Just when I thought the well was running dry on appropriate song names the BHA come along and give me an absolute gift in the shape 1990s Wirral-ites The Coral's catchy Brit Poppy ditty.
Kelso is a great track, attracting crowds way beyond expectations, given it's an hour away from any major city. The redevelopment of the track continues apace and they work incredibly hard to get punters through the door, recognising the importance of the live aspect as, not only an income stream, but a way of attracting new people to the sport.
Against this backdrop it's incredibly disappointing, therefore, that they are the latest victim of Premierisation. One of their biggest meetings, relegated to a start that people my age more associate with Tiswas and Swap Shop than with the thunder of hooves. An 11:10 start and a reduction to 6 races is poor reward for a course that invests so much time and energy in attracting the punters of today and tomorrow. Faced with the choice of either a pre 11am start time or a reduction in the number of races they, correctly in my opinion, opted for the latter. This was to enable the protected window from 2pm - 4pm to "tell the story", a euphemism for "extend the betting window".
To paraphrase Viz, imagine my surprise when the Premier meetings started at 12:15 meaning that most of the Kelso offering "clashed" with the Golden Child(ren) of Premier meetings anyway - you know the ones - you can tell they're "Premier" by the badge that is just about legally distinct enough from the footy one to avoid infringement, but similar enough so we all know what it is. So one of Kelso's best meetings shoved forward to a red eye time, with fewer races, and the result is that 2/3 of the races clash anyway. All pain, no gain. Kelso "Premierised" if you will- and that's not a word either.
It's also important to mention that we're in Scotland and it's November. This meeting was unaffected but, you know, it's Scotland in November. That extra hour to 90 minutes could be the difference between a meeting going ahead and an abandonment due to frost.
It's hard enough in winter to get crowds without start times more aligning with the circadian rhythms of a lark than with your average fiver each way punter, especially at a track where, by it's very geography, is likely to involve more travel than most before adding in the additional risk of Jack Frost in Scotland coming into play. The Sunday night misadventure was shelved very quickly, despite chucking disproportionate amounts of prize money and free tickets at it, one can only hope a similar level of sense will, finally, be seen here before we drive away even more core fans.
So, as promised, here is the comparison to last year
2024 2023
Bookmakers in attendance 20 29
Bets struck (slips) 517 598
Cash bets 5521 8357
I don't know what the attendance was and those figures will be out in the next few weeks. I don't know if any offers were made over and above the usual ticket prices as per the Sunday night trial earlier in the year.
Generally speaking we were relieved as the business held up better than expected. We think the decision to start post 11am was absolutely the correct one and will have helped. The downside to that was one fewer race to ensure the first race wasn't 10:40 or so. Bookmaker numbers down by a third which contributed to business levels, per bookmaker, holding up as well. With the same number of bookmakers as last year we'd estimate 400 slips for around £4000 which is just on the edge of workable when this meeting, historically, has been very good. The total cash taken was well down but, trying to be fair, the slip numbers give a better indication of turnover rather than cash.
I would suspect a lot of pre booked tickets may have been booked "blind" without realising the start time- the concern being that crowds may drop should the start time remain the same. As I've said before, it's very, very easy to lose people from fixtures and very, very hard to get them back again.
Anecdotally there were a lot of grumbles but, let's be fair, we are famous for a good old grumble. I am trying to be as objective as possible but have enough self awareness to know that I have a pre conceived viewpoint which I am trying not not let affect my summary.
So, to business. Steve has a birthday so Simon stepped into the breach for the early start. I double checked the timing of Steve's last birthday, just in case, but it appeared to have been a similar date last year;
1) Bit of a nothing sort of book. For most of the betting it looked like we were going to be "stuck" with the drifting jolly, Tommys Law but a late flurry meant we got it back to a nil niller, albeit we'd have preferred an early flurry before the drift to keep some more value in the book. Bel Amigo and, commentator's nightmare, Canunclecani the ones we didn't want, and we started with a modest enough win on Lunar Chief, doubled up by the unlaid forecast.
2) Gold des Bois battered into favouritism on course and off, halved in price and a value free book. We sometimes win on those. We didn't. Race 1 profit gone and a bit more.
3) Stuck into the jolly, Luckie Seven for the max along with perennial Scottish favourite The Navigator and got our full reward with 2nd in Forged Well being, more or less, the best result in the book. Places were kind and we were very nicely ahead.
4) Another race, another jolly, Choose A Copper, in the book, with Half Shot and Ned Tanner rounding out the bogeys. A nice win on 2nd favourite Breakdance Kid which had done all its shortening before we'd even put a price up. We weren't desperately disappointed to have it on the profit side of the ledger given it had been bet off the boards before the opening show. We sniffed a decent day despite nothing outside the top two in the market prevailing so far.
5) They love a Lucinda horse at Kelso and they loved Starlyte. Backed and backed. Went off co favourite of 3 in our book and broke our hearts. I did get the opportunity to knuckle my own head with every bet on Marty McFly along with the obligatory "McFly, McFly". If you're tempted to tell me it was George and not Marty that was the subject of Biff's ire then there is an "unfollow" button conveniently located somewhere on this page. Simon didn't have a clue what I was on about and wore an expression that flitted between disgust and bewilderment, but anyone 50+ raised a smile. That just upset him more.
6) See race 2. Lucinda joining the smashed up, gagged up hit parade as our day took another backward step to finish.
We ended up winning small and felt like we'd dodged our fair share of bullets. When you fire up Excel at the end of the year and see a modest win here, you move on but it's the ones you don't do your conkers on when you easily could which are just as important as the monster winning days.
That's us now until we venture even further south to Newcastle for the Fighting Fifth at the end of the month. Until then...
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