Interesting to hear HRV CEO David Martin's comments on the radio earlier this week. Whilst he stated he's still getting his head around race programming, which is fair enough, he did say he was interested in looking into some programming based on a horse's average times. The example given was for it's last ten starts. For a long time HARNESSWEB has listed averages for the last 10, 6, 5, 4, 3.
If someone wants to bring up the breeding mediocrity argument...good on them, but we're struggling for numbers to keep the sport going and we need to support the HERO programme to the hilt.
You can't guarantee going to Bettors gives you a champ, the broodmare gem is truly a gem.
Understandably, especially(?) considering the intended whip ban, there is a line of thought drivers won't drive their horses out to get a slower average time.
My thoughts:
The "not trying" rule is heavily policed by stewards,
Interesting David mention 10 starts not 6, 5...Without doing the maths you'd need to carry an anchor in 3 or more starts to seriously effect your average. And the liklihood would be those starts being the last 4 or 5 starts, so it would be fairly obvious(?). You need to take into account, even if you have a horse that is performing poorly it will likely be sucked along in a quick time or two so you might need to go in reverse to significantly slow your average down.
And query improved performance might be looked at more closely.
I posted in another thread, a while back, asking about Albury as an example of races programmed on times in the past. Anyone with experience there?
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