The eyes of the sporting nation were on Ipswich yesterday, as a race that no-one bar committed punters would ever have known was being run became one of the most watched sporting events in the land, and all because the favourite Sacred Oath was part-owned by a national hero who we lost in terribly unexpected circumstances this week.
Tragedy piled upon disaster when Warnie’s horse got knocked into the rail and lost his rider Ryan Maloney before they had even gone a furlong in the race, and ugly scenes erupted in the aftermath when Sacred Oath’s managing owner Jarred Magnabosco – a VIP Manager (read lost his rag and went up and started abusing Ben Thompson in the mounting yard, and blaming him for the near fall.
We understand that Magnabosco was upset and emotional about our loss of SK Warne – the whole of Australia is – but it is no excuse for running up to a lovely, decent and honest young man like Ben Thompson and doing what he did.
Can you imagine how the kid felt being blamed for this?
Put yourself in Ben Thompson’s shoes.
How would you feel if some prick whose day job is trying to suck more juice out of a punt addicted lemon – a bloke who had met the great man just once, and sat six seats away from him – came up to you and in in full public view basically blamed you for spoiling Warnie’s last good-bye, and shattering every Aussie’s dream.
Ben Thompson is from Melbourne, same as Warnie, and like all of us grew up idolising the Sheik of Tweak.
Even more so, his dad is a greyhound trainer who is great mates with Warnie’s much loved captain Ricky ‘Punter’ Pontinga mad dogs man, and both Thompson Sr have met and spent more time with the great man than any jumped up bookie’s clerk and spruiker like Magnabosco ever would have even if Warnie had lived to a thousand.
Do you really reckon the kid tried to knock his hero’s horse down, or that he did it deliberately?
For fuck sake, don’t be a dickhead.
Thompson’s horse was drawn out wide from a start jumping on to a sharp turn, and he did what he is paid as a professional sportsman to do and booted it out of the gate so he could zoom across and get a position before he got trapped out in the boonies on the first bend. As he did it he looked and looked and looked, and tried to make sure there was enough room.
What young Ben Thompson didn’t know – and couldn’t have known unless he had studied the trials and race replays as studiously as if he was preparing for the Melbourne Cup – is that Warnie’s horse was as green as grass and had a tendency to turn it’s head out away from the rail, and the horse in between he and it The Grey Panther was even greener and had a bad trait of both turning it’s head into the left, and of pigrooting after the start.
This hot-heated idiot of a so-called form expert Magnabosco should have known it though, because his self-proclaimed genius is in doing replays and working such things out.
If he had he would have known how the terribly timed freak racing incident occurred, which means he would not have belittled Ben Thompson by attacking him on the national stage for something he didn’t do, which says to me that he hadn’t done his form at all, and that his claim to form genius is nothing but bullshit and hot air.
However if I am wrong, and he had done the form properly, then by attacking Ben Thompson the way he did Jarred Magnabosco is nothing but un-Australian, and a downright Karmichael Hunt, with all due respect to Special K.
Here is The Grey Panther’s trial at Deagon.
See the head turning in to the right?
See him pig rooting?
Now here is Warnie’s horse Sacred Oath in his trial (below top and middle), and at his first start at Doomben (below bottom).
See his head turning out to the left on both occasions?
This is the reason for Ryan Maloney coming off at Ipswich on Warnie’s horse yesterday.
It had nothing to do with Ben Thompson coming across from the deep trying to find a forward spot.
What happened is that Thompson had two very green young horses inside him, both with early career behavioural difficulties.
As Thompson’s horse roared across they both took fright and reverted to type.
Warnie’s horse turned his head left.
The Grey Panther started pig rooting, and turned it’s head right.
Through no fault of any rider in the race, they banged heads became tangled up.
In the process of getting untangled, Tegan Harrison pulled the grey left and Ryan Maloney pulled Warnie’s horse right, and things went horribly skewiff, resulting in Maloney banging into the rail and falling off.
It’s as simple as that.
Watch.
It was a tragic accident.
But that’s racing.
It happens.
What has happened in the mounting yard at Ipswich afterward doesn’t usually though.
Jarred Magnabosco’s conduct was an absolute disgrace.
He owes Ben Thompson a huge apology for the terrible and terribly unnecessary distress that he caused him.
Do you reckon that kid is sleeping well tonight?
How bloody unfair.
Warnie would have just copped it on the chin and said that’s cricket, just like he did when he missed out on his maiden century by getting caught off a clear no ball.
Shit happens.
Such is life.
What a shame that Shane Warne’s has been twisted in such an ugly way, by a self-obsessed fool who just doesn’t get it.
It wasn’t your fault Ben Thompson, and don’t for a moment believe that it was.
My old man always told never listen to idiots, or let the drivel that they spout affect you.
It was damn good advice.
Make sure you take it.