Turffontein Tuesday Night?????

Or how about a mini Royal Ascot type thing, where big races are split over two days and run on Saturday and Sunday, or Friday night/Saturday? OK, a horse still couldn't run more than once (or would be very unlikely to anyway) but it might also help to create some interest instead of lumping everything into one day and then following it up with a string of the most dismal meetings imaginable.

Assuming, of course, that you can get decent weather in Gauteng two days in a row.<

Magic with regards the weather here is the average rainfall re: inch/year

Cape Town 24
Edinburgh 26
London 29
Joburg 33
Milan 39
New York 47
Hong Kong 87
Singapore 89

We should be asking Debbie, how many meetings lost at the big T vs Singapore?

mind boggles

I think they have a closed season in Singapore, presumably during the wettest time. Hong Kong definitely has a closed season, and I know for a fact that racing in Milan stops for several months in the winter. The problems with Joburg though are a) the lightning and b) that the wet season appears to be getting longer each year. Alternatively the wet season may have moved and the Spring may be less rainy that it used to be, it would be interesting to have monthly breakdown of rainfall figures for the last 5 or 10 years.

And then of course there is the perennial South African problem that simply never goes away. If it rains, we stop racing. It's almost as predictable as cricket.<

This is Joburg not very good at posting tables, but looking at the inches/month, gives an idea

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Year

mm 149.5 129.4 110.3 47.6 24.4 6.4 10.4 10.0 25.4 65.0 126.3 141.2 846.7

inches 5.9 5.1 4.3 1.9 1.0 0.3 0.4 0.4 1.0 2.6 5.0 5.6 33.3

So the Durban July should be run in Joburg......................

Hi Dave

Singapore has lost one meeting in the last 10 years. Not long ago we had almost 80 mm of rain at around 2 pm and we raced on the turf that night on yielding going. The drainage on the grass track is phenomenal and the polytrack is brilliant - hardly any kickback even when it does pour.

Should it become dark as it does during a big storm we turn on the lights and racing continues.

Racing here is just superb.

Regards
Deb

thanks for the reply debbie...iv said it before and i will say it again why cant we look at other racing countries see what they are doing right and follow it instead of us trying to reinvent the wheel..this goes for many sectors of racing including the pathetic info that our press give to the public on trainers and jocks comments bar mr tipster in dbn...time to put the fat egos to one side and do whats best for the horse and racing

Surelu on of the major problem in jhb is the amount of meeting that are abandoned instead of being postponed or rescheduled?

scotia Wrote:

---

> Hi Dave
>
> Singapore has lost one meeting in the last 10
> years. Not long ago we had almost 80 mm of rain at
> around 2 pm and we raced on the turf that night on
> yielding going. The drainage on the grass track is
> phenomenal and the polytrack is brilliant - hardly
> any kickback even when it does pour.
>
> Should it become dark as it does during a big
> storm we turn on the lights and racing continues.
>
>
> Racing here is just superb.
>
> Regards
> Deb


Just shows you what can be done if the will is there - let's move to Singapore

Hi Dave,



Thanks for sending this to me. I have checked with Patrick and the main reason for having major feature race days is driven by the marketing budget. It is more cost effective to promote a few major race days than to try promote several smaller race days. It is agreed that some features get lost in the major days, but without the budget to promote them on other race days, they would not be done justice there either.

Personally I would like to see a reverse takeover..Gold Circle taking over racing countrywide..they know what they doing and can do away with this dividend policy..pleees could that happen

In my mind the only thing that can change or help racing is if a private equity group buy out Phumelela shares and take the company private once more.........

Nothing else can stop the way they run things.