Things that annoy you about horseracing

I’d watch a bit of horse-racing now and again but I’m far from a committed enthusiast, more a watcher of big events (or a gambler on lesser events out of weekend boredom).

Anyway there’s a few things that piss me off about this sport, most of which are to do with terminology etc.

  1. Why does everyone accept the readymade excuse after a poor performance that the horse “scoped badly?” Every time a favourite is shit it’s the same fucking reason and you can just imagine the trainer giggling away to himself as the owners walk away muttering their thanks regardless. And they continue to spend big money on their superstar horse because he’s so fucking good he just keeps on scoping poorly. Gullible eejits.

  2. All the other excuses put together: cheek pieces, tongue straps, prefers going right handed, etc just sound ridiculous. Blinkers I can just about understand. Going right handed or left handed sounds like absolute nonsense - surely a good jockey would sort that out and get him going the right way or a trainer might, God forbid, have him running the same way he’ll be racing next.

  3. This utter nonsense about Ruby rode a 200-1 treble or Willie trained a 512-1 four timer. And then you look at the card and you see Ruby had 5 rides and Mullins had 10 horses out. So they’re just random selected bets based on the outcome afterwards. They’re no more or less likely than any other random sereis of events. You don’t hear after soccer matches that Hooper got a 12th minute goal which was 125-1 or that Celtic won 2-1 with Hooper scoring first which was 33-1.

You know the way that there is a bunch of horses, and a pile of lads sit on top of them, and they race the horses to see which one wins?

Yeah…

Well, that’s the bit I have trouble with!!

1 Like

Oh this thread is right up my street :clap:

To understand the going left or right handed phenomenon you’d need to understand the physiology of the horse. At the canter and gallop the horse leads with one or other foreleg, if he is going left handed you want him leading with the left foreleg and vice versa. Some horses just don’t run as well when asked to run off the left foreleg as the right etc. Simple as that and there are slews of examples of horses who acted far better going one way or the other. Similarly with different courses, some horses love them and some hate them.

My own personal favourite is when a mare runs badly and it’s announced how she was found to be in season post race. However 10 minutes beforehand she was grand. :lol:

not so different to 400m and 200m distances suiting right-footed athletes which is why races are always anti-clockwise. It is a particular problem indooors.

I agree wholeheartedly with this one, always irks me when I hear it on a sports report, Colm Murray tends to always mention it.

The entire association of flat racing and all the money driven shite that comes with it. And then a NH horse beats a former “champion 2 year old” :smiley:

  • Fellas getting carried away with certain horses that the media blow up, make them out as superstars, say they are unbeatable etc.
  • You hear or read of a “hot tip” for a horse. The same horse could be running at Cheltenham and could be favourite for the race.
  • When bookie representatives are interviewed before a race meeting - Hayley O’Connor, Leon Blanche, Kate Miller etc. “Well we have seen some shrewd money come for horse X in the 3.30. He opened at 6/1 and is now a best priced 11/2. We have also seen significant support for horse Y and he has been well backed from 25/1 into 20/1. I like horse Z in the 2.00, he is on the drift slightly from 5/4 this morning, at 6/4 now he would represent a bit of value for me.” Fuck off.
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:smiley: :clap:

Shrewd money / Smart money usually grates the hell out of me!

  • Paddy Power announcing after a large gamble that they’ve been cleaned out to the tune of a 6 or 7 figure sum when they’ve probably only had a 4 figure total liability and laid most of it off along the way.

Clare Balding

A Balding lesbian who likes riding in leather boots. I thought they only had that in South Park.

What annoys me are the cunts who don’t know one end of a horse from another but talk about horses as if they were reared on the Curragh

Kildare

Hugh Taylor. He used to be a good judge and i enjoyed listening to him but Im now convinced he works for a bookie.

Taylor is great on the flat in fairness, but you couldn’t be following him. He tips up something at 20/1 and if you wanted a bet on it you’d have to take the 6/1 the bookies are now offering. He’s not nearly as good at NH, in fact he should be given a break outside the flat season…

The people who are involved with and the people who follow the “sport” they are a bigger bunch of knobends than the smugby cunts. FACT!

Hard to argue with that, especially those who work in the industry…

What a shout :clap:

RTT hates the horsey crowd.
His favourite night of the year is after the local point to point when he gets loaded drunk and abuses people involed with the hunt.

  • It annoys me, like in the Superbowl, that the owner gets the trophy after a win. The horse should get a medal or cup rather than the owner.

  • Some of the talk about ‘form being franked’ annoys me. Horse 1 beating Horse 2 in November in Gowran Park and Horse 2 beating Horse 3 in December in Leopardstown doesn’t definitively mean Horse 1 will beat Horse 3 in Cheltenham in March. Similarly Chelsea beating Arsenal in November and Arsenal beating Manchester United in December doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a sure thing that Chelsea will beat Manchester United some months later.