If anyone was wondering what it’s like to own the favourite in the Cup, with such a weight of expectation he would win, and watch VE go storming on by, here it is.
If Craig Williams ends up booted from Giga Kick, the owners will have to go down as the most ungrateful connections in my lifetime. 8 rides for 5 wins, including the Everest, Gp1 All Aged and Gp1 Doomben 10,000, where on each occasion he rode an absolute 10/10 masterpiece. 🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️
@StephenPaulStew
@rgpoulussen
That is an absolutely a falsehood. In a referendum/election held in 1936 to outlaw all other parties, other than the Nazi party, the vote in favor was well over 90%. To pretend the average German was an unwilling participant in Hitlers Germany by 1936 is fantasy.
You can go to Maccas drive through, order a Big Mac meal, unbox the burger, eat it, gets some fries, slurp on your drink, all while driving, but if your phone is on the passenger seat, or centre console, it’s a $155 fine. 🤷♂️
Can anyone explain why those in the racing media literally froth over yearling prices going ever higher? Making horse ownership completely out of reach for the average person? None of them own studs. It’s bizarre.
Modern day punters have no concept of just how massive the trots used to be. The Daily Double races from Harold Park on a Friday night were broadcast live on the ABC, well before the Sat thoroughbred races were afforded the same. Champion pacers were household names, so much so
With FOUR dedicated racing channels on Foxtel, the coverage of the massive HK meeting today was pathetic. The whole industry is now run as simply a huge poker machine.
RVL desperately needs to review Melb Cup conditions. Hush Writer has won the Newcastle Cup and ATC St Leger in his last three starts, but needs to win Hotham today to leap frog NEUFBOSC and SOUND in the Cup, who between them have never placed in 13 Australian starts. Madness.
Has there been a more arrogant and costly decision in racing than Coolmore replacing Adam Hyeronimus on Storm Boy? Missed the start twice for JMac and Ryan Moore. 🤷♂️
Puzzling watch and listen to Sky presenters be so excited about the huge prices being paid at MM, and drooling over the average of $230,000. These yearling prices are totally out of reach of the normal racing lover. Is that really cause for celebration all round? Who benefits?
So many people have embarrassed themselves on Twitter with their pathetic Kah comments. She is clearly seen here genuinely thrilled for Clayton Douglas. A genuinely good person.
Has there been a more ridiculous and sycophantic article than today’s Richard Callander piece on Racenet, saying The Everest is now bigger than the Melb Cup? The Cup turnover will be AT LEAST 10 times greater. You may as well assert the AFLW is now bigger than the AFL mens.
Incredible effort from the Racenet team of bookies on Friday. Ten individual horses given out as the “lay of the day,” of which eight won!
With that kind of skill, no wonder their sole business model is to restrict any punter who has the slightest idea of what they are doing.
@ezralevant
Come on man. Don’t be a conspiracy theorist. I’ve known plenty of couples in their twenties, where the wife has a brain clot and the husband gets a paralyzed face.
All punters should be up in arms over this clearly fraudulent practice. If in the last forty seconds of betting, horse A goes from 5.0 to 6.0 the 6.0 is not recorded and the SP is 5.0. If horse B, however, goes from 6.0 to 5.0, then IT IS recorded and the official SP is also 5.0
And so the red bandanna begins his assault on racing today, using the same Alan Jones tactics he rails against, deliberately telling what he knows to be falsehoods to get the crowd going. He is as dengerous as those on the far right. An ideologue who will say anything to win.
Impossible to believe Richard Callendar would actually write that PVL “understands that punting drives the industry.” There has been no single administrator in my lifetime who has done so much damage to the punting landscape, with such obvious contempt for punters. He is the
I’ll say it. I love Terry Bailey. Today was a shocker but by and large he has his own style and it adds colour to the races. Plus he is a pretty good judge. Stand by for the shitstorm.
The rise of Danny O’Brien as the leading trainer of stayers has been spectacular. On a very light prep Vow wins the Cup, ditto King Of Leogrance in Adelaide Cup and now Russian Camelot SA Derby, third up and up from 1600m on an interrupted prep. A dead set genius.
