In the absence of three local racemeetings during August, the diehard SA punter is looking at alternatives and the UK racing probably provides the most likely fix.
One of our staunchest racing men chirped on his Facebook page, earlier this week:
So Monday came and no local racing. I went to the 3 operator’s web sites to see if they have a message for me as a customer. Do I need to say?
I imagined if Pick n Pay was to close for a day, there would be signs the week before, messages the day before, a sign on the door that “We’re open tomorrow, please come back, sorry for the inconvenience…”
The Sporting Post says “Wolverhampton may be best bet” by way of explanation. Sigh.
And KZN, it’s typically your race day, all your site has under Latest News is comments for Turffontein tomorrow 9 Aug.
No one ever calls anyone out on anything, so nothing ever gets better.
There are thousands of horses eating, many thousands of people working in the industry and being paid; and as a whole the answer was a Racing Loadshedding… a local rolling blackout.
The whole game is up and running, so the extra meeting is a marginal cost, just the direct cost because all the other overheads have been paid whether you race or not.
Obviously this was all planned a while ago before Bortz shoved the lightning rod into the patient. Maybe it should have been shoved into the Doctor and not the patient. This is hopefully the last of 4Racing’s innovation and transparency, how much can anyone take? Do I look biased? No &^%*!
So we look to the UK on Wednesday again and Britain had its driest July since 1935 and racetracks are preparing for a second heatwave, reported racingpost.com.
Salisbury will host its marquee meeting on Wednesday and Thursday and have had only five percent of their average July rainfall with no rain in August to date.
“I’ve been here 22 years and I can’t remember it being like this before. The last time we had a really good soaking was on June 5 when we had 14mm,” said Jeremy Martin, the clerk of the course at Salisbury.
“We’ve had to do a hell of a lot of irrigating, but the track looks nice and green and is currently good to firm. Without the ability to water the track from a borehole we’d be in a pretty desperate state. Like everybody, we’ve been desperate for some rain. We already have some early provisions on track. We’ll have iced water troughs in the unsaddling area and we’ve got more racing staff lined up to be able to do stuff like pass on water buckets and scrapers, alongside the couple of cooling fans.”
Temperatures are expected to rise ahead of the Hungerford Stakes at Newbury too.
“Although we’re watering every day, with the temperatures where they are and no rain in the forecast alongside the types of races we have, we don’t envisage huge fields. On the final day of July we had some light rain, but it didn’t even register at the 1mm mark,” said Newbury’s clerk Keith Ottesen.
The British Horseracing Authority (BHA) issued a statement saying, “The BHA will continue to monitor conditions at all courses due to stage meetings, working closely with the teams at each venue to ensure all necessary provisions are in place. The industry has coped well with the challenges posed and has continued to stage fixtures safely, while also taking action to abandon affected meetings when the first ever Met Office ‘Red’ extreme heat warning was issued.”
