October
NovemberWhich way?
Australian racebook form needs a serious update. Anyone lucky enough to have been to Hong Kong or to get their hands on a Hong Kong racebook will appreciate how far behind we are when it comes to raceday statistics. Punters there are flooded with information.
One important category shows the form of runners on racetracks that are left-handed (the Melbourne way) and right-handed (the Sydney way). This is an important statistic.
Let’s face it: every year a lot of the boom horses from the northern states struggle to cope with the Melbourne way of going. Likewise, some southern-trained horses don’t find their best form when racing in Sydney and Brisbane. It would be nice to see this factor included in their form.
Racebook and newspaper form has come ahead in leaps and bounds since the introduction of the TABs more than 50 years ago; it is constantly evolving. And so it should. Punters are the lifeblood of the industry. They crave information to help them make an informed choice.
There are other stats in the Hong Kong racebook that we would find useful, too: it is like a telephone book of statistics.
Some track ratings shown, however, are very foreign to our eyes. They show a "VS" (very slow/soft?) and a "Y" (yielding?). And what is a yielding track anyway?
Geelong West (Vic)