In a recent Winning Post poll, 3.9% of respondents said The Everest was the race they were most looking forward to this Spring. 90% said either the Cox Plate or Melbourne Cup. The Everest is yet another 1200m WFA race, indistinguishable from half a dozen others run each year. 😴
Sydney Australia domestic airport. Police with drug sniffer dogs going from bag to bag in the check in line. I have never seen this in any other country and I’ve been to some very authoritarian ones. Where on earth are we?
With no disrespect intended, anybody who thinks The Autumn Sun would seriously challenge Winx is living in a parallel universe. His two wins this campaign have been OK, but well below the Australian Guineas winner Mystic Journey in my opinion, let alone Winx!
The racing industry employs 70,000 people and contributes an enormous amount to government coffers. Does anyone else find it odd that RacingNSW CEO is lobbying the Govt for a handout to NRL, to lessen impact on players, whose AVE yearly wage is $370,000.
Mornington is certainly not in the top ten provincial tracks in Vic. I don’t know why the MRC and RVL persist with using it for these metro race days. Punters, rightly hate it. The idea that the MRC would sell Sandown and keep Mornington defies any sort of logic.
The charging of Marc Lambourne and Glenn Pollett is symptomatic of so much that is wrong in the current racing landscape. Racing was built on people with character and wit and street smarts. The very thing that makes racing so appealing, is being eroded by boring administrators.
As a punter who backed both Bound To Win and Shot of Irish yesterday, it is galling to the extreme, that both horses were denied a win by a jockey who broke the whip rules. I hate the whip rule, but it is CRAZY that a person who breaks the rule, profits from it.
Fantastic Cox Plate. Never seen Twitter so alive with punters claiming at least five different horses would have won if only their jockeys had incredible foresight and all got into the exact same position, as if the horses are motor cars and as if they knew in advance what would
Racing is full of head shaking exceptions to the rules. VE, producing on my figures a career peak by 4lens at start 34 on good ground, as a 6YO, defies any explanation I could mount. Even had Incentivise run to CCup rating, she would have won by 2lens IMHO. A total outlier perf.
This is so completely untrue and spin at its absolute worst. Racehorse ownership has never been LESS affordable. To be pretending that now you can buy 2.5% shares and therefore it’s somehow a win for owners is bizarre.
The i lack of irony when McGauran and PVL when they say racing to needs “find another income stream,” is incredible. They have both championed ever increasing taxes on punters, that even a year 10 student who has taken a single economics class could tell you will eventually lead
Is it long long overdue that the breeders, who year after year make enormous profits from racing, start to actually contribute to the funding of the sport. The punters are out for the count and can’t carry the whole show any longer. There is nothing left to squeeze from the lemon
I KNOW I am missing something, but I don’t quite understand why racing journos and the industry in general are so excited about AVE yearling prices being $370k, as the prospect of buying a yearling is now totally out of reach of the ave person and of zero benefit to them.
Two yearlings for $2m-plus, 11 seven-figure yearlings, almost $65m in sales and a $368k average.
What a way to start
#InglisEaster
2021! 💰
@inglis_sales
@bmracingclub
@MikeGoodie1
Because racing for political reasons has distanced itself from it’s lifeblood, gambling. People can gamble from home without publicly announcing how sinful they are, or at the pub with fellow sinners. The whole Raceday experience completely lost its way. There is no
@bobjcarr
Says Bob, who promoted the desalination plant for $1.8b, which has also cost a further $500m to keep in hibernation, but refused point blank to build any more dams. It’s been used zero times.
Amazing situation at SKY with Paul Joice, Lizzie Jelfs and Tony Brassell all leaving this week. They would be absolutely mad if they didn’t give
@braddavo
the nod to replace Tony Brassell. He is the most under used talent at the organisation and an excellent judge to boot. 💪💪💪
Whatever you feel about this whole sorry saga, Weir has come back and built a very successful pre training operation that employs a lot of people. This latest DQ, is just grossly unfair to all involved. The idea that you can keep punishing someone, for essentially the same crime,
BREAKING NEWS: The Victorian Racing Tribunal has handed down an additional two-year disqualification against disgraced trainer Darren Weir for the use of a jigger on racehorses Red Cardinal, Tosen Basil and Yogi. 👇
Another racing legend, Dr Nick, is turning his back on Australian racing apparently. What was once, literally, the greatest game on earth, has been laid to waste by PVL, RVL and the repugnant British corporates. A triumvirate of devils who have raped and pillaged punters at will.
