Quote Originally Posted by Mitch View Post
Dot, If you value my opinion in the slightest listen up. Breeding thoroughbreds is a fools game. Unless you have a black type young mare and deep pockets forget it! Even then there are no guarantees. I sold one at the weanling sales last week.... without giving too much away it was in the top 5 priced lots in the general sale and I'm still out of pocket. Surely the prices they were going for turned you off breeding to sell.... 99% of people who sold in the general sale would have lost money. And most of the top lots in the select sale were buybacks or arranged purchases.

I am selling up all my thoroughbred assets and buying more pacers to race. Trust me it's 100 times easier to get your money back. Anyway I'm off topic here.....
Mitch Whilst I appreciate your concerns for my intentions they are not warranted, I have been around the gallops much longer then the harness racing- we were there to buy not sell as it is well known in the TB industry that this sale in particular is a buyers market. If you are breeding for the yearling sales then yes you need black type and deep pockets, but I never said it was my intention to breed for the sales, I have another market in mind.

Don't let me discourage you from investing in harness racing as harness racing could certainly use it, but I hope you are the type of person that undertakes due diligence before taking on a significant investment in anything including gallops/harness racing.

Back on topic, Jamie has done an excellant job of blowing smoke here, loudly and soundly blaming the TAB for our "greyhound" experiment, I'm sure harness racing administrators have breathed a sigh of relief each time he has as it obscurred the real problem here. Perhaps the TAB did call for it, but don't you think that a little strange given that in QLD the wagering operators publicly called for an INCREASE in field size to improve turnover, yet Jamie would have us believe in NSW they called for a decrease in field size? Does anyone really believe that this experiment could really work? That we could do "greyhound" racing better then greyhounds do? The real problem is that we do not have the infrastructure (tracks) in NSW to increase field sizes to improve turnover. Nor do we have enough participants/horses to provide full fields on the tracks we do have, hence we are restricted to initiatives that reduce field sizes in an attempt to disguise the shortfall.

Twice now theHRNSW CEO has called for a 1000m track in Sydney, I'll bet he didn't have a 10 across the front configuration in mind, but it seems to have fallen on deaf ears. I'm sure Sam himself will tell you there are things that he and I do not see eye to eye on but he is absolutely right on this one. Unfortunately he hasn't yet come up with a better strategy to fund it then sell a piece of real estate the industry doesn't own, and those who are custodians of a large amount of the industries money seem content to continue on with their own interests rather then the interests of the industry as a whole.

It is ridiculous to think that we can even survive, let alone prosper, modeling our racing on the greyhounds, they have a high volume low turnover low cost product model, and bitches that can whelp multiple pups a year. The bottom line is if we are to survive (and don't kid yourself that the money from the HP sale won't run out) then we need a better product modelled on yes you guessed it harness racing.

And Brad Jamie did blow a little more smoke, yes it absolutely was a Bulli at Menangle restricted grade meeting that trialled the concept thus it was $3000 races, but to say it was entirely the idea of HRNSW and the Bulli club is somewhat deceptive. The Bulli "secretary" is also Menangle's racing manager and as we dont have centralised programming yet then the "joint" club had a say.