Always back the horse named self-interest, son. It'll be the only one trying
A decade and a half ago Harness Racing New Zealand attempted to introduce a new $30 per season charge on harness racing owners to fund breeders and owner associations that only some owners and breeders belonged to and supported.. One major owner jacked up about it, and challenged it in the courts. He won. The […]
The Eureka slot race is a concept that has immediately caused a division in the harness racing industry. Buyers, owners, trainers and drivers in the main love it. Breeders – or the most vocal among them anyway – hate it. We don’t have a position either way, so we thought we would take a critical […]
The news this week is that the Spring Champion Stakes winner Profondo – the $1.9 million yearling sold at the Magic Millions Sale, the colt they called a champion – has had his Autumn carnival campaign aborted, and is being away for the Spring. If you believe that, you believe in fairies. Profondo will never […]
This is a story about the art of the spruik, and it’s master. I would have called Gai Waterhouse it’s mistress, only I am a modern new age feminist turned gender equality junkie, and Gai lays down for no-one except through marriage, love and duty, or because she wants to, and then only with Robbie. […]
Mark Buckingham, the Victorian trainer with an outstanding positive swab to Levaimsole in the NSW jurisdiction, was fined a paltry $2500 for administering a steroid to a weanling in September or October of 2020. I wrote a story critical of the light penalty, but I missed something that an eagle eyed expert reader didn’t. The […]
For a Reason has won the NSW Sire of the Year award. Why? What has For a Reason actually sired that is any good? How did he win the best stallion in NSW award? What does it say about Yirribbee stud? What does it say about the rest of the stallions in NSW? What does […]
Summit Bloodstock is Jamie Durnberger-Smith and his business partner Jake Webster. They have come from the clouds in recent years to become the biggest harness racing owners by number of horses in Australia. It has been a remarkable rise from nowhere for a couple of lads in their early 30’s, that’s for sure. As often […]
There is a little known standardbred stallion named Huntsville, who only served one season in Australia before being inexplicably banished from these shores for reasons unknown, to this author at least. That breeding season was in 2018/2019, when Huntsville served 205 mares who dropped 133 of his live foals, each of whom have just turned […]
New Zealanders who leave for Australia raise the IQ of both countries Former NZ Prime Minister Robert Muldoon and my mate Bottles This is the colt that I wrote earlier this evening about in the story A Mixed Bakers Dozen – The Top-Priced 13 Lots at the Gold Coast APG Sale Dissected The one that […]
