Always back the horse named self-interest, son. It'll be the only one trying
When he was 21 Irish jockey Luke P Dempsey told a racing paper that he could ride comfortably and 9 stone 12 pound, which for those unfamiliar with the metric system is 62.8kg. Men don’t grow any skinnier as they get older, so it seemed a Herculean effort for now 28-year-old to get down to […]
What’s the world coming to when jockeys have to be paid to promote racing? They used to do it for free, as part of their commitment to the game. Not Willie Pike though. They say he wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning unless there was an earn in it. There certainly was one […]
The Grubby Day appeal kicks off. Kerry O’Brien as usual chairs the panel. Diane Condon and Lindsay Hicks are the other two members of the panel. Darryl Griffiths is the Steward’s representative. He has some yank woman named Ballard assisting him. I assume she’s a lawyer. Grubby appears unrepresented. O’Brien tells Grubby to ask questions […]
Ballard the lawyer with the yank accent kicks off the QRIC’s case. She said that Grubby’s fine was well inside the range, and quotes a number of cases to support her argument. Then she starts raving. Judge O’Brien jumps in. doesn’t seem to know who Grubby is. He keeps calling him jockey Butler. O’Brien tells […]
Darryl Griffiths kicks off. He says that Grubby was definitely sighted at the track at around 1pm and then took off. In many years of Stewarding he had never had a rider leave without telling the Stewards. Griffiths then raises the elephant in the room. He tells the panel that the booze bus arrived and […]
Grubby Day tells the panel that he usually sweats in the spa at home, but Ewan being in the middle of nowhere (as he describes it) there were no facilities of that kind. So he had to go old school by wrapping himself in plastic and hitting the street to go for a run in […]
Justice O’Brien begins to deliver the Panel’s verdict. He starts by saying it is appropriate to read Grubby’s appeal submission in full. It’s much as we’ve already reported. O’Brien then launches into the Stewards decision to charge Grubby and find him guilty. He explains that Grubby doesn’t have to prove himself innocent, the onus is […]
No-one can ever accuse the QRIC Stewards of being consistent. This was vividly illustrated on Melbourne Cup day when Five riders at five different Queensland tracks were pinched for failing to fully ride their mounts out to the finish line. Remarkably each received a different penalty for the exact same offence. How can that be? […]
Declan Bates is taking his sacking as the rider of Pride Of Jenni by owner Tony Ottobre graciously, and is acting like the perfect gentleman about it all, but in my view its bullshit and utterly unfair. It was Ottobre who told the press that Jenni would be ridden more conservatively in the Cox Plate, […]
If you’d backed the heavily supported second favorite Plymouth in the 2nd race on Cup day you’d either want to put your head in your hands and cry, or jump the mounting yard fence and throttle Blake Shinn, or maybe even do both. This horse was an absolute certainty beaten. He got stuck in three […]
