It's nearly impossible to learn more about Kansas tracks because they have all been closed for some time and no videos are available. As is always the case in USA the closures are for financial reasons - in turn due to heavy nearby competition from casinos.

Pretty well all the pictures you can get these days are for Florida races and they are all/mostly 6-doggers.

Back to NZ tracks - can I summarise .......

No two lures are exactly the same.
2 have hooped lures roughly comparable to OZ - Hatrick and Manuwatu.
1 has a short arm and is lowish - Addington
4 have a high shortish arm - Auckland, Forbury, Cambridge, Ascot Park.

Those variations suggest (a) the exact specifications of the lure do not tell you a lot, (b) the finish-on must be helping with integrity, and (c) the running generally appears cleaner than in Oz although that is a bit subjective and is not what the recent reviewer implied (he is a lawyer and may have a different starting point).

Robert this is exactly what the extended lure is designed to do spread the field out allowing dogs to come from behind

Someone on these forums I think Bruce is saying we have no strength in our dogs anymore .
This is one of the main reasons is because our fields are to packed together not allowing dogs to come from behind
This is where the saying comes from when breeding
"Breed speed to speed " thus getting fast early dogs to get out of trouble
Trouble is there is now a lot of dogs out there that cannot even run 500 meters which is basically unheard of in America

as they shld be reluctant to introduce change to the old lure system if there was nothing wrong with it........there was no evidence of anything, racing was fine where I was watching it from.

you appear to be talking about change in general,Bruce. I'm talking about the topic specifically.

racing atm is rubbish, so much so that i regretably rarely watch or partake anymore after almost 40 yrs involvement in the sport.

Bruce Teague wrote:

The classic example is that virtually all of them tried to stop Betfair and the corporates getting a toehold and therefore introducing some competition.

wldn't that be the aim of any business model to endeavour to minimise or eliminate the competition that was a threat to your income ?

i dont agree with what they tried to do, but i understand why they tried.

Bruce Teague wrote:

Equally, "great dogs in the past" would still have been great on a ploughed paddock. That is, broadly speaking, their superiority was independent of the system under which they raced (partly because most of them led).

Lets speak more specifically Bruce.

imo dogs of the calibre of Awesome Assassin, African Zulu, Rapid Hiker, Temlee, Bit Chili, Big Smig, Timeframer and Golden Impulse to name a few off the top of my head wld have been lucky to have won half the races they won on the current lure system in Vic, however feel you missed my point about the 'great dogs in the past', you may want to revist.

Bruce Teague wrote:

In any event, many of "they" have since been sacked, which kind of emphasises my point.

much rather the bloke who they said gave a few kickbacks to who he thought were reliable contractors, to the bloke who approved the media attend a private trial track without so much as a pho call.

in hindsight wldn't you ?

we may actually still have had a sport and many good imo innocent grass roots people(such as the people who introduced myself and countless others to the sport), still in the game.

so it actually emphasises how wrong they were in doing that.

a little compassion sometimes wld'nt go astray Bruce in preference to constantly wanting to prove your points

Yes, true - the fanning out as they enter the home straight is fairly common, including at the new Horsham track, but most obvious at Shepparton and Geelong (see almost constant stewards comments about "ran wide in the straight". But why?

By far the most obvious cause is the reduced camber - from turn to straight at around that point. My theory is that the reduction occurs too early.

Sure, the lure must be having some effect but it is likely that it is secondary to the shape of the track. Really hard railers may not be affected but centre or wide runners are. (See also Bulli, which is easily the worst in the country in this respect).

Strength - I have (for years) been making the point that "stayers" are getting weaker or, put another way, many long races are being won by 650m dogs which nick out and hang on (including some of yours). And, tine and again, we find that a good 700m cannot be repeated 7 days later, as required by many of our premium series.

By extension, this suggests that the whole breed is weaker than it was. That is emphasised by the continuing growth of shorter trips (

This is essentially a lure discussion - about which you claimed there was nothing wrong with the old system and "they" would have changed it if necessary.

My point is twofold. First, "they" never change anything unless someone is pointing a gun at their heads. Bureaucrats hate change because it makes more work for them. So I offered some examples of that thinking. Many more are available.

Second, the hooped or wide lure was introduced spasmodically in three states, followed much later by Victoria (there was an "over my dead body" camp there). The understood theme was that it helped keep dogs separate and that it assisted with fighting and FTC. Yes, this did amount to a change but it came only after protracted pleas and objections from various sources over several years. The smaller states of Qld and SA led the way, not the two biggies. The evidence in favour was, and is, very strong, both here and in NZ. All trials were extensive and successful.

