Reply With QuoteInteresting/alarming stuff.
You should be our twitter reporter Dot
Meanwhile in the harness industry.......
Llewellyn Park
@llewellyn_park
Rob so true well Said, if our biggest asset the broodmare does not have a value the hope for our industry sadly is slim. To bring Lazarus in at that price they are not looking at where the industry is at
Quote Tweet
ROB WATSON
@thetrotter13
· Jul 14
Replying to @brian_kiesey and @bradwmc
Can’t even give mares away now. Today’s mares that were passed in didn’t even attract bids , and I wonder why someone like club Menangle buys Lazarus and wants to charge 10k for a service fee and thinks they are doing the industry a favour
ROB WATSON
@thetrotter13
·
Jul 14
Replying to
@bradwmc
and
@brian_kiesey
The problem is there will be no horses to buy in 10 years , if things keep going the way they are the industry just can not survive , the rate of drop off is alarming
Interesting/alarming stuff.
You should be our twitter reporter Dot
Greg Sugars was a Champion harness racing person
I think our biggest crisis is in the breeding sector Kev. You can change many things in the industry with the stroke of a pen and an injection of funds but you can not change that the barest minimum to produce a horse to race is 3 years, and then only if there are broodmares to do so with.
I think administrators need to address this issue immediately or there will be no horses to race in 10 years time. No use arguing about field sizes, amount of races, Sky coverage, integrity or drivers colours. You need to act 3 years ahead to keep the supply of horses going. They don't seem to understand that for the next 3 years at least, the pool of horses old enough to race will decline. Any action taken now will take at least 3 years to have an effect.
With the lack of action in this area I am starting to wonder if the government is trying to shut the industry down.
In future years we will need to let older horses keep racing and allow horses to race twice in one day !
Don't die wondering !
An email I received made me ponder how much of the disillusionment - decision not to breed, has to do with people not believing the racing is fair and therefore Integrity is a close second on our biggest crises list
Greg Sugars was a Champion harness racing person
Originally Posted by Messenger
Hmmm the chicken or the egg. Hmmm the recent Shepparton sale.
“Quote Originally Posted by Messenger View Post
An email I received made me ponder how much of the disillusionment - decision not to breed, has to do with people not believing the racing is fair and therefore Integrity is a close second on our biggest crises list
Hmmm the chicken or the egg. Hmmm the recent Shepparton sale.”
In the words of Pauline Hanson “ploise explain” ?
Maybe a lot, maybe a little, domination of a limited number of sires at the sales and on the track also serves to discourage people from breeding if they can’t go to one of those sires, or limit the number of mares they breed so they can. Racing opportunities ( additional but seperate to integrity concerns with racing) with regard to handicapping but more so programming impacts on people who breed there own to race, and drought conditions all impact on breeding numbers.
At the current time it appears there are in Vic significant numbers of people with concerns about integrity. Demand and success for those limited numbers of sires continues unabated with no programs or incentives in sight to encourage breeding to wider range of sires, or at all in fact. New handicapping and programming system introduced which is likely to still have teething problems and not see some horses racing at the appropriate rating and some people experienceing difficulty finding suitable racing opportunities extending into the breeding season and drought conditions and high feed prices can all be expected to continue to feed into an increasingly rapid decline in breeding numbers in the season just ahead.
Perfect storm really when we desperately need an increasing number of horses racing to improve field sizes and numbers of races to build our market share and ensure our funding under the joint venture.
An exodus of horses over four and under 70 ratings points to NSW early in the new year won’t help there either.
Racing horses so as they remain under 70 ratings points won’t do much for integrity either
Last edited by Dot; 07-17-2019 at 10:23 PM.
Your post below from the Stallion Bonus thread which supported another poster's idea:
[Little doubt that many breeders, particularly with the drought conditions in Victoria, are very price sensitive and a suitable sire offered free could attract a very large book. The precedent has been set, the connections of Mr Feelgood very generously offered him at no service fee several seasons ago, no doubt that was the season he covered 347 mares, 140 mares more then in his next best season ( where he was still offered at a reduced but not free service fee) and over 200 more then in any other season.
I imagine a free quality sire would certainly attract some mares that would not have otherwise been bred and some from stallions that breeders would have paid a service fee too. Presumably leasing a sire would not be a single season occurrence but would rotate through a roster of suitable sires from year to year so sharing around the benefits and burdens.
Needs to happen this season as we know how very long even this will take to bear results
Greg Sugars was a Champion harness racing person
Yes it does, there can not be that many untried or retired horses left to be drawn out of the paddock and back into the racing pool. Even if the ratings system is an outstanding success it will only extend horse careers, a horse may have have a 100 starts instead of 40 but that will only delay a horses retirement not prevent it. It means there will be a lag in retiring horses that can be filled with the reduced number of horse bred in the last couple of years, but then the retirement rate will increase again to what it was and there won’t be the horses to maintain the population much less grow it.
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