are that it will be nearer to 3lbs.
At Leopardstown on August 16, he put up 2lbs overweight on Snow Queen. She was beaten half a length into second by What Style.
Aidan O’Brien’s desire to make his son champion jockey is perfectly understandable, but should such a consideration override the overall good of racing?
Punters are being short-changed on an ongoing basis and thousands throughout the country have no way of knowing that, frequently, a horse they are backing is carrying more than its allotted weight. There has been some tweaking to the weighing in procedure, but it’s no more than a fudge.
The Turf Club’s job is to ensure the integrity of racing and to protect the interests of punters. The silence from that quarter is essentially deafening.
Denis Egan Statement
Denis Egan, Turf Club Chief Executive, has issued the following statement regarding the decision that Killarney should race last Tuesday rather than the previous Sunday.
Said Egan: "There were two major contributing factors in not being able to staff a second fixture last Sunday.
"Firstly, in the last four years, five full-time officials have retired and have not been replaced, so we are working with a minimum of full-time staff.
"The cost of providing integrity has reduced by 26% since 2008.
"Secondly, we are obliged to comply with the laws of the land with regard to employment practices and are obligated to give days off to comply with the working time acts. Last Sunday was the first Sunday for five weeks where a double fixture was not scheduled for that day.
"It was the first time this year that we were unable to staff a fixture.
"We had no problem staffing all the rescheduled and additional fixtures last month and we staffed two fixtures at short notice on Tuesday of this wee
Saturday, September 08, 2012
And so back to Killarney we trundled on Tuesday.
This really was a puzzle. The four-day Killarney meeting was due to run from last Wednesday week to the following Saturday.
But Wednesday was lost to the weather and so the natural progression surely was to start on the Thursday and end on the Sunday.
But when it comes to the politics of racing in this country then anything is possible. The decision was then made, much to the surprise of most observers, that Killarney wouldn’t race last Sunday and instead wait for Tuesday of this week.
It didn’t seem to make much sense, but we thought, because Dundalk was on last Sunday as well HRI, perhaps, concluded that running two all-flat meetings on the same day wasn’t a good idea. The Trainers’ Association might even agree with such a sentiment.
But then we arrived in Kerry on Tuesday to discover the main reason was that Turf Club officials wouldn’t have been available to oversee racing on Sunday, rosters and all that sort of thing you know. There’s no mystery here, it was as simple as that.
Such a scenario was quite ridiculous and for Killarney not to race on Sunday was clearly economic madness.
Killarney is a hugely popular track, with a go-ahead management and a setting that is breathtaking.
The racing was excellent, weather superb, catering first-class and attendances, in the main, quite healthy.
Last Saturday, for instance, was deemed Ladies’ Day and grabbed an audience in excess of 3,000. That was impressive.
All logic dictated that the feel-good factor should have been allowed spill into Sunday. But no, the public was told to go home and come back next Tuesday.
But, of course, most didn’t. Tuesday was sparsely populated, they deserved far better, there was no atmosphere and just 20 bookmakers were standing.
If the meeting had taken place on Sunday several thousand would have been on site and it would have been a case of win-win all round.
And then you have to ask yourself about the type of card that was foisted on Killarney on Tuesday.
The way it was framed tells us that the people who are responsible for such things have little understanding of what the punter wants.
Do not ask the Irish punter to go to a meeting where the last four races are those necessary evils, handicaps. The first three contests were maidens, but why wasn’t the programme framed as follows: handicap, maiden, handicap, maiden, handicap, handicap and finish with a maiden.
Punters and bookmakers alike in this country, in my experience, detest handicaps. Punters, at least those who know what they’re at, won’t bet on them, on the basis it is simply too difficult to find the winner.
And bookmakers don’t want them either. They hold little or nothing in such races and having to go say 5-1 or 6-1 the field isn’t a very attractive proposition.
Racing in Ireland should nearly always end with a non-handicap. Punters and layers will then come out to play and may the best man win.
Let’s have a quick look at one of the handicaps at Killarney on Tuesday to emphasise just how pathetic betting on such a race can be.
Here’s the business Daragh Fitzpatrick did on the contest won by Van Rooney. In total he issued just eight tickets.
He had €20 for Van Rooney, €100 for Loreto, €150 for Maundy Money and €30 for Lord Kenmare.
He did not take as much as a cent on any of the other eight horses in the race. Fitzpatrick held just €300 and, somehow, managed to win €160.
Berkie Browne held €250 and John Harney a whopping €47. That’s how sad the betting ring in Ireland has become and yet the people who run the game think that racing on a Tuesday, in preference to a Sunday, is fine and there is nothing wrong with having four handicaps in-a-row.
On the Thursday of Killarney, Joseph O’Brien put up 2lbs overweight on Greek Goddess, who won a maiden by three parts of a length.