Still, the new lure is not a magic wand - it simply gives the magician another assistant to help him with his show.

Re the corporates - you are on the wrong track. Even now, people forget that in all codes the wagering package was in a moribund state, partly due to gambling growth in non-racing areas, and partly because state governments were privatising TABs, giving them increased powers, and simultaneously making life hard for oncourse bookmakers. The bookies rebelled and decamped to the NT, and the rest is history.

Sadly, we ended up going from the frying pan into the fire as, after an initial positive spurt, wagering failed to grow much at all. The dollars simply shifted from the TABs to the corporates who now offer rip-off prices, particularly at the dogs, while TAB pools keep declining.

But the underlying point is that traditional racing authorities did not want anyone disturbing their empires, regardless of any benefits to consumers. The gallops, being as powerful as they are, convinced state Treasurers to go along with the negative approach. The single justification for that was that racing got more cents in the dollar from TABs than it did/does from the corporates. But they were short term dollars as the industry has failed badly to talk to its customers and/or generate more of them and thereby increase the size of the pie.

Meanwhile, "they" have ignored all that, allowed live baiting to continue, breeding to decline radically, and have taken belated actions which will have little or no effect on population numbers or on fading stamina in the breed. All the QCs in the world will not change that. Nor will "compassion". Good management might.

Extensive studies suggest that dogs are colour blind to red-orange.

"Extensive studies suggest..."

In other words

"We researched this for years and we do not know the answer. But because the research was publicly funded, here's our guess"

I was pretraining pups when SA changed from a red lure to a blue/white/yellow one.
Made no difference. They chased just as hard on both.

EXTERNAL LINK EXTERNAL LINK

At the track, I see the same dog, chase two different coloured lures, running the same times and ripping into the lure with the same tenacity. So that's what I observe in practise, without trying to explain the theory.

Based on that, I say colour makes no difference to a chasing greyhound.

Correct, Jamie.

My scientifically proven clinical trials ( "extensive tests", for the uneducated ) show that, regardless of the colour, the movement of the lure is what gets the greyhounds chasing.

The same team of scientists that produced those results for me, are now conducting further scientific clinical trials, to assess what is the optimum decibel level, of the noise of the lure.

I was stating that if you run your lure around the back at sandown and at dog height the fluffy lure does not stand out as well unless it is a contrasting colour.
The swaying will catch the dogs eye easier in my opinion.

Don't rubbish something because you lack some of the facts. I did not list all the references about colour for reasons of brevity. They involved extensive research by highly qualified professionals, mainly in USA. It was not a guess but the outcome of exhaustive work under scientifically controlled conditions. If I can be bothered I will dig them out and mention them here.

They just need a talking greyhound to firm it up.

Although this stuff is publicly available, the majority of Australian authorities/clubs used or moved over to orange or red lures - ie they ignored the available science.

In any event, the primary influence on the dog (as I suggested elsewhere) is not colour but movement. The same principle would have applied to your pretraining. Anyway, no doubt the SA decision was sponsored by the Adelaide Crows.

Alternatively, the decision may have been made around the committee table - the same place where I suspect decisions are made on rug colours by GA (ie not out in the wind and rain in the back straight in poor light).

No doubt those folk would have had advice from material manufacturers but not from qualified colour consultants who would consider not just the material but also the conditions under which it is used and the ability of the viewer to absorb it. That's what a professional would do, as opposed to an amateur. (The same principle applies to old and new TV sets).

If you don't quite follow that, consider getting some black, white, or black and white dogs and put them in rugs 2,3 and 7 on a rainy night, and try to instantly pick them out. It's OK if they are under your nose but not at a distance in poor light.

Your 2nd and 3rd sentences are fine.

Your 1st sentence is incorrect - strongly so. You have no idea of my history and background. However, your response is very common in this industry. For example, I can recall sending a letter with some two or three pages of data attached to two different state CEO's only to get the response that "it is only your opinion". This is even worse than a "Yes Minister" example because it is a straight out lie.

Every item I have ever written is based on facts (including my brief colour comment) to which I may or may not add an opinion. If I do that I make it clear that it is an opinion and usually invite comment.

Incidentally, Michael Floyd's referenced articles confirm exactly what I said about orange/red lures.

The burning question I have is...
When the dog was rewarded for choosing the correct colour, was the reward a SYNTHETIC ONE?

