FROM THE SHERIFF'S DESK: WALL TO WALL RACING AND THE ENORMOUS PROBLEMS IT HAS CREATED FOR THE SPORT

By John Schreck | Wednesday, June 29, 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.

For years I’ve been concerned about wall to wall racing … one reason being the workload on participants and two, being the fact that we are trying to run American style racing on European style tracks which simply won’t work in the long term.

That is why there is so much trouble with tracks these days. They just can’t possibly stand it.

If you’ve got a field of twelve or fourteen horses each weighing half a ton going around eight to ten times a day, you can just imagine what would happen if you put a roller of that weight around the track. It would create a road.

Wall to wall racing has created enormous problems for the sport, but the TAB insists upon it because they need the product.

That is one of the tragedies of the sport not controlling the wagering arm as they do in Hong Kong.

It was a tragedy when, years ago, the sport allowed the wagering arm to be taken from them and commercialised.

It is too late to go back. That can’t be changed now.

Everything is easy in hindsight, but the sport should control its commercial arm and it should control its TV product.

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The Australian Racing Board has announced that there will be a review of the whip rule.

I would welcome a review so long as the Australian Racing Board does not weaken on their position so far as animal welfare is concerned.

It might be that they might have to restrict the number of times a horse can be hit in total irrespective of where it is, leaving it up to the jockey’s discretion as to when to use the whip to its best advantage.

That type of review is understandable but if they open the floodgates again in terms of broader whip use well then get ready for some action from the animal welfare people.

As I’ve said before, people who are critical of animal activists and dismiss them should go ask the fur industry what they think of their weight of influence.

Try and buy a fur coat today. That industry is dead through the work of the animal welfare people and the racing industry, while they don’t have to like it, should be mindful of the strength animal activists have in society today.

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I spent time in New Zealand last week in the Cambridge area and there is a lot of talk about a young jockey coming through. He’s name is Sam Weatherley.

He has just started out. He didn’t grow up around horses as a lot of good jockeys have done but the talk is that he might have a lot of natural talent … so it might be interesting to monitor his progress from here and see what happens into the future.

He is a name to watch.