These are alarming figures: according to the annual report of Deutscher Galopp, 2,210 horses were still in canter training in this country in 2022. In 2021, there were still 2,289 four-legged friends. The number of owners, which is then only logical, also fell from 937 in 2021 to 889. Of course, the cost explosion in all areas of life, which also affects the training and keeping costs of horses, played a role, as did the anything but exciting race prices, which are now to be raised, after all, and this continued the trend of the years before.
Lack of starters at many race organisers, even at the big meeting tracks, was the order of the day. One could feel sorry for those responsible in the secretariats. There seems to be little improvement in sight. Rather the opposite is the case. At the moment, when two sand track race days are held on two Sundays in a row, you can see that even here it is difficult to put together six or seven races.
It would be important, and this seems to have been accepted by most of the people in charge, to limit the number of races per race day. Ten, eleven or twelve races, as in the pandemic days, should remain the exception. Eight, nine races seems an ideal number. In England, the motherland of the sport, there are usually even fewer races per day.
The world is different at some hippodromes in South America, where a completely different number of horses is available. Prime examples are tracks like Santiago in Chile, where sometimes more than 20 races are held and you spend almost the entire day on the track. But that`s not possible here and it`s not a benchmark. Less is sometimes more.
The racetrack spy
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