Is there a market up anywhere for Racing NSW “journalist of the year,” next year? Ben Dorries would have to be an absolute shoe in. Has done nothing all week except tweet pics of empty train carriages, (2.5hrs before the first,) and report “plunging” wagering, crowds, TV figures.
How long until other medications are mandated? Perhaps anti-depressants for those in aged care? Perhaps some speed for people on newstart to help them get motivated? It’s a very slippery slope when the Government can demand you take any medication or lose your freedoms. 👎
Leaving The Everest aside, the Redzel Stakes is clearly an attempt to vandalise the VRC spring carnival and cannibalise the VRC sprint classic. It’s really a shameful act on the part of Racing NSW.
How on earth is this bringing “racing into disrepute?” What does something somebody does in their own home, have anything to do with racing? The person who MAY have brought racing into disrepute was the person who released the photos.
Fondly remember when Mark Read, through DAS and then IAS, would put up Derby Day markets and you could back any runner to win $100k at the price, on all races. It’s unimaginable that today we have the UK corps with vastly bigger financial backing, betting to win $2k, reluctantly.
NSW TAB pools for Sat 4th Feb. On all ten races the total pools for odds and evens was $119. (I think?) the takeout is 7%. So the TAB takeout was $8.33. This was the bet type that was going to fund the $10m Golden Eagle!
Massive hats off to the connections of Romantic Warrior. They could have easily chosen the Winx path of staying home and winning the same races, year after year for probably the next three or four seasons. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
It just won’t seem like a proper Golden Vobis on Fri night without Widgee Turf being an absolute moral on the form but sitting back on a snails place and not being able to run down Iconoclasm.
What a day for Brett Prebble! Gets the ride on INCENTIVISE, probably the most promising stayer I’ve seen since Might And Power, and on Behemoth in the Gp1 tomorrow. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Yesterday with eighteen minutes to go before Sandown race six, the TAB were betting 134.6%. On a metro race day, when they had been betting in the race for two days!!! And stewards are investigating whether Steve Fletcher uses bowler accounts!! They have their priorities wrong!!!
Shame on Racenet for republishing this garbage. And for the condescending and patronizing article from Ben Dorries yesterday, the same day he tweeted a pathetic attempt at “wink, wink, nudge, nudge,” humour on the same topic. 👎👎👎👎👎
Star jockey Jamie Kah was having relationship difficulties in the lead up to an illegal Airbnb gathering in coastal Victoria, it has been revealed.
Story courtesy
@theheraldsun
Race six at Warwick Farm Wednesday. Sportsbet 139%. Crownbet 139%. Classicbet 141%. Whilst all the “participants” are singing the praises of the ruling bodies the punters are copping it in spades.
People go to the races in Japan and Hong Kong, TO BET! The betting is actively promoted. In Aust, in the last twenty years, it’s been seen as an unfortunate necessity by administrators, who themselves never bet and regard the whole process as distasteful.
I am of course, incredibly proud of the horse and so honoured and privileged to have shared a memorable Spring carnival with all the other owners, Peter Moody and Brett Prebble. A wonderful experience.
Sydney racing media does racing a great disservice with this narrative that every other race day pales into insignificance compared to Everest day. Apart from being demonstrably untrue, it denigrates their truly great days that have so much history. Eg. Doncaster, Slipper day etc
BY FAR, the single biggest integrity issue in racing, is the betting activity that takes place in the fifteen seconds AFTER the jump. NATURE STRIP on Saturday, 3.2, 3.1, 3.1 on the three totes. There is no other explanation. An absolute scandaI, that ICAC should investigate.
Shows the level of independent journalism in racing that the figures (briefly) released yesterday that showed odds and evens holds to less than $100 per race, received zero attention. This bet type was mooted to fund $9.5m in prizemoney. No questions asked, no reports. Silence.
Followers of JMac have been in a world of pain in the last three months. Losing 29% on turnover overall, an incredible 51% on odds on favourites, 34% on horses between 1/1 and 2/1 and 41% on horses between 2/1 and 4/1. A dramatic departure from his usual consistent record.
Not many years ago, (six?) Darren Weir became the first trainer to train winners of $10m in a year. Last year Chris Waller trained horses won over $50m. Yearling prices have skyrocketed in the same period. The enormous funneling of punters wealth to an elite few is scandalous.
