KEY POINTS:
So Racing Board boss Graeme Hansen wants to get the feel for some of his customers' opinions before changing the rules about what's paid back to punters after an abandoned Pick6.
He only needed to be at Te Rapa on Saturday. It wouldn't have taken long.
He'd have
got all he wanted between 5.15pm and 5.30pm when it was announced Race 10 had been abandoned and punters would get only the face value of their ticket after five races of the Pick6 had already been run.
To be fair to Hansen and his board, a change seemed obvious after the exact same situation at Riccarton only 14 days earlier.
Alternatives were being looked at and no one could have foreseen that the same thing could happen two weeks later.
That was a 100,000 to 1 chance.
Hansen said yesterday the Racing Board was looking at what the rest of the world does in similar situations.
Without trying to be clever, is that really necessary?
Surely the only requirement is that the payout has to be parallel to the level of success a punter has achieved on a Pick6 ticket at the time an abandonment is announced.
In other words, if five legs have been run, 80 per cent of the pool is divided among those with five winners.
If there is an abandonment with two races left to run, something like 64 per cent could be paid out to those live with four winners.
Slide that scale down to where perhaps 15 to 20 per cent is paid out to live tickets if the Pick6 is abandoned after leg one.
Punters are receiving a sum commensurate with what they have achieved.
Surely that makes more sense than the current system of giving punters only their investment money back, including those who picked no winners of the first five races at Riccarton or on Saturday.
That's absurd and morally bankrupt.
No argument could justify that being retained.
Hansen revealed that a previous Racing Board had looked at the matter and decided to stay with our current ridiculous rules.
You'd like to know why.
The other issue about the causative factors of the abandonment - which would not be so serious if the Pick6 payment was fixed - are also being looked at by New Zealand Throughbred Racing.
CEO Paul Bittar favours shortening mid-winter racing from 10 races to nine races.
Early on Saturday the Waikato Racing Club was given the option of switching the timing of the last race from its 5.10pm timeslot to 10 or 15 minutes earlier.
But that's a flawed system.
When Race 9 was run there was no suggestion of the light being a problem for jockeys one race later.
Even if the decision had been made at that late point to bring the race forward, how could you guarantee the electrical storm and heavy rain which caused the blackout would not have hit at 4.55pm and been perfectly fine to race at 5.10pm.
The heavy black clouds that accompanied the storm did the damage to the light - not closing darkness - and how can you have rules and regulations to allow for that.
It's impossible.
Fix the Pick6 payouts and there would be few ripples with a future abandonment.
* A decision will be made tomorrow on whether jockey Trudy Thornton will be charged for her angry comments on Trackside Television as she came back to the birdcage moments after the abandonment was announced.
"I'm pissed off ... " she said to the camera, slating stipendiary stewards for not declaring an abandonment before the horses left the birdcage.
Of course there were the usual cries that jockeys are pampered pussycats and that they should have agreed to ride in Race 10.
Always remember, they are the only ones being asked to put their lives on the line and if they say it's too dangerous, who are we to say it's not.
