Three blank days on the local racing calendar this week is set to be repeated next week as South African racing adjusts to the mathematical realities of a horse population that can no longer sustain fixture numbers of years gone by.
Traditionally August has been the quietest month of the racing year, as the switch of the seasons sees trainers attending to the housekeeping chores of vaccinations and innoculations, while grabbing the opportunity to give their personnel and their equine residents a well-deserved break.
But to encounter so many gaps as we are currently experiencing on a calendar in the month of March is unprecedented, and, like we did for three days this week, Monday 17 March, Tuesday 18 March and Wednesday 19 March are also gaping holes for local racing fans and hard-pressed stakeholders.
It is pleasing to learn that despite the inevitable political differences and varied philosophies, the Sporting Post is informed that our local racing operators are working together to ensure that every region’s stakeholders are accommodated, while maintaining a reasonable momentum of consistent output for the SA racing product.
4Racing’s Soma – ‘key is working together’ (Pic – Supplied)
4Racing’s Head Of Operations Gabriel Soma told the Sporting Post on Wednesday afternoon that it was most definitely not an ‘ideal situation’ that South African racing was not hosting a fixture for as long as a three day period.
“We have accepted Monday as a potential off-day, but we acknowledge that two consecutive weeks of three blank slots in an important month of the year, is not ideal or sustainable. We are talking to the other operators and are looking at reducing the double-header slots as one option. The key will be working together on this,” added Soma.
Cape Racing’s Vermaak – ‘likely to worsen’ (Pic – Candiese Lenferna)
Cape Racing’s Executive Racing and Bloodstock Justin Vermaak endorsed Soma’s view and said that the blank days are inevitable and will likely increase in the future.
“It is a statistical reality that our horse population is not big enough to sustain vast amounts of racing. This will be clear to anybody who merely looks at historical and current population numbers and foal crops, “ said Vermaak, who also pointed out that the racing operators are not always going to sacrifice a weekend race meeting to fill a gap on a Monday or Tuesday.
“It should be understood that the operators also have owners and stakeholders to please. As Mr Soma points out, the operators are working together as best we can to reduce blank days where possible and maintain enough weekend racing for each region, and at the same time, some level of consistency. That is the tricky balance,” observed Vermaak.
It is a fact that to fill blank days, the regions will constantly be racing on different race days in the week, and there will be zero consistency in that regard.
“If there is an expectation that regions need to race on the same day on a consistent basis, then there will be plenty of blank days as those regions cannot fill the days allocated to them every week anymore,” concluded Vermaak.
National Horseracing Authority CEO Vee Moodley said that the racing regulator would support all efforts by the racing operators to restructure fixtures in the best interests of the sport, but that the rescheduling specifics fell outside of their domain.
If one considers the number of racedays lost in recent months to Mother Nature, and the supposition that these could not be used to fill the current gaps, then the one conclusion we can draw is that we overall have too many racemeetings rostered.
