FROM THE SHERIFF'S DESK - WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH

By John Schreck | Wednesday, January 20, 2016

John Schreck, a former Chief Steward in both Sydney and Hong Kong, has seen both the colourful and the dark sides of racing. His wealth of experience and his deep knowledge of racing matters across the board is unquestioned and the reputation he built as a racing ‘lawman’ remains firmly entrenched in racing’s history. Shreck’s personal blog, ‘From the Sheriff’s Desk', appears exclusively on HRO.

The state of racetracks in Australia in general and the track ratings on individual race-days in particular are often the cause of some debate.

One of the things to bear in mind is that in Australia we run American style racing on English style tracks. At Epsom and York, for example, they will have twelve to fifteen race meetings a year ... and, of course, their tracks are always in very, very good condition.

Here we try and run on grass day after day after day, which obviously makes it difficult to sustain a good track condition all year around because of that workload ... and there is an aversion to using artificial tracks.

For many years I have been advocating that there should be more thought given to artificial tracks if we are going to have this American style racing three or four times a week.

There is nothing wrong with artificial tracks.

Horses like Secretariat, Affirmed and some of the greatest racehorses ever born have run and won and done well on artificial tracks.

I know Queensland have had some unfortunate experiences with artificial tracks but that shouldn’t deter anyone from thinking along those lines for the future.

At very least, they absolutely serve a purpose as an alternative track on days when the grass surface is unraceable and that situation has to be provided for.

These days we are also trying to provide grass as a training surface. That is not only getting more difficult to do it is getting more expensive.

Again, in England, or France, you will find that some of those good horses will train on a piece of grass today and they won’t come back to that piece of grass for the rest of their racing life because they have such wonderful facilities for training racehorses.

In Australia we simple have not provided similar facilities. So there are very good reasons why our tracks don’t stand up to it ... and that is not even taking into account our sometimes extreme weather patterns.

If we had been settled by somebody from America instead of somebody from England, we’d be racing on plenty of dirt tracks, I can tell you.

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My own view on the track ratings is that they have become too sophisticated for the normal punter.

The normal punter doesn’t care if the track is a 4 or a 5. All they really want to know is in which of four categories the track falls – good, dead, slow or heavy. They don’t need any breakdown beyond that. They are not interested in all of that.

Professional punters, for their part, don’t take any notice of what rating is put out anyway. They are better at rating tracks than anybody and they take little or no notice of official track ratings. They work it out for themselves.

Gary Player said that the normal golfer shouldn’t get ‘paralysis of the analysis’ ... that is that you should try and keep things simple as per the KISS standard (Keep it simple stupid).

That sentiment applies here and to get too specific about track ratings only confuses the man in the street, particularly when upgrades or downgrades are made during the meeting itself, sometimes retrospectively.

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As far as the actual track preparation and rail positioning is concerned, it is very difficult task for track curators and I sympathise with them.

They come under such a lot of criticism. If the track is too hard, they are criticised. If it is too soft they are criticised. If they water they are criticised. If they don’t water they criticised.

So they are really between a rock and a hard place and I don’t know what the absolute answer to it all is.

Of course the rail has to be moved on occasions to spare the track but you don’t have to be a genius to work out that moving the rail will create lanes. It’s just normal that will happen.

In Hong Kong ... and I hate to compare anyone to Hong Kong because they are so different from other places ... they have the two grass tracks and a dirt track. At the end of the racing season the grass tracks are shaved bare.

It is just bare dirt and fresh grass is grown for the commencement of the next racing season ... and of course they therefore have that proper spell which tracks in Australia just don’t have.

I have used these overseas examples throughout this blog for no other reason than to show what advantages some other racing precincts have and therefore to give a better understanding of why Australian tracks are struggling by comparison.

It is an issue that won’t go away, so it had better be handled with care.