October
SeptemberNever on a Wednesday
Peter Meilak’s proposal to move acceptances for Saturday racing forward to Wednesday (More Say 5/9) would no doubt be a boon for him, his fellow jockey managers and the many lazy people in the racing media.
It wouldn’t be so great for trainers, owners and punters, but not to worry.
Trainers have consistently and rightly opposed this move because it means one more day for something to go wrong with their horse and/or the weather between acceptance time and race time. If something does go wrong, they have either put their horse in the wrong race or wasted their owners’ money by having to scratch the horse.
For the reason mentioned above, Wednesday acceptances would result in a sharp rise in the number of scratchings. Once again, the poor old owner cops the bill.
The punter loses in two ways.
For starters, because of the increased number of scratchings, more emergencies would have to be allowed. (New Zealand Saturday races, which accept on a Wednesday, routinely have six emergencies.)
Those punters who like to do their form before raceday would thus waste precious hours studying horses who are not going to run.
Secondly, it is not an uncommon practice to start a horse on a Wednesday and back it up on the Saturday. Any form guides produced at a Wednesday acceptance time for Thursday distribution would be missing several horses’ latest runs.
Meilak is correct, however, when he states that the current Victorian system of free nominations is not working.
A number of trainers are clearly taking the mickey, entering a horse for a dozen races at five venues in the space of a week, entering horses for races in which they are clearly unsuited and will not run, or — in the case of a prominent stable recently — entering nine horses for a three-year-old race, most of them unraced, and accepting with one.
As Meilak states, this is needlessly confusing for all concerned. It was also predictable.
The answer, though, is not Wednesday acceptances.
Rather, switch back to the previous system, charging a fee for nominations, but compensating owners in some other way.
Or, at the very least, place a limit on the number of times a horse can be nominated in a seven-day period, or on the number of times it can be nominated before accepting.
Castlemaine (Vic)