Kiwis do it better

To a punter who has bet for three decades on Australian jumps races, it has become apparent just how hard it is to get "value" from the product anymore, based on a number of causes. By comparing it with the closest product of its type, New Zealand jumps racing, the flaws appear obvious.

And a man who helped ensure the future of jumps racing, Steve Pateman, has ironically halved my investment on same and made acquiring any value from it very difficult.

Pateman’s win-to-ride ratio a few years ago was an unbelievable 50 per cent.

While his connections to the powerful Smerdon, Maher, Payne and occasionally Musgrove stables ensure he gets quality rides, he does equal justice to his mounts.

Apart from Brad Mclean, nobody can get near Pateman. Ryan and Cully have picked up big wins when Pateman has incorrectly chosen between the best two rides offered to him in a race, but the reality is that when Pateman is engaged it’s usually on the favourite.

If the field size is small, exotic bets and options become very limited indeed.

In contrast, in New Zealand jumps racing, no single rider reigns supreme. The solid "old-timers" like Thornton, Lupton and Phelan are constantly under threat from talented apprentices like Kuru, Miller, Mitchell and Kayla Veenendaal, who are losing their apprentice claims within their first year and winning major races too.

There are "value" runners in most races and their field sizes are larger on average.

Compare that to Australia’s depleted jump riding ranks. Our apprentices still have maximum 3kg claims despite years (in Kosuke Kawakami’s case, a decade!) of riding and trying. The likes of Hamblin, Bedggood, Lynch and others, who not so long ago were riding nearly a dozen winners each per season, now would be lucky to win that many between them.

Admittedly, the condensed weight scales have also not helped. Reading John Adams’s historical column in Winning Post, it becomes apparent just how tough the old jumps champions had it when they’d give 15kg to rivals, while recently a seven-time jumps winner and reigning Von Doussa champ, Lord of the Song, gave jumping maidens like It’s the Truth a mere 3kg in the Great Eastern.

And people were surprised when he won by 22 lengths!

Move forward to Casterton on Sunday May 25, when a stupid but nameless punter bets in a four-horse hurdle and seeks value by daring to bet against the undisputed hero, Pateman, leaving out his odds-on mount from the first slot of exotics and plunging some "value" win bets on two of thee other runners. The unexpected does, for once, occur through the tragic breakdown of Elms (on the flat) and the risky bets are coming to fruition …

Two minutes later, hold on. Caller Rick McIntosh is confused and then confounded as the three runners travel past the incapacitated Elms, who is not "secure" enough despite being held by attendants. The race is abandoned!

As the TVN presenter suggested, while safety is paramount, common sense should prevail. And how can a jumps punter feel confident again? For such a circumstance will surely occur again via a riderless horse, an "unsecured" pulled-up horse or whatever, in future jumps events.

As the jumps betting pools become "puddles", races are programmed as race one on Sunday provincial programs and jumps racing can’t get a gig on a Saturday in Victoria (last Saturday was the once-off), value is even thinner. Unless Pateman continues to find trouble managing his weight, there is no end in sight to his reign.

So I’ve had enough, I’m afraid. There’s lots of Saturday jumps races coming up in New Zealand which will contain good-sized fields, talented young jockeys, a wider weight scale giving all runners a chance and betting pools which, if you bet with an agency that has access to Supertab pools, will exceed anything NSW TAB can offer on Australian jumps racing on any non-Saturday of the week.

And the possibility of an abandoned race in New Zealand? Not likely. I know what races I’ll be abandoning.