It was a very memorable day’s racing on Saturday with the super tough Mr Brightside winning the Group One Memsie Stakes at Caulfield, Veight blousing them in the McNeil, Remarque winning the Concorde at Rosehill and, of course, the retirement of the champ Nature Strip.
Nature Strip’s record says it all 22 wins, countless Group One successes and $21m in prizemoney. Enjoy the paddock old mate.
It’s great to see the older geldings like Nature Strip, Think it Over, Knights Order, and Eduardo still competing at nine and 10 years of age. I honestly thought that when the racing authorities banned the administration of steroids for geldings some years ago, that older geldings would disappear from the racing scene.
But not to be.
Clearly, training methods are such that older horses can be sustained, especially their joints. Water walkers, ice boots, deep sand training tracks and better feeds certainly help. Good on the old fellas.
The Old Tugger wasn’t too far off the mark in tipping Lucky Pippos neddy Zidaki to readers, it ran second at its first race start at Wyong last Friday.
While it was beaten by a pretty smart Cummings’ first starter, Lucky’s horse was very impressive in its own right. He will be winning, soon, stick with him. Great to see the Gunsynd colours go around in Sydney.
What can you say about Damien Oliver that hasn’t already been said?
Its a shame he will hang up the saddle after this year’s Perth Summer Carnival, on his home track, but what a career. He is going out on top, still riding supremely well. I’m sure he will get the send-off he deserves, but not before riding a good winner or two during the Melbourne and Perth carnivals.
The weather is such a big factor in horse racing.
A week ago today the Warwick Farm meeting lost the last three races due to storms in Western Sydney. That’s following great winter tracks in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.
If the long-range forecasts are right, hard tracks that cruel many a good horse who jar up, could well be the norm. It’s a tough gig for the track managers who risk the ire of trainers if they don’t put enough irrigation on the course during the week.
But alternatively cop the crow from the punters if it does subsequently rain and then tracks play on the slow side.
It goes all the way to the Melbourne Cup when the foreign trainers have a big say on ensuring the Flemington track never gets beyond a good four. You can bet your sweet bippy we will be talking about the weather during the Spring Carnivals.
Birdsville or bust, last Friday and Saturday, with 130 horses over 13 races thundering around the famous red dirt track and thousands of thirsty punters watching on. To say the annual Birdsville races are iconic is not doing it justice. It’s on a lot of people’s bucket list. This year the Cup was won by Phillip Stokes-trained Adelaide horse Nediom.
Les Boots the world’s worst and funniest jockey.
The South Australian who rode over the jumps for 18 years is famous for having 41 falls from 39 race rides. How’s that possible, well he fell off one of his mounts twice in the same race, having remounted him, only to fall again, topped off by falling out of the ambulance on the way to hospital. His long-suffering wife always packed his pyjamas in his riding gear. She refused to let him do the steeples as she was concerned he would fall in the water and drown!
If you ever have a few minutes Google the Bert Bryant Les Boots interview – it’s priceless.
At the racetrack, Paddy had placed a large sum of money on his mate Murphy’s horse. Murphy had been talking it up all week. The race started, horse jumped well, heading round the bend to the straight, the horse appeared to be going backwards!
“Gees,” Murphy put his head in his hands.
“What’s happening,” asked Paddy, wondering how he was ever going to tell his wife.
After the horses came back to the ring. Murphy went up to the jockey and asked, “what happened, she was doing so well!”.
“Well,“ said the jockey, “When we hit the turn, she started to make a funny noise, that just got worse and worse!”
“Geesus, what did it sound like?”
The jockey looked from Murphy to Paddy and said, “Heehaw, heehaw, heehaw!“
Disclaimer. This is a true story that happened in Queensland country race meeting a few odd years ago.
