I am definitely no expert on training of horses, and I can’t find any statistics, so I expect that I will be put in my place after writing this, but want to comment on Joey Ramsden’s column about Cape Racing going back to once a week. I am also disappointed about this as I far prefer my home town racing to the other centres, writes David Stober.
However, not knowing the true statistics, I would hazard a guess that Joey has about 10% of the total horses in training in Cape Town.
Joey Ramsden
He is represented by 7 horses on this Saturday’s card.
If the other trainers follow with a similar percentage then we would have 70 runners at a meeting. On an 8 race meeting that would equate to an average of 9 runners per race (this card is boosted by the 15 from the Bass yard).
I can understand why the powers that be give Cape Racing the short end of the stick.
PE racing for years had 1 meeting per week and just about every race had 14 or more runners.
Even through our high season races generally were of smallish fields. I have noticed the improved sizes of fields recently, and assumed that it had to do with the number of mid-week meetings we were bring deprived of.
Would keeping up the sizes of the fields not help our case for more meetings?
As a one-time (a while ago) part owner of a very forgettable horse, I would think that owners would like to have their horses running as often as possible… how often is up to the expert who trains the horse, but as often as possible nevertheless.
Wet!
I recall, some years ago, we had some meetings cut short or cancelled because “the jockeys felt the underfoot conditions were unsafe after some rains”.
Well, the weather got worse and worse and we lost many meetings due to the very wet winter we experienced.
After a while, I was amused that the same jockeys seemed content to ride on underfoot conditions that could not have been any better than those in the earlier part of winter… the difference, I think, being that their pockets had taken a severe beating.
- Letter via email to Sporting Post Mailbag