Bruce, stop putting yourself in the centre of the universe. I was referring to the author in the links that Michael Floyd posted, not yourself. I didnt even know you were an author.

What you wrote in an earlier post was 'extensive studies suggest...'
Now if you really believe what was in those studies, you would have written 'extensive studies prove beyond doubt...'

My 6 pups all trialled between 16.15 and 16.30 behind the red lure.
A week later they trialled the same behind the blue lure.
They all went off their nut during the preview/stir up of the red lure and did the same, no more, with the blue one.

What I believe about the lures of SA and Vic is what I have been saying since I started training 3 years ago.
The SA one makes a squawking sound that dogs can hear coming.
The Vic one just sounds like a trolley on a rail.
I've raced on both and I believe my dogs chase the SA squawky one harder than the Vic one.
Nothing to do with colour, nothing to do with finish on, nothing to do with position.
And certainly nothing to do with the colour of the food bowls they eat out of.

However, another post reminds me that noise comes into it as well - of squeaker or lure/cable type. Good point. I have had trainers tell me that an odd dog is deaf or does not like the outside because the noise is lower there. No doubt???

All of which underlines the fact that there are many aspects of track equipment which go to make up the overall impact on each dog - no two of which are built exactly the same. Pinning something down to just one of those influences is dicey. In the final analysis you have to take the most likely path - eg shifting to the hooped/wide lure - and accept that some will like it better than others. The upcoming change - to the actual finish-on system - will need some 18 months minimum to filter through before we can record sensible results (assuming everybody does it).

While all this is going on, there could well be a string of other factors which enter the discussion (following acceptance or not of the final report of the UTS track investigation for GRNSW). Whatever action is taken there will overlap with the ongoing increase in familiarity with the new lure. So it could be a few years before it all settles down. Meantime, it is a moving target.

Strangely, almost every trainer known to mankind has agreed that corner starts are a dead loss, yet the two newest tracks both include them - Cannington 600m and Murray Bridge 530m in SA (under construction). The next four newest tracks/trips also produced corner starts - Newcastle 413/410m, Gosford 400m, Traralgon 395m, and the horror of them all, Bathurst 450m. At around the same time, GRV created or renewed disruptive corner starts at Warrnambool, Bendigo, Ballarat and Shepparton (all middle distance), as well as repeating the original fault at Sale - 520m v 511m. To boot, Queensland has also pumped out designs for new tracks (albeit not followed up) which also included starts on the bend (Deagon and Logan). And Canberra swapped a terrible 450m start for an equally bad one over 440m (the inside two dogs have to turn right at the jump).

And that's without considering many long-existing corner starts.

So what you have in this modern age are six states/territories all doing stuff which the vast majority say is wrong - bad for the dogs, bad for the punters. In that context, the precise design of the lure fades into the background. It also makes a mockery of the big push towards improved welfare.

Still, as one very famous club manager once told me, "They'll be
alright if they nick out in front". And bugger the rest!

How can you say I'm on the wrong track about the corporates when I agreed with you ? If I'm on the wrong track, you're on the same one Bruce.

Ryan Vanderwert wrote:

i dont agree with what they tried to do, but i understand why they tried.

I just said I didn't agree with what "they" did, but I understood why "they" did it, which you explained in the next few paragraphs giving the reasons.......short term dollars, failed their customers, etc.

Every punter knows this already. You're preaching to the converted.

Bruce Teague wrote:

My point is twofold. First, "they" never change anything unless someone is pointing a gun at their heads.......

Your first point I dont agree with - A major change was they rebuilt Sandown after the CEO spent weeks talking to participants about the first turn. I didn't agree with their reasons btw. No stats, no nothing, just went on participants opinions and ruined a great racetrack. So that CEO tried, no gun to his head I was aware of.

Bruce Teague wrote:

Second, the hooped or wide lure was introduced spasmodically in three states, followed much later by Victoria (there was an "over my dead body" camp there). The understood theme was that it helped keep dogs separate and that it assisted with fighting and FTC. Yes, this did amount to a change but it came only after protracted pleas and objections from various sources over several years. The smaller states of Qld and SA led the way, not the two biggies. The evidence in favour was, and is, very strong, both here and in NZ. All trials were extensive and successful. Still, the new lure is not a magic wand - it simply gives the magician another assistant to help him with his show.

Your second point is not a point at all, its 95% a summary of events until you get to the last sentence " the evidence in favour was....." then you contradict yourself with some Houdini type analogy about a magic wand.

So what you are saying then is that the current lure system is not working as well as expeted despite the 'successful trials' ?