From depleted fields to a surfeit of info - five frustrating racing gripes

This week the Horseracing Bettors Forum published the fruits of its most recent annual survey of racing punters, a document that carried extraordinarily detailed results and analysis of around a thousand responses.

While the presentation of the findings could not have been more thorough or impressive, the actual substance of the information the survey provided was slightly less insightful than such a comprehensively assembled 110-page epic deserved.

It was interesting to see the top three desires in terms of better information focused on more accurate going descriptions and race distance information, sectional times and the publication of horses’ weights.

And confirmation of the popularity of the best odds guarantee concession came across loud and clear when it was named as by far the most popular of the commonest bookmaker incentives, coincidentally just as a number of layers are limiting access to it.

Hills this week announced they will no longer offer the BOG to bets placed before the day of the race and, while I am generally against anything that makes life tougher for punters, I would rather the offer was limited in this way than withdrawn completely.

I was told by a bookmaker recently that the best odds guarantee has a massively detrimental effect to their racing profits but that they have to offer it because everyone else does.

Most punters getting involved the evening before a race takes place are clued up operators on the hunt for value, and removing the guarantee only from such wagers means the more recreational punter will still be able to enjoy this brilliant concession.

The BHF survey results followed on from a fascinating Big Read in this newspaper on Sunday which looked at some radical ways of making up the shortfall in racing’s finances that will be caused by widespread betting shop closures in the wake of the huge recent cuts in maximum FOBT stakes.

These included racing forming its own bookmaking operation and a complete overhaul of the fixture list.

One of the sport’s great attributes is its willingness to self-analyse in order to improve and hopefully this will continue to throw up new ways to ensure racing remains in good health.

We all have our own reasons for loving racing (numerous) plus a few points of frustration that we would like to be eradicated in order to increase our enjoyment of being a fan of the sport.

My top five current pet racing hates are either impossible to solve or not worth addressing but here they are anyway…

1 Races that fall apart

This seems to happen more often than ever and is a regular source of disappointment. It becomes apparent that there is a cracking contest brewing up and you start getting excited and working out who is going to win, and then one or more of the participants is ruled out through injury or given a new target.

Horses are fragile. They get injured. And the structure of the modern race programme provides more choices for connections to aim at and more reasons to dodge a potentially tricky test and pursue easier prize-money instead.

But even if the final declarations throw up a belter there is always the threat of unsuitable going scuppering things. I don’t know the solution but I know that it is a constant downer for those of us who love to spend days and weeks excitedly anticipating how a potentially great race will pan out.

2 Watching horses enter the stalls

Every so often we are exposed to the results of surveys, usually delivered by DJs on music radio stations, that reveal how much of our lives are spent doing certain basic tasks.

You know the kind of thing. We spend two months drying our hair, six months on the loo, etc. This stuff largely sails straight over my head but I would love to know just how much of my life has been spent watching horses being loaded into starting stalls.

I used to just accept it as part of punting life, but lately it has started to eat away at me. The stalls handlers are amazing and as someone who cannot even pat a horse on the neck without being convinced it will bite my fingers off or spin round and kick my head into the next field I can only marvel at how skilled and brave they are as they carry out their duties.

But it is probably the dullest thing in the world to watch a horse digging in its heels and having to be painstakingly cajoled into the stalls.

And you can’t pop out and make toast because if you do it will be one of the few times when they all walk straight in and you’ve missed the entire race by the time you are back in front of the TV.

3 Call them by their actual names

What is it with so many racing professionals and punters that they can’t just refer to horses by their names? It’s weird.

Instead of saying Lucky Boy or November Rain or whatever, it’s the favourite, the Nicholls thing, the Irish horse, etc.

The other day a pundit said “Okay, almost all in, final selections please,” to which his colleague answered “I’m going to go for Kevin Ryan’s horse”.

And that was it. Kevin Ryan’s horse. Why say that? Why not just say its name? It happens so often and it’s extremely peculiar.

4 Losing old friends

Racing’s welfare efforts are excellent and commendable but when a horse dies in action, particularly an old favourite, it hits hard.

Take Josses Hill, who collapsed and died after finishing at Sandown on Saturday. He’s been a popular member of jump racing’s cast list for ages and it is horrible enough for those not connected to them when they suddenly lose their lives.

The pain for those who look after them every day must be awful.

5 Information overload

Each individual punter has his or her own list of priorities when it comes to choosing their bets. It is pretty much unheard of for anyone to take every single factor into account, yet we all have to filter every scrap of available information and that can be tiresome.

For example, I completely disregard pedigrees, and I believe the importance of ground conditions is often overplayed.

The identity of a horse’s parents does not enter my calculations because I have never found sufficient proof that it is a passport to profit to invest the necessary time to properly understand how bloodlines affect performances.

And while it would obviously be absurd to claim there is no such thing as ground preference, it strikes me the extent to which people obsess over precisely how firm or soft a racecourse is largely excessive.

Yet on the morning of every Saturday and big race day Twitter is awash with requests for people who live near Haydock or wherever to report how much rain has fallen, and horses are written off because their dad didn’t have much in the way of stamina.

All in all, though, it is still the most fascinating, challenging and intriguing betting medium, and a sport that throws up wonderful stories on a regular basis. And while those responsible for ensuring its prosperity is maintained keep striving to make it even better the future is rosy.

Must-win factor is always overplayed at the end of the season

The most overplayed factor in football betting takes place at the end of each season, when teams that need to win in order to boost their promotion hopes or diminish their chances of being relegated play opponents who can go neither up nor down.

The market anticipates how punters will approach such games and makes the team with the more tangible motive to triumph significantly shorter than they would have been had the match taken place earlier in the season.

Experts use phrases like “they will be on the beach” or “they will be playing with flip-flops on” in relation to the team with less obvious incentive to do well.

But every year we see that in fact footballers just want to win whenever they play and that some of the worst bets are struck on teams that find themselves needing to win, especially if that is to avoid the drop.

Last Saturday, for example, Fulham beat Cardiff, Bournemouth drew with Southampton and Newcastle came away from Brighton with a point. And there were plenty more examples further down the divisions of teams with nothing to play for achieving draws and wins against sides battling for victories that would have helped them achieve promotion or avoid relegation.

It is one of the great things about English football that the integrity of the game is so pure from the start of the season right until the finish, and yet still punters fall into the trap of doubting it on a regular basis.

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