Always back the horse named self-interest, son. It'll be the only one trying
The QRIC Stewards team performed much needed without notice drug and alcohol testing at the Mackay racetrack this morning. Or they tried to anyway. No-one was there. Mackay is usually a bustling training center in the early hours before dawn when the QRIC team arrived at 4.3oam, but it was like a ghost town as […]
Here are two different views from readers about the Boort Cup fiasco on Sunday. It seems that there is more to the whole thing than meets the eye. Hi Archie, Just reading your post on the Boort Cup, perhaps stewards have taken no action against Ewa Justice as they belatedly realised the sprint lane they […]
It was back to the dark ages at Oamaru in New Zealand yesterday, when in farcical scenes an entire harness racing meeting was conducted without either photo finish equipment or electronic timing. Oamaru is no hick backwater joint. It’s the largest town in North Otago and is only 80km south of Phar Lap’s birthplace of […]
The cyclone has played havoc with the Queensland racing schedule. The dogs and trots are all off until Tuesday. Knowing how low lying Albion Park is it’s likely to go well underwater, which means we may not even race then. The gallops in the South-East corner are all off until next week too, with the […]
You need to watch this one twice to get it. The back marker is a horse called Efficiently, trained and driven by a small-timer named Des Nolan, with whom I am not familiar. He certainly doesn’t drive much, or I would be. I’m not sure if it was Nolan’s money or others, but Efficiently has […]
A licensee who was close up to the action at Marburg on Sunday has written in to say that he clearly observed that Neilson’s horse ALWAYSMISSINGYOU paced roughly in the approach to the start, and said that if he had chased the horse off the gate it would have galloped. The observer also said that as far […]
We don’t write a lot about Northern Territory racing, but given that we have been railing against jockeys that fail to fully ride their mounts out to the finish, and the fact that the latest example of it cost one of our readers a juicy First 4 on the weekend, we thought we would tell […]
US stud Darby Dan Farms has introduced an initiative that may prove hugely attractive to Australian breeders, particularly smaller broodmare owners at the middle to lower end of the spectrum. The stud – that stands 12 stallions at service fees between $2500 and $15 000 – is offering its client what it calls a Breeder […]
Below is the Stewards report into Collective Works disqualification from its win in Sunday’s Boort Cup (see earlier story). What is quite amazing about the whole thing is that while the horse was disqualified because its driver Ewa Justice broke the rules, Justice herself was not charged with any offence despite having already been ruled […]
Queensland jockey Nathan ‘Grubby’ Day set what is believed to be a new world record yesterday at Ladbrokes Cannon Park in Cairns. First Jockey Ever to be Suspended Three Times in Five Hundred Meters. It happened in race 5 where he was riding Spirit Meister in a Class 6 Plate over 950m. All the suspensions […]
