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The average Timeform rating of winners on the all-weather in January 2014 was 78.0, where it had been between 73.5 and 74.5 in the previous three years. The quality of all-weather racing has improved this winter, due mostly or entirely to Arena Racing Company’s injection of prize money leading into an All-Weather Champions’ Day in April. Rather like the current English Premier League table, there are a small number of elite clubs and a much larger number of makeweights only ever a few points from safety or relegation. The shaded all-weather tracks are all in the bottom half by this measure, but it should be noted that the distribution is skewed. The figures for Flat racing in 2013 are as follows:Īscot was top of the pops for average Timeform rating of winners, followed by York and the Newmarket Rowley Mile course. There are a number of ways of measuring a course’s quality, but a consideration of the Timeform ratings of winners is one of the better ones.
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If it is acceptable to denigrate Kempton, Lingfield, Southwell and Wolverhampton (the four UK all-weather tracks in operation) on this sole basis, then the same should apply to Chepstow, Brighton, Catterick, Ffos Las, Bath, and several other longstanding Flat turf courses, also. But only if you are prepared to dismiss racing at many other tracks in similar style.
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Royal Ascot it most certainly is not, but is it fair to categorise all-weather racing in its entirety in such a way? Last week, we had a two-pronged assault on the blight of all-weather racing, linked, as this phenomenon would appear to be, to the decline of the Empire and to England’s inability to win a major football competition since 1966.īoth writers mentioned all-weather racing’s “low-grade” nature, one of them qualifying that term, ironically enough, with the word “tedious”. The Racing Post letters page can make for depressing reading, even on those rare occasions when Laurie Williamson is not dissing the memory of Frankel with a diatribe of unparalleled tendentiousness. By Simon Rowlands - published 11th February 2014