Always back the horse named self-interest, son. It'll be the only one trying
This is what Ben Hope told the Stewards when asked last night to explain his plunge horse Pure Courage’s massive turnaround in form and 5 second improvement on his PB at his 58th start. If the stipes believe that then they must also believe in fairies. Hope forgot to mention the shampoo and the sand. […]
The Wooden Beach magic worked again. Pure Courage, the hitherto walker that we told you last night had been backed as if unbeatable in the 1st at Addington today after having been transferred to beach trainer Ben Hope just 3 1/2 weeks ago, did as predicted and landed the money. The horse ran 5 seconds […]
See the $2.70 favourite on the NZ TAB to win race 1 at Addington tonight? Pure Courage is his name, and he has been smashed in the betting. They started getting into him when the markets opened and they haven’t stopped. But why? This horse has atrocious form, just 2 wins from 57 starts, the last […]
Further to our earlier story about leading Kiwi driver John ‘Lurch’ Dunn pulling a sickie at the Ashburton race meeting in Sunday because someone tipped him off about the integrity folk being at the track with their breath testing kit, the red hot mail from the South Island is that the man was in fact […]
We stand corrected in our criticism of the abandonment of the Ashburton race meeting on Sunday, after a reader has brought to our attention that it was not the state of the track that caused the races to be called off, but rather 200km winds that ripped through the Canterbury region, making in dangerously unsafe […]
As we have written a few times, leading NZ driver John Dunn seems to make a habit in recent times of calling in sick to Sunday meetings after having a big drink at the pub or stables the night before. We’ve lost track of the number of times it’s happened now, but it’s far too […]
One of the most successful owners in harness racing history Ian Dobson has passed away at the grand old age of 90. Mr Dobson, a self-made man who started with nothing and through a combination of early frugality, brains and hard work went on to become quite a wealthy man, owned a remarkable 31 Group […]
Two of the three TAB race cards in New Zealand in the past two days have kicked off on Good 4 tracks then been abandoned mid-meeting, one in Rotorua in the north island and other down in the south at Ashburton. In neither case was there any significant rainfall that would cause this to occur, […]
The Kiwi stewards and integrity board are far more strict on the application of the whip rule than their cousins over the ditch here in Australia. That was proven again on Friday night at Addington when Mark Purdon copped an 8 meeting suspension for using the whip on his pacer Chase A Dream with more […]
What you see above is from a story in yesterday’s NZ Herald by the doyen of Australasian harness racing writers Mick Guerin, the man of a million facial expressions. Trainer Matthew White doesn’t work out of Cambridge, and hasn’t for some time now. These days White trains at Clevedon, 2 hours to the north. You’d […]
