July report from Board Rep

Hi All,

Apologies for no reports the last 2 months but HRNZ were going to do a summary of the board meetings which was going to be circulated.

 

I think that you would have caught up with the new points system being trialed in the North Island effective 1.08.16. I think that this will be a great concept and at the end of the day horses will hopefully race like for like. We have a log jam in the co c1 grades with a lot of horses having to have many starts before they even win a race. When you have trainers saying  that they have had a win with a horse but have to tell the owners who are that excited with the win and where to from here,  that their horse is not competitive  and has to be sacked. I think this system should extend a lot of horses racing careers.  I think that we have all had some criticism or questions of the current system so I am really hoping that this system will help all horses including the elite. I appreciate it is very hard to get a perfect system for all horses but at the end of the day every horses should race like for like .. Lets try this system and see what happens.

The racing board have recently submitted  their Statement of Intent for the next 12 months which is not showing much growth over the next 12 months . They are projecting that the payout to the 3 codes   will remain the same. A joint effort between the Harness, Thoroughbred and grey hound codes have gone back to the racing board  saying this is not good enough and for  the 3 codes to remain competitive  they must have their funding allocations increased . Costs are being monitored and reduced where they can.  However the racing board are not in a good financial  position because they  have some major capital expenditure over the next few years  which has to found from some where . I will keep you posted on progress. From an owners perspective stakes have to increase  to keep these owners  in the business and bring more owners in  which in turn would increase product.

I don’t have a lot to report this month because  the board has a lot of governance issues which do not directly effect the owners. However if you have any issues I am prepared to listen to your concerns and raise  them   but more importantly I would welcome suggestions for improvement and in particular how we can increase the number of horses being bred  and how we can increase the  wagering turnover  which hopefully could get ratified at board level . The industry does face some hugh challengers over the next few years ,

Annual conference is to be held on the weekend of the 29th & 30th  July  2016 with the annual awards being held that Saturday evening . I will provide another report after the conference.

If anyone wants to email me my email address is gh.crawford@xtra.co.nz

Regards

 

Greg Crawford