A couple of rule changes for NSW racing people were announced to no fanfare last night.
And they come into existence, meaning they are enforced as of 1 July this year.
They are significant to some people, particularly battling trainers and owners. They are:
LR41A – Restricting a horse from racing in no more than 5 races in a 30-day period.
LR41(3) – Requiring horses that haven’t raced or barrier trialled for more than 12 months to barrier trial before racing.
Now the first one in particular has been drawn up to protect the welfare of the horse primarily, and with due reason as the world is watching our sport and any form of cruelty perceived or otherwise will be jumped upon.
But it’s also there to prevent greed.
With prizemoney in NSW continuing to spiral upwards making this one of the greatest hotbeds to race a horse anywhere in the world, it is to stop trainers flogging the guts out of their horses knowing they will pick up prizemoney even if the horse races badly.
TAB Country meetings pay out $500 for horses finishing 7th to 10th, which just means of you have a fit horse who competes, you could just keep sending it around and around to pick up losing prizemoney cheques.
Well, that was before.
Saying that, 5 starts within a 30-days period is still a lot of racing. Not many have the constitution for it. Old Annandale Lass did, and has. A couple of times during her career she had 7 starts within a 6-week period and she is sitting now on 96 starts for $249,000.
She nearly always collects cheques and during those two times when she raced a lot over 6 weeks, she picked up money every run.
The second rule is a good one re the trialling if having a year off.
Punters need to know about form and both these rules she be adopted nation-wide.
At present they are just in NSW.
