Posted by TMcC on May 10, 2009, 12:22 am, in reply to "Thanks to the surrey union team"
86.27.168.50
Congratulations to both Pete[Baldrick as us senior p-to-p jocks know him as] and Cynthia on their championships respectively, very well done !
This sport can ill afford nagative people passing judgement on a variety of problems we all face !
We [organisers] have worked tirelessly throughout the year to provide Race Tracks and opportunities for those involved withtin the sport to appreciate, however, there is always a minority who think that, things should be better! I acknowledge full well that we should progress, however, it does not help by either insulting or deminishing the REAL efforts made by ALL those concerned who supply a product and service that will, end up like Foxhunting if we are all not very CAREFUL ! We all need to stick together or we will end up , like the Torys or even now Labour in the future.
When i went to Pepper Harrow as a rider, i was battling the championship out with, Paul Hacking, Adam Welsh, Andrew Hickman, Chris Newport etc, so regards to why we don't have the runners that we used to have, i think is pretty obvious - we are in the South-East approximately 100 horses less , so how do we attract owners of Point -to Point horses - more prize money, but still remaining Amateur status? This could still be done, if we all thought about it properly !When i was on the Amateur Riders committee 20 years ago, a certain Mr Richard Russell [ Teaplanter] said this sport was healthy enough, and none of the sports popularity would be lost. In my own words then, i said that this sport would still be Amateur if we all raced for £500 per race, if you took into account the real costs involved, from an owners point of view, but he was having none of it !
So here we are, we have a wonderful sport that is either creating negativity or insults to those who provide the most,Owners, trainers, jockeys, organisers and all those, which there are hundreds of,Free volunteers!
If everyone sticks together we will try to find a solution and way forward, if we don't we will all lose out, i hope we can have another meeting in order to thrash our problems out, and move to the future !Godstone, Pepper Harrow and all those courses who have suffered a lack of water, have done the very best they can, during an exceptionally dry spring - still could be worse if it had pissed down, loads of runners, No paying public, i remember Godstone 2007, so what is it the Bookmakers really want ?
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