11th December 2006, 01:38 PM
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Member
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Join Date: Jan 1970
Posts: 4,426
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The whole class system is a ballsup in Australia, and every year it get's more confusing. Even some trainers are now confused and get fined for nominating ineligible horses, so that speaks volumes.
Each State has it's own way of doing things, and even some raceclubs.
Then you have various grades of the same bloomin' class, so you can have a $5,000 Class 6 or a $20,000 Class 6.
Prizemoney cannot give an accurate guide to class of race anymore apart from Country/Metro.
And then they give more of a penalty to a horse that won first up, than a horse that won second up in Perth - which makes no logical sense at all.
They need to have an industry standard criteria, like any other industry.
Then handicap the horses based on performance +/-. If a horse fails to run well in it's current class, so that the ratings go below a certain point, then it should be eligible to go back to the lower grade.
So there should be a race class figure and a horse class figure, but it should be consistent across the board.
Fairly straightforward I would have thought, but the powers that be decide "let's do something different". And they successfully confuse the trainers and punters which detracts interest, quality, and turnover.
WAKE UP!
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