FROM THE SHERIFF'S DESK - LIVING WITH CHANGING TIMES IN RACING ... AND IT'S NOT ALL FOR THE BETTER

By John Schreck | Wednesday, June 15, 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.

Whinging about racing has become a common past-time these days.

In the seventies, eighties and into the nineties there were those whingers and they were usually people who were not successful complaining about those who were successful.

The difference, looking back, was that there was so much positivity around racing in those days that the whingers kind of got drowned out, but these days there is not that sort of positivity in the sport ... almost anywhere!

Hong Kong is going well but what is happening beyond that tells a story.

New Zealand is just stumbling along. Singapore is going to reduce their prize-money anytime. Their big race-day ... the Singapore International Day has been cancelled. France is nearly buggered.

In England they are racing for blue ribbons. There are a lot of people going to the races and you can imagine the tremendous meeting there will be this week at Royal Ascot ... but there is no money there.

If you take away the sheiks and the gazillionaires there is nobody left. America too is just about buggered.

So there is negativity across the sport unfortunately.

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One of the great things about racing in England is that it is difficult to get a place around the mounting yard because everyone is there to look at the horses, the jockeys and the whole thing.

There is not that interest here.

One of the reasons for that is the fact that we have so much simulcasting. They race at Doomben now. A couple of minutes later there is a race in Sydney and then Melbourne and so on.

The horses literally just go past the post and the simulcast changes to the next meeting.

It’s wall to wall racing and, because of that, there is not the interest in the horse that there used to be ... and that lack of focus on the racehorse is another unfortunate trend in play these days.

More negativity and less interest in the horse is not a particularly good recipe moving forward ... but it does look like we are going to have to live with it.

It is hard to see it going back to what it was.

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The return to racing at Eagle Farm on Stradbroke day last Saturday has attracted mixed reviews.

Looking at it from a distance, all I can say is that the quality of the horses engaged at the meeting was pretty good ... I’d say about as good as you can get at this time of year.

The quality of the jockeys riding those horses out on the track was outstanding.

I don’t think you could have got it any better. They were all there ... and, by jeez, when you get all of those blokes riding together they put on a pretty good show.

So credit to the club for the quality of horse and rider they attracted for the big day.

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The fact that ten jockeys were fined a combined total of just under $6000.00 for breaches of the whip rules on Stradbroke day underlines the fact that the penalties that are currently being imposed are not serving their proper purpose.

A penalty is imposed to deter the person who has breached the rule from so breaching again.

The deterrent acts upon the person that has broken the rule with the hope that it also prevents others from going down the same track.

If there is not a strong enough deterrent, a new option has to be found.

Handing out more suspensions to the jockeys involved is one course of action that could be considered. Taking the horses number out of the frame would soon stop the transgressions, but that would be fairly radical.

I don’t know what the solution is but I don’t think the authorities are going to give up on it.

I just don’t think they can go back.