Magdeburg is one of the racecourses that has seen the greatest upswing in Germany in recent years. Thanks to the top work of President Heinz Baltus and his extremely committed team, the racing programme here has been constantly improved. As is well known, they have even been offering a group race at the Herrenkrug since this year. They are also exemplary when it comes to the guaranteed payouts in the four-horse race and offer sums that many large organisers do not dare to offer. And PMU races have also long become a permanent feature.
Therefore, the criticism we make in the following, which concerns several tracks and not only Magdeburg, is constructive and is not intended to diminish the success at other levels. In the season finale on 10 September, the first part of the event, which was then followed by a longer break, was delayed considerably early on. Annoying, because PMU was in the boat, and for the French, punctuality is the top priority in order not to disappear from the screen. Again and again there were riderless horses or stays at the starting gate that did not want to end. And it was exactly the same on the previous race day.
Sometimes, and this is also the case elsewhere, one simply starts far too late with the impressions, which are then not pursued consistently enough. If you follow it on the stream, you need a lot of patience. We ourselves, in order to watch a race we were particularly interested in, watched for a quarter of an hour until the stage had finally started.
We want to take the start helpers in our stride here, they do a hard job for little money, but better training in advance and precise allocation of tasks and punctuality would be appropriate. Baden-Baden or Munich could be an example, the work done by the team there is first class and usually very well timed. Hope remains for improvement in 2023.
