Always back the horse named self-interest, son. It'll be the only one trying
Heidi Whalley is a passionate young horse thoroughbred owner, strapper, and mother who is happily married to jockey James Orman, and madly in love with him to boot. Or she was until Saturday anyway. A strapper that is. Now Heidi is a horse trainer, and she will become a damn fine one too. Reachforthestars – […]
A fortnight ago we wrote about the amazing run of success being enjoyed by trot trainer Tim Williams, and told you how he had improved a slow old horse named Manly Mach so much that he had taken 5.6 seconds off it’s previous best time when winning a race with it at Menangle. Well, in […]
I was talking to an encyclopedia of Australian racing and world breeding last night, and he told me about the day that Surround won the Cox Plate, and only minutes later the world turned black. It was a solar eclipse. I remember it. It was the biggest thing that had Geebung since the polo game. […]
This is recent CCTV camera from a Rockhampton pub. The bloke who gets whacked is Nathan ‘Grubby’ Day. He’s the good guy here. The bad guy is trainer Jamie McConaghy, the fella who hits him, gets ejected, and then comes back for a second crack while the bouncer’s back is turned. How it unfolds is […]
I have written of my admiration for the skills of NSW trot trainer Troy Williams before. On Tuesday at Menangle the master trainer Williams impressed me even more. Manly Mach used to be a cat, much like the footy team that is named after. Aaron Bain couldn’t get it going in Adelaide, Ben Yole wouldn’t […]
Des Nolan (2nd from right) is a farrier who runs a family owned horse products supply business in South Australia. He is also father of a young daughter, and reportedly a devout family man who ferries his daughter to and from school, music lessons, sports training and games, and play dates. A normal person would […]
Terry French was just a no-name battling trainer with a poor strike rate until young trainer Alex Ashwood – the man with the highest strike rate of runners to winners in Victoria this season – started dating his daughter. In the four seasons between 2016/17 and 2019/20* French trained just 21 winners in total, at […]
Alex Ashwood at 34.8% has the best winning strike rate of any trainer in Victoria, better than Emma Stewart, better than David Aiken, better than Andy Gath, better than Anthony Butt and Sonia Smith, better than anyone at all. In fact Ashwood’s win rate is so impressive that he would damn near be a certainty […]
Over the past couple of years Brian Portelli has emerged from relative obscurity to become one of NSW leading trainers, and now boasts a stable full of young stars headed by Smaltese and Tasty Delight, who although only two and three respectively have won almost $400 000 between them, with the promise of many more […]
Miss Serena is a four-year-old mare who started her racing life in Western Australia. She had sixteen starts there for just one win and two placings. That sole win was in a lowly late season 2-year-old affair at Northam in a time of 2.01.5. The horses Miss Serena beat in that race have gone on […]
