Now, back on topic. 61 litters for sale on GD classifieds and probably many more not needing to advertise.

EXTERNAL LINK

After NOT receiving enough nominations to run heats for a GROUP 3 EVENT last week, tonight's race will be raced as a BEST 8, with $25,000 to the winner.

Not bad eh.

The shortage is definitely here.

Thanks boffins for BRUSHING our decades & generations of experience, & destroying the industry.

And still, you continue to IGNORE our JUDGEMENT.

@$$h01e$.

Knowledge is scarce. What we do know is that 14,000 dogs are currently racing in Aus - but declining. I also have past data on the proportions of dogs racing in each distance category (but not the absolute number). I am about to update that so will post the trend here when available. Be assured there is a huge trend towards shorter races.

However, those answers are compromised by the fact that many 500m dogs (and 600m or 700m) cannot actually run out the trip - they are pretenders or hopefuls or just youngsters and fade at the end. So counting by nominations could be misleading as it measures only what trainers think is a good idea and is obviously influenced by prize money.

Technically, hardly any can run out longer trips because they reach their maximum speed at around 435m on average and are slowing after that.

Desirably, this should be matched against breeding patterns to determine which causes what but that is outside my brief. Or put it this way - Tornado Tears is an aberration. But then so was Miata.

Yes and no.

The primary impetus is that state authorities get medals if they bring in more turnover each year. They don't care how. Therefore they have grabbed any available hole in the TAB calendar and filled it with a new race.

Pre-2010 there was also a push to increase races per meeting from 10 to 11 or 12 for the same reason. That eased off in some places (eg NSW) but continued unabated in others (Vic, WA).

When conventional means of filling boxes did not measure up they then brought on low standard races (more Grades, Tier 3, C class)which then attracted lesser lights in the litter.

Concurrently, breeding numbers had long been in modest but steady decline but plummeted post-2015 after live baiting. By that time, all the rabbits had been pulled out of the hat and there was nowhere to go. Even with some recovery in recent times the mathematics were still poor - hence all the empty boxes.

The short term challenge is then to assess if the industry is better off wearing the short fields and the consequent risks to exotic betting, OR would it be better to reduce races and concentrate on more effectively promoting full fields of what's left (ie to maintain the same turnover). Given the attitude of bureaucrats running the industry, the former option is more likely and has been adopted so far.

Unsurprisingly, the missing (and ignored) element is that excellence is no longer a determinant. Average field quality is down, as well illustrated by the new but growing habit of programming low grade races at major city venues. Even on Saturday nights, the industry's biggest betting venues at Wenty and Meadows have been degraded by the addition of various provincial meetings in competing time slots. Dog quality is there but not big betting pools.

That leaves at risk the goose that laid the egg - good punters will not patronise crappy races or lousy pools and so have gone elsewhere. Mugs will not care, which is why they have grown in relative importance. Nice to have but can we rely on them for the industry's future?

My guess is that the industry can get away with a reasonable number of short fields for a period but not with a poor quality betting environment - notably one where the pools are split into smaller and smaller bits.

Major attention has to go to (a) genuine efforts to improve breeding, (b) scheduling more high quality races, (c) promoting the product and (d) more pressure on governments to clean up the wagering scene. In passing, I could add a suggestion that a percentage of prize money should be shifted from city to provincial racing. The cost to the city would be minimal but the benefits to week-round racing high.

Rich.

very good post Bruce.
the betting pools you say are down,in other ways the betting turnover is rising all the time, you only need to look at Betfair. five or so years ago only a few thousand was bet on most races,now it is twenty to thirty on a lot of even low grade races,people will bet on any thing.

if it is FFA OR GROUP RACE the turnover will rocket.

To get the size of fields to fill the grading system needs to change.

every day hounds are going off at odds of 100-1 or bigger
i have seen some at 250-1 laid on the exchanges in WA

what sort of grading system allows a dog that has won only 3 races out of over 100 starts to compete against dogs that are ten lengths faster .

where are grades 6, 7 ,8 ,9 , 10, and 11

the number of hounds that dont make it to the track is so high.
they are deemed to be to slow for racing ,this needs to be sorted. in the UK graded racing is for A1 to A 10 AND EVEN A12 one one track.
the winning time for a A 10 is about 21 lengths outside track record, over the 480 mt trip,

i hope this gives you some thing to think about .

the number of hounds that fight in Australia is in my opinion down to a few factors.

1. get rid of catching pen.
2 build larger beds
3 allow a male and female to be together

these 3 factors alone will give you a dog that is a lot less aggressive.

Looks like the overbreeding myth was more than a myth, of course at the time they were talking about wastage. Ya, the puppy bond crap is an underhanded low act, in any case I reckon the industry will run out of money sooner rather than later in NSW.

At my last count there were 125 different grades in Oz, all due to different states coming up with a brainwave and adding yet another grade, year after year. It's still happening with Veterans races, as we speak. Even so, Grades 1, 2 and 3 are seldom used, while Victoria had the brilliant idea of using a "No Penalty" grade, if you can call it a grade.

My observation is that the bureaucrats who do this are forever fielding calls from trainers (who all have different ideas) to change the system to better suit their personal needs. Some of those emerge from clubs (meaning more owner/trainers) which have some flexibility to stage different sorts of races - eg those limited to 1-2 wins, or 1-3 wins, or 1-4 wins, and so on.

Generally, the system is aimed at keeping lesser dogs on the track, which is not a bad thing in itself. But you then get to the stage where you start asking "Is that all there is?".

OK, there are top races, too, but the middle ground is skinny, particularly at provincial tracks but often now at the major city tracks as well.

What was once a fairly attractive mix of Grades 1 to 5, where everyone knew what the differences in standard were, has descended into a mish-mash of undecipherable quality. They are just dogs.

The club graders who once sorted out all the 5th Graders into peer groups have been replaced by a computer which could not care less. It is owned and operated by people who worry about the process, not the outcome. The computer and the internet are marvellous assets but we are just not using them well.

Above all, the industry has become trainer-centric, not customer-centric. Unfortunately, trainers don't generate funds, only customers can do that and they are disappearing like a flood down the Darling river.

Here's a test. A plane load of Inuits has just arrived from northern Canada, their pockets stuffed full of oil money. They know dogs. It's in their DNA. Dogs are their lifeline. So explain to them how 125 Grades work so they can have a bet.

PS: Fighters are an important issue but the numbers are actually very small. FTC numbers are much higher and would be higher again if you counted dogs that never see a track.

PS2: Yes, some feature races do attract good turnover. However, week to week racing shows that the quality of the race is a poor guide to turnover. Much more important is the day of the week and the time of the day. Mug gamblers!

PS3: Your Betfair comments must come from fairyland or Northern Canada, not here. In any case, Betfair refuses to divulge its annual turnover and checking race by race data is laborious and unhelpful, except for well-equipped and highly skilled punters who are probably not much interested in dogs anyway. The key issue here is that a modest pie has now been split into ever-declining smaller pieces, and Betfair is just one of many.