Originally Posted by
reTHAIment
I completely agree. This rule does not help professional punters or social punters at all. What does driven less aggressively mean? According to last Tuesday it means in the death seat from the outside barrier after last start being 3 pegs? For mine, if you notify you want to be less aggressive , you SHOULD be making every attempt to drag your horse back.. not let it cruise to the death seat. What does further back mean? In the case of some horses.. usually trained in the hunter valley this could still mean leading as most of theres are running sub 28 sec quarters.. this rule either needs to be scrapped, or adhered properly to and if the rules are broken then STRICT punishments need to be dished out. The appropriate authorities need to issue a statement with instructions on what all COT's actually mean because at the moment they are way too ambiguous and NOBODY, including punters, trainers, or drivers have a clue what they actually mean. If this is not published then they should be scrapped altogether and the owners and trainers should be able to NOT disclose tactics, as they never used to have to. A prime example was last Tuesday where Sam Douglas announced a COT of driven less aggressive. It was 3 pegs the start before. I happened to own a horse in the race and with these change of tactics we did the speed map and there was now no longer a death seat horse, so we did not come out charging as we didn't want to be caught in the death ( as no lead would be there because of Panella driving in the race). Low and behold Sam Douglas comes out running from the outside barrier and we get dragged back to last instead of having a nice 1x1 sit. ANYBODY doing form in this race that saw the COT would've put a line through Sam Douglas as they assumed it would be going back in the field and its never won before from that position in its life. This rule is way too ambiguous and must be fixed now. No wonder people don't want to bet on the "red hots" and the turnover is less than the dishies....
Yours in reTHAIment..