@PaulBongiorno
Seriously Paul, give it a break. Every tweet is so utterly predictable. Everything that has anything to do with British/Aust tradition is to be scoffed at. Anything to do with other cultures and their traditions is absolutely wonderful and to be admired. It’s sickening.
A mere three months ago, the worlds number one tennis player was banned from playing in the Aust Open and deported from the country, because he posed a national health risk, as an unvaccinated person. Today any unvaccinated person can arrive in the country and go anywhere.
Punters are overwhelmingly racing’s biggest customers. They pay for the WHOLE show. They despise shifty, water affected going, yet now week after week, in the middle of summer, that’s exactly what they are served up in NSW. It’s an absolute abomination. RacingNSW has a stellar
Sports betting used to only be 10% of the wagering market with the corporates. Today with some it’s 50%. If you have $200 spare to gamble with on the weekend, you can chooses to bet on the NRL orAFL into 107% markets or the races at 125%+. Racing is being extremely short sighted.
Have Godolphin completely rewritten the modern training ideas for 2YO’s, by actually racing their horses rather than spelling them after just three starts? Microphone, Kaimichi, Athiri etc all having extended campaigns. Maybe the modern thoroughbred is not so weak after all?
I have literally never seen a better new track than Eagle Farm. Talk about from the shithouse to the penthouse! The job Racing Qld and Mick Goodie have done with this track is amazing.
30 years ago, every jockey in the QE would have been questioned and likely fined or suspended. Via was 33 lens off POJ with 600m to go, not some 100/1 shot but POJ. Vía’s forte is that she likes a strong gallop and she was 1.80 fav. The lack of initiative simply defies any logic.
Now that Chris Waller has come out publicly, saying criticism of the Rosehill track last Sat was “ridiculous,” and that a soft 5 is the perfect surface, do we have a situation in Sydney where the tracks are being deliberately prepared to accommodate the leading trainer?
For many years the MV race club got away with the Cox Playe double header, with kind weather. But it has really come back to bite them on the ass in recent times. Tonight’s card is atrocious and the whole meeting is a massive negative. Surely it’s time to move the Manikato to Sat
In recent weeks Rachel King has completely destroyed two short priced favourites, Cross Talk and Willinga Rufio with suicidal tactics aboard O’President and Supremo, who were in turn beaten 27 lens and 48 lens. When TSherry was an app, he was outed for six weeks for far far less.
12 mil Australians in lockdown, and every single outbreak in the last twelve months has happened because of our inadequate hotel quarantine system. A programme that simply defies any sort of logical examination. How is that possible eighteen months on?
Today we have Racenet proclaiming that anybody questioning the sense behind a $2m increase to an $8m race is a “nark.” This is what passes for journalism in NSW. Stalin would be proud of the coupling of the media and RacingNSW.
The WATC must be thrilled that the $1m Gong is being run this weekend, on the same day and over the same trip as the $1m Railway. Just one sole NSW trained horse and for the fist time in ages, no Chris Waller rep. I’m sure that won’t rate a mention anywhere in the press though.
Do we really need ten races in winter on a Sydney Saturday, when there are three bm78, three bm72 and a class 3 on the programme? These are midweek standard races, being run for $100-$130,000 plus BOBS. There are four bm72 races at WF today being run for $50,000. Absurd.
If there was 32 mins between races, each metro race could start 8 mins after the previous, with the provincial meetings taking the 4 min slot. 40 minutes is too long and people lose interest. On a card of 10 races the difference is well over an hour. A fast game is a good game.
The good boys and girls of Melb must be tickled pink today. They can now go an extra 5km from their home and they can go boating! Imagine all the cases there would have been, had people been allowed to recklessly take their boat out on the water, hundreds of metres from anyone.
How is it even possible, let alone conscionable, to write these sort of conditions. Surely, if that’s their rules, the bet size should have been reduced to reflect the max potential winnings. They took the whole stake, therefore should pay the whole winnings.
A punter who is suing BetEasy for close to $1.2 million in unpaid winnings says her betting account was opened for her by a Crown employee when she joined the casino's Signature Club.
@theagesport
@agerealfooty
@theage
I can’t recall witnessing a more puzzling and heartless decision than that from the Qld CHO, denying a young woman saying goodbye to her Dad AND making her spend 14days alone in quarantine, when she is from the ACT, where there has been no Covid for SIXTY DAYS. It’s sickening.
