Scottsville has received 23mm so far this morning and it is still raining steadily, with a forecast of further rain over the next few days.
As a consequence, and in a good faith move to ensure that racing goes ahead, Gold Circle has decided to move tomorrow’s Scottsville race meeting to the Greyville Polytrack, with the clear proviso that the Company reserves the right to abandon the meeting if there are too many scratchings as a result of change of venue.
As it currently stands there are only 68 runners engaged at tomorrow’s meeting and any significant drop in this number will result in the abandonment of the meeting.
Something that is surprising about the programme proposed for tomorrow(as was last Sundays),is,we know that the turn was unsuitable for racing for some 3 months,so you would have thought that they would be well ahead of sprint races and way behind on races around the turn,howeve there are still more sprint races (6/2)...................hard to fathom!
I see that GC is being a little more strict ( I cant think of the right word) and if there are too many scratching's the meeting will be abandoned. It will be interesting as any scratching a trainer does has the possibility of affecting his/her other runners.
I am glad that Gold Circle want to do this, penalise trainers & owners...... our baby is definitely being scratched & i do not care what they decide to do.
So we now want to force trainers & owners to race on the shocking POLY track...... great idea but i thought that all the trainers wanted to race on the POLY Craig & Graeme? If this is your case then why would there be scratchings?
I suppose we will just keep shooting two horses a meeting?
KZN racing is in serious trouble......... I go back a few years when I raised the issue of the condition of Greyville and the inability to keep the grass in good condition. My opinion was shot down as being negative..... well the chickens are coming home to roost.
We have had two weeks of extremely hot weather and now 18mls of rain causes a meeting to be abandoned...WTF, was there even a penetrometer reading done?
You can take POLY racing and shove it....... If something is not done immediately in KZN then the number of runners will continue to drop and it will only be mugs racing on the POLY track.
Tigershark, I really am not trying to push the poly. Just stating what is going to be done. Much like Phumelela did with Cape racing a week or so ago. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and I know 2 horses were put down last week but in my yard the horses are pulling up much better off the poly than the grass. I actually took out the figures from America yesterday as they have sand as well as grass and allweather and in both normal injuries and injuries where the horses had to be put down due to the injury received during the race, by far the most injured and put down came off the sand, then the grass and the all weather tracks were the safest. As of now about 2hours after the announcement, no horse has been scratched yet due to change of surface or venue. My horse is running.
All due respect Craig, your runner is the exact horse for POLY racing so i agree do not scratch it. Our runner is definitely being scratched, i will not have a two year old run on POLY.
If the POLY is so good then all the "top" trainers should be running their two year olds week in week out on the POLY. If memory serves, the Kannemeyer yard was used as an example when last debating the POLY.... where are his top two year olds? why are they not racing on the POLY? why only his 4 & 5 year olds?
Either way the fact of the matter remains, we have stuffed up both Greyville & Scottsville grass racing and the POLY is about exciting as Flamingo park.
The option of putting a POLY race track at Summerveld should have been explored or alternatively a third grass track at Summerveld but alas we just have crap at Greyville now without one decent/fair grass track like Clairwood.
stats eh craig?maybe you can tell us as a percentage how much racing in the usa is done on grass sand and all weather ..I say that around 70 percent or more is done on the sand so hence the more done on a certain surface the more would be put down..the most disappointing thing is why are we not moving the meeting to the greyville grass tomorrow?rob faux is spot on in his assessment on why there would be 6 sprints and only 2 1400m races..
Everyone has their own opinion TS. Dean K, Dennis D and many others stated last year on TV that they had nothing at all against the polytrack and would run their horses there. Dean won with a number of babies first time out and Dennis has run Barbosa etc there. I run Flyfirstclass and any horse of mine there without even a thought as I know that with a surface that is evened out after every few races the chance of putting you foot in a divot is about 100x less than a divot in the grass that you can do what you want with it and it will never be the same as before the divot was formed in the grass. Do you think the ladies on the grass patting down the divots after a race are going as good a job as the machine is after every few races? Anyway, each to there own. Anyone can come and check my vets book and see which of my horses needed any attention after the poly and compare it to the grass days.
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