Racing should pay price for rubbish meetings
SAVE YOUR CASH FOR GOLF
It is quite understandable that racecourses want to stage meetings when they think they can attract a crowd but it means that we have some shocking dross days such as Wednesday, when the competition to Uttoxeter came from Catterick, Lingfield and evening meetings at Worcester and on the all-weather at Kempton.
At the aforementioned Chester evening meeting there was a crowd of 39,000, around 10,000 more than attended the whole of the July Meeting at Newmarket.
Mind you the Chester area is so chock-full of people up for a night out and with money in their pocket that you'd get a crowd of 25,000 if you just opened the bars and let them watch the grass grow.
Romance
With nearly everybody sensible in the sport agreed that we have too much racing, catering for far too many shockingly ordinary horses, I suspect that in the medium to long term racing will be forced to adopt a two-tier system, with the top courses in the lead stream and the others dwindling to a status similar to point-to-point.
We are breeding far too many horses and paying the price for it. When I was a kid a top stallion would cover 40 mares in a season and that was that.
Now the big Flat sires receive 150 mares plus, while the jumps stallions can cover up to 300. The age of romance is indeed dead.
It has become like this because people still think they can turn over a couple of quid from breeding horses, but the current recession will soon disabuse them of that notion.
This country has too many rubbish mares being sent to sub-standard stallions and hopefully a major economic downturn will knock large numbers in both categories on the head.
We punters don't expect to have top quality action to bet on every day, but a diet of gruel soon gets boring and the bookies have loads of tricks to get folk to bet on other things - the shockingly brain-dead virtual racing, lucky number games and AWP machines to mention just three.
The bookmakers don't give a flying one what we bet on - as long as we bet on something. And by feeding the public with too much crap racing, the sport plays straight into their hands.
On the betting front the main event this week is the Open at Royal Birkdale.
Wheeze
The great wheeze about betting on the Open is to wait until the championship has taken some shape after two rounds on Friday night as you would be astonished at the value still available at half-way when half the field have gone home and a number of the fancied contenders have sunk without trace.
You will find that pre-tournament 40-1 and 33-1 chances can still be backed at 25s and 20s despite the fact their prospects have become massively enhanced.
Three to look out for if they are still in the hunt are Andres Romero, who would have won last year with either a brain or a caddy; Hunter Mahan, a rarity among young Americans in that he doesn't have a baby when confronted by a links course; and that cigar-chomping old warhorse Miguel Angel Jimenez, who is a big occasion player in top form.
By waiting until Saturday morning you avoid the blow-outs and are still playing at fat prices.
At Newbury on Saturday, Dark Mischief is worth a second look in the hugely valuable two-year-old Super Sprint.
Henry Candy has his horses in better form than in many a year and this one was backed into favouritism when winning first time up at Windsor. That wasn't a great race but he did it well and looks the sort to improve.
Mark Johnston's Luberon will be worth a couple of quid if sent down for the big ten-furlong handicap at 3.55 while in the Summer Plate at Market Rasen Malcolm Jefferson's Brooklyn Brownie, shrewdly supported last time, can take a step up the ladder by winning this big money televised prize.
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