KENILWORTH FRUSTRATIONS

Owning horses in the Cape must be very frustrating at this time and point.The appauling weather conditions have not helped the cause.My partners and i have been trying to get a run for our horses for over a month and to no avail eiether the weather beats us or the entries are 50 plus.I sympathise for the trainers that cant get work in and have to keep us grumpy owners happy.It was raining today and so the meeting at Kenilworth will once again be in jeopardy.How are we going to resolve this nightmare?????????????

Fight global warming by electing officials that are sympathetic to scientists.

Nice one Barry, but get the impression that the Greek was looking for something on a "quick fix" bases?

Will they run at Kenilworth today?

Still await confirmation? but rainy during the night.

Lets be positive and say YES....then we wait for the course manager and powers to be to check it out and decide....at the moment some blue patches in the sky and we will have intermitant rain throughout the day

Sorry, the positive didnt work ,KENILWORTH CANCELLED

A postponement would have been nice. Please don't tell me the rules don't allow this. The same rules have been bent before.

With over 600 nominations and around 150 acceptors for most Kenilworth meetings at present it should be clear to even the dumbest member of the Gold Circle hierarchy (lowerarchy?) that there ARE. NOT. ENOUGH. RACES. scheduled in the Western Cape, and we can ill afford to lose more.

After this weekend racing goes to Durbanville for a few weeks, if I'm not mistaken. Many trainers are reluctant (to put it kindly) to run their better horses there, and even more reluctant to give a decent first-timer its first run around the hairpin bends. For whatever bizarre reason, Gold Circle have taken it upon themselves to withhold doing the draws until after final declarations, for the forthcoming batch of Durbanville meetings. They've tried this before, and from what I can recall it had no appreciable impact on either the quality or quantity of the fields.

In other words, after this forthcoming Saturday at Kenilworth (and please god they do postpone that one if they cannot race on the day) there will be even fewer opportunities to run decent horses at the Cape. This, with the Feature season just around the corner. It's nobody's fault that the weather is lousy, of course, but it continues to bemuse me that meetings can sometimes be postponed and sometimes not. Every last effort should be made to save as many Kenilworth races as possible right now, and one can only hope that additional meetings can be put on later in the year (one the rains go away) to make up for what has been lost through meetings being either rained out or not scheduled in the first place. After all, it seems like that on every second Tuesday for the last couple of months the racing has been somewhere other than the Western Cape, and while that is fine and dandy for betting turnover it does nothing for Cape owners to have extra races at the Vaal or in PE.

16 SEPTEMBER 2008



Gold Circle advises that due to adverse overnight weather conditions in the Western Cape the racemeeting scheduled at Kenilworth Racecourse, today, 16 September 2008, has been abandoned.

I have 3 horses in training in Capetown.
Yesterday i phoned my trainer and expressed my concern at the situation in Capetown (similar to some expressed by magic, ie postpone rather than cancel, add some meetings, why some Tuesdays no meeting scheduled etc. resulting in massive entries and fewer opportunities to race).
This impacts on jobs, owners's ability to pay stabling, unfit horses etc.
Capetown being downgraded as a venue.
And as M.Naraic is alleged to have said, "Capetown racing a burden to GC".
My partners and i can no longer afford to race in Capetown as a result and have to make a decision pronto as to relocating our horses, something we would be loathe to do but are being left with no option.

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Cuckoo...it's frustrating for me as a punter who concentrates my bets almost exclusively on Cape races however I can't even imagine how it should feel for the owners.
We've had lots and lots of rain this season however even in milder winter seasons there have been plenty of meetings that have not taken place.
It's easy to call for an all weather track however the cost factor needs to be taken into account but if it's going to drive potential owners and/or current owners out of the province then the thought probably warrants serious consideration.
The West Coast option or should I say on/off option if it comes off could be could however whether it will improve the situation significantly in the winter season is debatable.