Last Tuesday at Killarney he again weighed out 2lbs in excess of his allotted weight aboard Purple, who scrambled to win another maiden by half a length. O’Brien weighed in, I gather, 3lbs over. It is something that has happened repeatedly this season.
If he weighs out almost 3lbs over, but not quite, then that will be registered as 2lbs. When you hear he is putting up 2lbs over then chances are that it will be nearer to 3lbs.
At Leopardstown on August 16, he put up 2lbs overweight on Snow Queen. She was beaten half a length into second by What Style.
Aidan O’Brien’s desire to make his son champion jockey is perfectly understandable, but should such a consideration override the overall good of racing?
Punters are being short-changed on an ongoing basis and thousands throughout the country have no way of knowing that, frequently, a horse they are backing is carrying more than its allotted weight. There has been some tweaking to the weighing in procedure, but it’s no more than a fudge.
The Turf Club’s job is to ensure the integrity of racing and to protect the interests of punters. The silence from that quarter is essentially deafening.
Denis Egan Statement
Denis Egan, Turf Club Chief Executive, has issued the following statement regarding the decision that Killarney should race last Tuesday rather than the previous Sunday.
Said Egan: "There were two major contributing factors in not being able to staff a second fixture last Sunday.
"Firstly, in the last four years, five full-time officials have retired and have not been replaced, so we are working with a minimum of full-time staff.
"The cost of providing integrity has reduced by 26% since 2008.
"Secondly, we are obliged to comply with the laws of the land with regard to employment practices and are obligated to give days off to comply with the working time acts. Last Sunday was the first Sunday for five weeks where a double fixture was not scheduled for that day.
"It was the first time this year that we were unable to staff a fixture.
"We had no problem staffing all the rescheduled and additional fixtures last month and we staffed two fixtures at short notice on Tuesday of this wee
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what small punters like me want is h'caps and competive racing and not the small field long odds on favorites in maidens usually trained by apob which i cant have a flutter on. pat keane must have had coolmore write that piece.
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I doubt he had coolmore write the piece max as Keane was the first journalist I've read to actually bring up the subject of Joseph O'Brien constantly putting up overweight.
He has a point suggesting that the handicaps should have been more evenly spread over the card, but just because he much perfers to back short priced favs for big stakes he shouldn't be so quick to nonsense handicaps just because he refuses to back in them, many of us do actually like big field handicaps and have done ok out of them for a much smaller outlay down the years, in fact you might say Pat Keane is a lazy punter preferring instead to tax his brain by studying the form of 4 or 5 runner condition races, which would probably take him all of 10 minutes. |
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Not quite the first, Richie Forristal brought it up last year too. See the piece below.
Monday April 18 2011 Last year's champion apprentices, Ben Curtis, Gary Carroll and Joseph O'Brien, have all made bright starts to the new campaign. Already, Curtis has ridden six winners, Carroll five and O'Brien four -- fine tallies at this early stage. However, unlike the former duo, O'Brien, who stands nearly 6ft tall, is not naturally built for the game, and the regularity with which he is permitted to carry overweight on horses merits discussion. Given the 17-year-old's talent, his predicament is admittedly worthy of some sympathy. Nonetheless, he is a young professional who operates on a public platform in a highly competitive environment, so sympathy for his lot shouldn't come at the expense of reasonable analysis. The current situation goes like this: Joseph O'Brien has ridden in 39 races in Ireland this season. On nine occasions, or 23pc of the time, he has carried overweight, thus creating a state of affairs where a race takes on a shape other than what is presented in the race card. Two of those nine rides resulted in a winner, including Empowering in the 1,000 Guineas Trial, so there are times when the transgression made no material difference to the result. In some instances, though, it does. Three of the remaining seven rides have finished in the first four, the latest of which was She's A Queen's defeat at Dundalk on Friday. The filly was beaten a length and a quarter, when Joseph failed to claim his 3lb allowance off 9st. According to the British Horseracing Authority guidelines, one length typically equates to 2lbs in races over a mile. If you apply that theory, then She's A Queen, on which Joseph O'Brien rode a perfect race, might well have won. Of course, she might not have, but the point is that there is a duty on O'Brien, his father Aidan -- to whom he is indentured -- and the game's regulator to ensure that punters are not being misled on a routine basis. Indeed, the role of the stewards in relation to O'Brien's plight is curious. When the apprentice was set to carry 4lbs over on Sing Softly last December and 5lbs over on Apache in March, the stewards prevented him from taking the mounts on the basis that "no very exceptional circumstances" were put forward for his doing so. Which makes you wonder what's so exceptional about all the other circumstances? |
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Cheers for that article water bottle, I obviously hadn't come across it, an honest assessment from Foristal, but of course a year on and alas the goalposts have been moved to accomodate him and he's still putting up overweight on a constant basis.
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