Racing goes to the Dogs? comments please.

Forget racing going to the dogs...

news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Showbiz-News/P...Royal_Melbourne_Show

Mickey, be careful I bought one, was told it was a flying machine, it caught swine flu, must say magic bacon rolls.

So would the better horses be penalised for winning their heats? or would the handicap marks say the same from r1 thru to the final?

Would maybe encourage horses/jockeys to just do enough to get through to the next round to give themselves an advantage?

"Therefore I was very surprised to see that looking back at figures over the past 20 years, that the number of horses in training at the highest point was in 1997 with 9250, while the last 2 seasons of 2007/8 has us at the lowest point of 5700."

This quote sums up the state of South African racing. There is NO way that our racing can be improving if we've reduced our racing stock by nearly 40%. If we want to produce world class horses and improve the quality of our top races, we need to increase our stock, not reduce it. Hasn't anyone noticed how shockingly poor the depth of our big races has become?