Steve, you said
"Well, as with thousands of other people, my one and only contact with racing is the Grand National. I have a little flutter every year, but I think I'm packing it in after this race. Synchronised, a horse that was clearly unsettled at the start, threw his jockey before the race had even started. He was then allowed to delay the start of the race by about ten minutes while he was recaptured and calmed down. I'm a Dutchman if this didn't unsettle all the other horses and riders who were raring to go. Synchronised and his jockey should have been told to bugger off - immediately disqualified. As that would have amounted to about a million bets being repaid, I can imagine why he was allowed to continue. There was then the fiasco of two false starts and a tragi-comic session with two blokes struggling to refix a crude tape - in the richest race in the world! - across the start line. The horses were clearly spooked by all the loud-hailer shouting and bawling from officials at the start line while all that lot was going on. Everything felt wrong about the race from the word go, and, of course, two horses had to be put down, both victims of Becher's, a "drop-fence" lower on its landing side than on its taking-off side."
you said you only bet once a year, you also said two horses had to be put down as a result of Bechers, that is incorrect, THATS WHY I CALL YOUR COMMENT UNINFORMED, It is also uninformed because these horses are horses that are very experienced race horses they are used to crowd noise and have encountered false starts before.
you can interpret my comments about being uninformed how you like, thats your problem.