One question. Why didn't Peter V wait for Melbourne Cup week to announce
That announcement, concept, and the current Breeders Crown discussion, interesting.
In regards to the Breeders Crown
http://www.harnessracingforum.com/sh...Breeders-Crown three years ago to the day.
The BC has moved a long way from it's inception as the Bendigo Breeders Crown. Sure, bigger prize money for the ABC and it's not surprising the word elitist has come up and that's a long way from the BBC. (I think Kyle was on the money. Initially, as the BBC, heats were run in Vic, although Peter Walsh won with Flubber (a name for Kev) early on so whether there were NSW heats at least?)
I'm not sure if there is anything constructive in my memories of something that felt good when the BBC final day was first run. Heaps of people, participants at all levels, felt good, happy. Easy for me to think/recall now it was happy days until it became the ABC. I'm obviously a Vic participant.
Now we have the marquee/area for participating owners on final day at Melton. Not a bad thing. BBC we had, I should say Bendigo HRC had a fair, field days atmosphere to it. Noel, Adaptor might like to add? I'm not sure where I'm going with this but the BBC felt like it encompassed all.
The relevance might be the C $5000 prize money level against the Australasian Breeders Crown. Considering that most ABC entrants have come and will continue to come from Vic it would be questionable if the ABC could continue even at the elite, I won't say elitist, level with a C5k tier. Doubt very much if R4K will do much either. I go back to wondering what's wrong with two tiers. R3.5/4K and max the C prizemoney, one tier, regardless of assessment or quality.
Vic will move to $ handicapping/assessment(?) like NSW and probably WA. (Where is WA at with the proposal to their participants?) Considering we are moving to a national system still(?)
Amongst other factors, the increase to the R $ level may well be a "reward" for funding the $10K races as well as a great percentage of $7K races. Leaves the $5K level treading water perilously. Not to be ignored is the $5K level is in the same revenue raiser group as the R level. Everyone knows all that. How do you raise the $5K without minimising your profit/revenue from those? I don't know exactly where the average/line is. Is it 5.5, 6K, undoubtedly a lot to do with programming, creating turnover.
Is it too radical, can I say democratically unacceptable, to offer only two tiers? We still have conditioned racing. Previously we raced for something like C0-C2 $6.4K, C3- $6.7. Some people weren't happy with only 3 or $400 separating faster assessed and slower. Now we race for $5K and if you win a 7K it's wow! People will even congratulate you emphasising it was a $7K race, wow I'm racing at the elite level!
If we could max C at 8K which might mean no, or very little 10K as well as probably keeping R at 3.5K, would this be an unacceptable race card:-
At the extreme, C0 $8000 trainer less than 5 wins last season no faster than 2.01. C5 $8000 open/ffa RBD?
C5 owners disgruntled? But you have a C5 today and tomorrow a C0? Or both at the same time? Just like the "fall-back" thought on R races, there if your potential champ isn't, the horses that move through the classes aim for increased prize money via minor and major feature races? And if you're not quite that quality you also have the drop back. Not too bad to be dropping back to 8K?
May well be the opposite of the trickle down economy but what we're seeing with the Breeders crown, well, if history shows the greater number of horses only win at the lowest levels, would upping that prize money level encourage that money to be reinvested? "I don't have to go to the top, top, stallions...will have another look at that other yearling at the sales"?
Originally Posted by arlington
One question. Why didn't Peter V wait for Melbourne Cup week to announce
Reply With Quote
