Everthing old is new again- 13 years & still NOTHING

While looking back through all the crap stored in my PC for the 2yo stats that Dan wanted to see, I found this piece from another report produced way back in 1998.
The same old aspects are highlighted here as were highlighted by so many who responded to the 2011 Survey conducted by the HRA Breeding Panel.
Have a read and see if you experience the same sense of deja-vu that I did.

Regards

Jaimie


COMMENT - FILLIES AND MARES

F1 Fillies and mares of any foaling crop provide an average of 50% of the foal product and their racing outcome is far less promising than for colts.
Given that fillies and mares generally are not as fast as colts it follows that there is an inbuilt bias against training and racing fillies and mares against the colts because there are insufficient races. This is a severe disincentive to race 50% of the standardbred product.

F2 The statistical bias against fillies and mares is evident in the following areas:

• * There are less fillies and mares being named
• * There are far less fillies and mares starting racing at all ages.
• * There are far less filly and mare winners at all ages but this is

particularly more evident in two and three year old racing.

F3 38.6% of colts and fillies of the total 1990 foaling crop have so far started in a race.
Of these 16.1% were fillies and mares and 8.1% of such fillies and mares have won a race.
In their two and three year old careers fillies had only 1.8% and 4.0% chance respectively of winning (see Table 1) whilst the colts had almost double the chance.

F4 Given that fillies and mares make up 50% of the breeding product the prospective return to their breeders and owners is generally depressing in all areas including yearling sales.

F5 There is a trend for additional exclusive races for fillies and mares in some States and for fillies or mares to have preferred barrier positions but these trends are not nation wide.

F6 There is a growing shortage of pools of horses to race. If half the industry breeding product is made up of fillies and mares and they are currently trained and raced less and are starved of opportunity it makes sense to provide more opportunities and thereby provide more races at race meetings and greater incentive to trainers and owners to break in and train and race fillies.
It would take some years to put these incentives fully into place and a long term commitment would have to be made.

F7 This report was not given a charter to express any conclusions as to the plight of owners of fillies and mares, however, the percentages are overwhelmingly apparent and deserve the attention given here and which is directed to the attention of Controlling Bodies and Clubs to establish whether more can be done to make training and racing of fillies and mares more worthwhile for their owners and breeders and for the well being of the standardbred industry in general.
In the end result it is the Clubs that will ultimately benefit from an increased variety of programming and a greater selection of horses.

Yes and still nothing done no wonder we've got so many enzeder's over here racing dont race mare breed from mare can't sell filly foal get rid of mare get rid of filly.
I hope something is done about it this time but i am not holding my breath just yet.

G'day Greg,

The REAL shocker is that to my knowledge the call for greater racing opportunities for fillies and mares pre dates even that 1998 report and it does so by at least 7 years.

The first one that I can recall came out around 4 years after I left High School.

As such...we now rather ashamedly find ourselves fast closing in on the 20th Anniversary of State and National Bodies annually giving lip service to but ultimately ignoring their plight.

How anyone in State or National officialdom can look Industry participants in the eye and hand on heart tell them that they need to breed more foals...whilst they at the same time preside over a lop-sided system which effectively all but dismisses 50% of the annual foal crop is absolutely & utterly beyond me.

The really ridiculous aspect of it all of course is that if it were come to pass that fillies & mares largely ever only had to race fillies & mares, then a greater number of those fillies & mares would enter the breeding barn post their racing careers and their annually & long desired increase in foal numbers would without doubt follow, even if only by default.

Nicely done fellas.

Race 5 M0 Only. Mares. PBD/$L4. Prizemoney: $16,000

Race 8 M0 Only. Mares. PBD/$L4. Prizemoney: $16,000

Both 8 horse fields. Both over the Mile.

Good to see all we need now is every club to jump on board and program the race's consistently then we might get somewhere.

I usually only race fillies/mares and it's great to see club's putting up races for them. Over this part of the world we seem to have maiden races for them and then about the next chance a filly or mare get is as a open class, outside of the stakes races. Fifty per cent of the foal population should result in around fifty percent of the races not fifteen per cent like is happening over here at the moment.
It's neat to see Menangle programming these races. Good work.

It is the same over here Ray.

http://www.harnessracingforum.com/im...cons/icon8.png Everthing old is new again- 13 years & still NOTHING



Bit late getting into this convo, must have had my eyes closed....

There is absolutely no doubt there needs to be some genuine efforts to improve the programming of female only racing, and unfortunately, as pointed out by Jamie, this is not
a) new idea!

b) made any progress.

I know the clubs ( in NSW anyway) are often struggling to find full fields without adding the additional hurdle of non mixed sex racing per each class, per each meeting, however if they were consistently programmed and the industry had confidence that this would be ongoing and not a " flash in the pan" then obviously many more owners would keep going with some of their fillies/mares.

Claiming racing is an excellent avenue to extend the racing life of proven horses and for one reason or another in NSW this has really struggled to get a foothold.

I don't pretend to have the answer to that one, I do know the clubs are always looking for fresh ideas to make they're programmes both full and attractive to the punters, so maybe an organised approach from the owners and breeders to the clubs would help? and if reasonable support for gender based programming ( as in nominations ) was evidenced then a "start" could be effected.

I needs to get some impetus from somewhere thats for sure, maybe that's here!??!

Cheers,

Dan