It’s almost impossible to reconcile that Mehreen Faruqi, came to Australia as a 30yo adult, was gifted a senate seat by the Greens and now uses her taxpayer senate money to promote an anti Melb Cup shindig, a great Aust tradition, when she is utterly ignorant about racing. WTAF?
It’s hard to believe how sour and disaffected so many young people have become about so many things. Great cultural events, like the Melbourne Cup, used to be a real community experience, across all political and social divides. Not any more. It’s sad for society.
And so it begins. The NRL is going to introduce a premium betting tax on Grand Finals and State Of Origin games, over and above the regular fees. A PVL initiative, mirroring his attack on racing punters, which shows no understanding of the long term wagering landscape.
It seems very odd that to me that they will retire Winx after the QE. She is in peak form and surely a fifth Cox Plate is there for the taking, a record that would never be beaten. I can’t see any reason she would suddenly lose form before the Spring and there is no opposition.
@BernieSpofforth
She is 18 and he is 15. And it’s 1980. Get a grip. Anyone who thinks this guy was traumatized at 15, being kissed by his 18 co-star, is living in a parallel universe. Why tweet this and provide an avenue for all this faux outrage?
The Winx Stakes on Saturday is a Gp1 race. Only Golden Mile, if he runs, will not be resuming from a spell and he will be second up after not really contesting the finish last start. It’s an absolute nonsense for this race to have Gp1 status.
I often mention to people how DK Weir was interviewed at the ‘Bool a number of years ago, and referred to John Allen as “my main man.” He was still mixing jumps riding with flat riding and nobody else ever gave him a ride. Last year he won the Vic premiership. Fabulous rider. 💪
Track manager at Flemington directed to water the track tonight despite the forecast for up to 15mls of rain tomorrow. (95% chance.) It seems a good track must be avoided at all costs. Absolute lunacy.
Has there ever been in the history of Aust sport, a bigger, repetitive own goal than the literally insane programming of race times on Melb Cup Day? First race at 10.45am, 9.45 in Qld and 7.45 in WA. The Cup is at 3pm, right on school pickup and the last at 5.15, when we have
Another theft of punters with the dead heat on Saturday. SHOT OF IRISH, already rounded down to 2.70 tote price, but punters don’t get 1.35, its rounded down AGAIN to 1.30. It’s possible the correct dividend should have been 1.39. A 30% reduction on their rightful winnings.
To put Damian Lane’s 2019 into perspective, neither Hugh Bowman nor Chris Waller have ever won the Golden Slipper nor the Caulfield or Melbourne Cups. If Lane could win all four in a single year it would be literally incredible.
Might not win horse of the year, but surely it’s the training performance of the year. And if they had an award for toughest horse of the year, it would be a walkover.
There has never been a time when it has been more critical for the racing industry to band together. Yet in my lifetime, I can’t remember the industry as a whole being so fractured along state lines. Clearly many believe for one state to prosper another must fail.
These are very significant stats. Aust CV tests 25x greater per capital the USA and one of the highest in the world. USA positive to test ratio 53%. Australia 2%. These are very encouraging figures.
I think I’m right on saying that Darren Weir became the first trainer to win $10m in a calendar year, about six or seven years ago. This year Chris Waller has won $50m. The huge prizemoney giveaway, paid by onerous taxes on punters, has ended up in a few already wealthy pockets.
Imagine being a promoter of any major event, and knowing so little about your product that you programme the clash between Shangri-La and Switzerland as race one, prior to the Midway and Highway and then conclude the day with a bm 78. Seriously, absolutely no idea.
I think we have reached a point where the dual acceptor issue needs to be addressed when in the Gp1 feature on Sat, Chris Waller has accepted with five horses, ALL of which have accepted in other races on the day. My guess is that at least three and possibly four will scratch?
"He is a magician. I was at home oblivious to it all. He doesn't hold himself responsible for anything"
Ben Melham's ex-partner has unloaded after his relationship with Jamie Kah was made public
It seems Craig Williams lost the Zaaki ride for having it one out and one back, in front of its main rival on the fence and directly behind the third fav, in a WFA race over 2000m. You would think perfectly positioned and then put him into the race at the 600m. 🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️