Despite the weight for age tag after the name of the R400 000 Lanzerac Alta Mater Gr2 Green Point Stakes run at Kenilworth on Saturday, the race with a long tradition and history is now a conditions contest.
Name and shame these great minds
The conditions of the Gr2 feature indicate a penalty clause of 2kgs for a Gr1 win, with a 1kg premium for a Gr2 win.
And our investigations reveal that the gamechanging variation was implemented rather stealthily (hey,what’s new?), with all Gr2 and lesser features, now standardised across all racing jurisdictions.
Word has it that the racing operators met with the handicappers, and other industry representatives, to review the national feature race programme, in an attempt to uniformise conditions for similar races run in the varying racing jurisdictions.
It was decreed at this meeting of great minds, that feature race conditions would be standardised across all racing jurisdictions.
Apparently the move to implement penalties in Gr 2, Gr3 and Listed races was introduced to minimise the ‘fear factor’ faced by potential participants when having to square up at WFA to the likes of Gr1 and Gr2 winners.
These changes were apparently discussed at meetings of the Racing Programming Committees and implemented and applied nationally from 1 April 2015 – you guessed – April Fool’s day.
So the purist principle of weight-for-age was summararily tossed out of the window in the interests of increasing field sizes?
And on the assumption that owners and trainers obviously only run their horses if they can win – not for black type, or the track record – or the chance that they may get lucky and have a budding future stallion chase a champion home on weight for age terms. No, never.
Ice Machine won the former WFA Green Point Stakes
With the Green Point Stakes being run on the same day as the Selangor Cup, and with the same prize money on offer, there clearly would no incentive for a 3yo to run in the Green Point and thus take on older horses.
So why still call it weight for age?
Besides the glaring shortcomings in the rationale of the thinking of these great minds, there sadly seems to be no shame, or consideration for tradition – or for much else that we hold dear.
And what about the mechanics of a simple press release announcing the changes?
This sort of action is often an indicator of a combination of incompetence and having something to hide. Why would a reasonable horseracing purist come to any other conclusion?
We hear that there are some powerful people in the structures, including industry leaders and sponsors, that are asking leading questions – after only hearing about these changes six months down the line!
This is not the end of this little story…
It is time the men in grey find out that there are people who know – and who care.
