We'll come back to that in a minute, though, because first we'll look at how it would work if they were only going to be weighed once they had arrived at the racecourse, which would be the easier. We aim to get to the races three hours before the race, so even if we get held up in traffic for an hour, we're still there two hours before the race. Getting there three hours before the race, we find that on the Flat we're among the later arrivers, but over jumps we're one of the earlier ones. But that's by the by. If we say that horses are going to get there three hours before the race, how on earth are they all going to be weighed in time?
For people who don't know what's involved in handling horses, weighing horses is simple: you just weigh them. But, in practice, it's hard and time-consuming. It's easier to get a horse into the starting stalls than on to the weighing machine, but it's harder to get them onto the weighing machine so that the weight recorded is accurate. The thing is that the weighing pad is not a solid footing, so horses feel uneasy standing on it, and it's very hard to get them to stand still for a few seconds, which is what is required for an accurate reading.
And then you have to consider who will weigh him. You might need several people, so effectively you'll need a team of stalls handlers to help. And you'll have to consider other points. Bearing in mind that you're going to be weighing quite a lot of horses in a short period, how long do you allow each horse before you give up? Some of the experienced ones will only take a few seconds, but some of the inexperienced ones might take half an hour. And, bearing in mind that there's a limit to how many times a horse can be hit in the race, the stewards are obviously going to have to decide the limit to the coercion permitted. And how worked up do you allow the horse to become before you decide not to weigh him, bearing in mind that if he gets too wound up beforehand, he's probably going to underperform in the race?
But really they have to be weighed the previous day if the information is going to be disseminated in time for it to be useful. How is this going to work? Do you bring them to the races the previous day? Does each stable have its own set of scales? If the latter, does each trainer, with his staff obviously, weigh his own horses and supply the weight, or does a BHA team go to each stable to do the job? When you consider that pretty much every stable in the country is understaffed (even the ones which make a big profit, because it's not a matter of money, but the fact that there aren't the people around to fill the vacancies) you'd really need to have the BHA team doing the job - particularly as Monday racing would mean that the stable staff couldn't have the Sunday off, bearing in mind that in many stables you'd need the complete complement of staff there to weigh the horse who was running the next day.
If it was just a case of the trainer and his staff weighing the horse, in reality with the difficult horses one wouldn't weigh them. One would just guess. It would be, "What did we say that this horse weighed when he ran last time? 460? Well, he looks like he's got a bit stronger since then, so shall we say 466?". It just wouldn't work however you look at things. It would be very feasible in jurisdictions where the horses are trained on the track, and in jurisdictions where there are plenty of Jockey Club employees and staff floating around. You'd just get in a routine of going round the stables every night and weighing horses every day. It would become a run-of-the-mill event, and the pre-race weighing would be a formality.
But in the UK, where the stables are all around the country, and where racing is chronically underfunded, it just couldn't happen in anything like a satisfactory manner. And if it's happening is going to be woefully inaccurate and unsatisfactory, how can supposedly intelligent people think it a project worth advocating? Well, maybe the advocates of this idea understand what is involved a lot better than I do. Or maybe they just haven't actually thought it through very well, because any time I've ever heard it proposed, I've never even heard an opinion on when it should be done, never mind how it could be done feasibly and accurately.
If the weighing became compulsory (whether that means that one has to attempt to weigh a horse before he runs, or whether it means that you do actually have to weigh him in a manner which produces a reasonably accurate weight) then Indira would have to be weighed in advance of next Tuesday, because she is likely to run at Lingfield then. She'll be our next runner. We've had a runner this week - Cherry Street ran OK at Wolverhampton on Monday on his first run for this stable - and we had one last week, when Zarosa again found the really testing winter conditions too much on what was otherwise a lovely day at Fontwell (seen here). We'll wait with her until we get conditions more suitable for a Flat-bred horse, and see what happens next time.
2 comments:
John...you really had me chuckling reading your disposition about weighing bloody horses. There is a huge gap in the understanding of the animals between people who own, race or train them and the punter, who try to treat them like automons. I guess it's all part of the fun of keeping said punters interested and investing by dangling more carrots before to them with the hope they find the key to nirvana. Even the TV pundits go into limitless minutiae in trying to find the winner.
I have heard it all now I think, from " I fancy this one because it's been clipped out since its last race"..to " It won't win because it only runs left handed with a following wind ". Even [ and it will be impossible to implement in any relevant manner as you so humourously put] we do publish weights, only the professionals, and more specifically its trainer, will be able to interpret it's meaning in any substantive way. Other than the trainer, who would know what work regime it had had recently, what feeding program it had be on and had it changed recently.
The other major factor to assess in the chances of a horse winning is whether it is placed to win on any single occasion or as a step in its education/experience, almost irrespective of form,weight ..... or whether it's clipped out or not !
Great post John.....
John...you really had me chuckling reading your disposition about weighing bloody horses. There is a huge gap in the understanding of the animals between people who own, race or train them and the punter, who try to treat them like automons. I guess it's all part of the fun of keeping said punters interested and investing by dangling more carrots before to them with the hope they find the key to nirvana. Even the TV pundits go into limitless minutiae in trying to find the winner.
I have heard it all now I think, from " I fancy this one because it's been clipped out since its last race"..to " It won't win because it only runs left handed with a following wind ". Even [ and it will be impossible to implement in any relevant manner as you so humourously put] we do publish weights, only the professionals, and more specifically its trainer, will be able to interpret it's meaning in any substantive way. Other than the trainer, who would know what work regime it had had recently, what feeding program it had be on and had it changed recently.
The other major factor to assess in the chances of a horse winning is whether it is placed to win on any single occasion or as a step in its education/experience, almost irrespective of form,weight ..... or whether it's clipped out or not !
Great post John.....
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