FOR THE TIMES, THEY ARE A CHANGIN’
In the immediate aftermath of Black Caviar’s (Bel Esprit) Lightning Stakes (Gr 1, 1000m) win last Saturday it was easy to overlook the time when it was semaphored.
The55.53 was just outside the course record of 55.50 held by Special (Habituate), who established the record when winning the Lightning Stakes back in 1988 and merely seemed to emphasise what a great run the mare had just delivered.
Afterwards there was some discussion and in a conversation with Racing Victoria’s General manger Racing and Chief Handicapper Greg Carpenter, we established that Special had ‘probably’ run 55.49, but that in those days the times were recorded in 1/10ths and rounded up.
I have to say I was fairly pragmatic about it, no-one else seemed to be too fussed and that was that. I was aware that the track had since been re-modelled and is fundamentally different.
The terrain is different, the camber is different, the track is different.
Having conversed with Hong Kong-based form analyst and respected writer Murray Bell on this I was struck by his passionate response. “The ‘new terrain’ idea has merit but Black Caviar’s time deserves record status for an even more compelling reason -
IT MIGHT ACTUALLY BE THE FASTEST 1000m EVER RUN THERE!”
Mr Bell is not one to trifle with, mainly because he is usually right, but his response and the growing groundswell of curiosity got me thinking that perhaps we should be more diligent in our attention to race and track record times.
Courses are changing constantly, in the case of Flemington, almost totally, so it does stand to reason that times will be different. Perhaps not faster, perhaps not anymore slow but they will be different because the track is different and so the record times should be adjusted accordingly and suitably recognised.
This is not to say that the VRC or Racing Victoria is wrong, I am just calling for a need to recognise times post track reconstruction at Flemington to be acknowledged alongside the earlier records.
That is not to denigrate the past but to recognize the current. The recording mechanism has also changed so the whole picture has changed. This does not make what has been recognised in the past as all wrong.
At the time they were seen as correct and they were, but, as Bill Heslop of Porpoise Spit fame constantly said, ‘you can’t stop progress’ and even if I have my rose coloured spectacles on most days there is more than a grain of truth to this.
Special ran the record for the old 1000m course and Black Caviar should hold the record for the new course
The final verse of the Bob Dylan’s classic ‘For the Times They are a Changin’ goes like this,
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.
How true you are Bob and how right you are MRB
