Red Ink Rules in the Rain

We’ve got a little blase over the years with the dog ratings – the ratings consistently deliver good results and with a bit of work and analysis, many members can turn the good into great.

We’ve used the phrase “red ink” to refer to the dogs that the ratings highlight as best in a category.  It’s a quick way of spotting the runners to follow.

A red letter day!

Today was one of those days when the racing curse didn’t have a chance.

The headlines:

• 14 races at Invercargill today
• the dog with the best box speed won SIX races
• the dog with the top predictor rating won SEVEN races

Of the races won by dogs who were not top rated for box speed or the predictor, two were won by dogs with the best track and distance rating – with one of these paying $18 to win.

Red Ink?

Where does that phrase come from?  A good question!

From the practise of using red ink to denote debt or losses on financial balance sheets. Likewise, in the black for businesses that are financially solvent.

Why red ink? No one really knows.
This phrase conjures up images of inky-fingered clerks in Dickensian offices scratching in ledgers with quill pens. In fact, the term is much more recent than that. The first known citation of it is in 1907 in Montgomery Rollins’ exhaustingly titled Money and investments: a reference book for the use of those desiring information in the handling of money or the investment thereof:

Formerly it was customary, and is now with some bookkeepers, to make an entry of a loss in red ink, from whence arose the term ‘in the red’, always indicating a loss.

It’s ironic though that with the ratings, red ink is often linked to a winner as it was today.