ROYALE HARVEST FOR THE PADDOCK

Quality mare ROYALE HARVEST has been forced to the paddock for reasons which seem quite bizarre. The mare who has amassed nearly $240,000 and who has finished in the first three in more than 50% of her starts is the victim of her own consistency and poor race conditions.

Without blowing my own bag, I reckon I have placed this mare to perfection throughout her career to help win the most stake money for her loyal group of owners The Amelia Park Syndicate. Unfortunately, all that good placement counts for nothing when it comes to carnival time and the conditions of some of the races programmed during that time.

ROYALE HARVEST is probably one of the better mares currently racing in W.A. Unfortunately she is not quite up to the best open class sprinters racing during the carnival especially when she has to meet some quality horses on nearly equal weights because of the compressed nature of the weighting in these races. A classic example was this years Hannans Handicap. When she is nominated for mares races she is given top weight of 59.0kg or 60.0kg a weight she finds it very hard to win with.

That's all well and good in the normal run of the mill mares races throughout the year but even when it comes to the few quality mares races over the carnival with black type attached to them, she is still burdened with top weight of 58.0kg. This seems quite ridiculous that when it comes to the best races, the whole series bar one race are run under handicap conditions. That race is the LA TRICE CLASSIC run over 1800m, a distance which suits so few horses.

Surely it is time if those in charge are serious about running a series of quality mares races during the summer carnival, that they structure the conditions of the races to give the better mares racing a chance to be competitive in them instead of weighting them out of contention. All this does is give some lesser light mares the chance to earn some black type whilst forcing the better mares like ROYALE HARVEST East or to the paddock.

After looking at the options available with this mare I have decided that the best opportunity for her to earn more stake money as well as hopefully gaining some more black type along the way is in races like the Hyperion Stakes, Easter Handicap, Belmont Sprint etc.
The other option with her is to send her East however by the time she has a well deserved spell and then gets fit again, all the black type mares races have already been run in Victoria. Those races are run at set weights with penalties where the better mares are not weighted out of the listed and group races.

I know Rome wasn't built in a day and that slowly but surely, those in charge are doing their best to improve our racing. Hopefully we do not see many (any) more carnivals go by before we see this anomaly in the race conditions changed for the better.