By MIKE DILLON
Something needs to be done urgently about penetrometers.
It would be difficult to confuse punters more than they were on Saturday.
The penetrometer reading for Ellerslie was 2.2, generally thought to be firm, but in fact a comfortable track for all horses if the reading is accurate. It was and
the track raced perfectly all day.
The reading at Hastings was 2.4, which you imagined would be with a nice amount of give in it. Punters could perhaps look towards horses that act on easy tracks.
Wrong. The jockeys in Race 1 complained to chief stipendiary steward Noel McCutcheon that the Hastings surface was extremely hard and McCutcheon passed the information on to the public via the press.
The question has to be asked - where does the inaccuracy come from?
Another point. New Zealand punters bet large amounts on Australian racing and the reverse trend is becoming increasingly popular, yet the two have different penetrometer reading systems.
How could that have been allowed to happen in the first place?
We don't even have the same manual readings for tracks. Australia has hard, good, dead, slow and heavy and we have firm, easy, soft and heavy.
