Chief Stipe

Are you fastidiously recording their statistics in a spreadsheet? Which forum are you persecuting the Australian officials on?

Can you be more specific?

That wasn't the question though. Would you say Murrihy was the most respected Stipe in OZ? I'm not sure those caught up in the Cobalt Saga wouldn't entirely agree.

@Yankiwi did you send your questions to GRNZ? Or do you believe ranting on a forum is going to make a difference? Apart from making you feel better.

Ray Murrihy called in to latest Alligator Blood saga www.racenet.com.au The most respected figure in Australian racing integrity will oversee the latest chapter into the long running Alligator Blood saga, after Queensland officials opened a third inquiry into the matter. It can be revealed former New South Wales chief steward Ray Murrihy has been called up by the Queensland Racing Integrity Commission to chair the new inquiry into his failed swab from the 2020 Magic Millions 3YO Guineas, which was won by Alligator Blood. All Tipsters - Last 28 Days Sitting alongside Murrihy will be former Victorian chief stipe Robert Cram and longtime QRIC steward Kym Daly as officials work to put the matter to bed. READ| The hype on Harry is real as Sunlight tilt shines bright The matter will not be heard until next year however, with QRIC opting to wait for the outcome of a February 28 court date, where Alligator Blood's former owner Allan Endresz is seeking an injunction to stop the new inquiry. Endresz, who has been banned from owning horses in many states in Australia, labelled the latest inquiry a farce, saying he offered Queensland officials a settlement, despite being confident of victory. The Alligator Blood saga has been going almost five years. Picture: Trackside Photography. "It is a complete and utter waste of everybody's time and taxpayer money," Endresz said. "I am gobsmacked that they have the audacity to have a crack at my background when they put these blokes in to run these inquiries. "It is beyond belief, I am very confident we will win on the 28th and it will be game over." The former QRIC regime, lead by former commissioner Shane Gillard, convened a second inquiry following a Supreme Court victory from Endresz over an owners right to be heard earlier this year, however it was over before it began. READ| Beau enhances Derby prospects with dazzling Grand Prix win Under the new leadership of Catherine Clark and former Hong Kong chief steward Kim Kelly, QRIC last week opened a new inquiry with Murrihy and Cram. "What we wanted was a panel that is removed from previous panels that have dealt with matters involving the horse," Kelly said. "We arrived on the view that some interstate participation would aid in having the matter resolved in a timely manner." Endresz and his legal team will argue the panel is unable to prove the validity of the horse's urine sample from the race after what was left of the "A" sample was revealed to be unreliable because of a power outage where the samples are kept after it was initially analysed and had a test report issued.

Note to everyone @Yankiwi's statistics are misinformation aka bullshit. Note that by comparison to other jurisidictions NZ Greyhound Racing has better statistics than most of them. In one case at least half. It has always been like that. So even if Chazza's stats were accurate, which they aren't, they are better than most. The reality is if you race animals some will die of injury or sustain injuries that mean they can't race again. It happens to pets too. If you don't like don't race a Greyhound and don't own a pet. As for the complaints about the large trainers - if you didn't have those trainers you wouldn't have had an industry because there wouldn't have been enough numbers to sustain a commercial industry. Yes one trainer can sustain 100's of dogs just like one trainer in horse racing can. Why? Because they have dedicated and often well trained staff. Don't forget the 1000 people employed directly!!

As a social scientist @curious surely you can see the weakness in the poll and the question asked. Still don't the 25% who don't want a ban have rights? We give every other minority rights. 327 individuals polled in 2022 and 817 polled in 2024. Anyway the key part of the question is "If a referendum was held tomorrow..." An event that was never ever likely to happen. I'm surprised @curious knowing your working background that you would give any credence to such a poll. BTW half the population want the Treaty Principles Bill concepts to be introduced as Law. I gather you are advocating that it should go to a referendum as ACT want it to? Or does the imaginery construct of a social license not allow that?

So did anyone consider a judicial challenge? Or did you all go "oh well its a rort" and then constantly moan about it for the next two years?

No a point in time BS analysis without any statistical normalisation by someone who has little understanding of statisics was done to presumably undermine the industry aka @Yankiwi. GRNZ shot themselves in the foot by choosing some stupid metrics not based on any science or historical data. Essentially they hoisted themselves by their own petard.

What was the question asked? Then again what about the poor minority of 25% who supposedly support the industry or don't care? Obviously enough support to sustain an industry. But you just keep banging on about a purely made up construct called a "social license"!

Two years is ample time to have turned things around.

Then why wasn't he charged with reckless riding? Of course the horse was entirely blameless - NOT! “Reckless” contrasted to “Careless” 10. A person is reckless when he/she acts in a way where they are heedless of, or indifferent to, the danger or peril of the consequences of their actions. That is when there is disregard or indifference to the danger of the situation or for the consequences of one’s actions. “Careless” by a Rider is where he/she fails to act with the necessary prudence, or level of care, that a reasonable Rider is expected to take in the same circumstance. It may arise from inattention to take reasonable care, rather than consciously deliberate, So, for example, a Jockey is required to take reasonable care to keep his/her mount on its required line and not hamper other Riders by drifting off that line when insufficiently clear. 11. The actual result or outcome of the particular riding is not the determining factor of whether the riding is reckless or careless (or neither). There can be reckless riding which does not involve any fall or injury (eg the Australian cases of Damien Oliver (14 October 2016, or J Cartwright (24 January 2017). Correspondingly, there can be careless riding which leads to a fall or even tragedy. So, too, there can be a fall with or without a tragic outcome, where there has not been a breach of the Rules of Racing. 12. Those observations are made to illustrate that the tragedy that eventually happened ought not take into account in deciding the charge. But a fall may be one factor relevant to penalty, which Rule 920(2) requires an Adjudicative Committee to have regard, amongst such matters as it considers appropriate: “c) any consequential effects upon any person or horse as a result of the breach of the Rule”.

But you did just bag him. You haven't provided a "more factual approach" instead you have selectively listed some statistics that supports your hypothesis. Your statistical approach is a nonsense. For example Craig Grylls started riding in 2005. Opie Bosson 1995. Effectively 10 riding seasons more. To compare the Judicial era's of Noel Harris, David Peake and even Lance O'Sullivan to Opie Bossons is spurious at best. Not to mention that you have lumped all types of suspensions together. The vast majority of the suspensions are for careless riding and many of those at a low level. In some instances even the Stipes were defending him. I note no one is bagging Lisa Allpress but based on your analysis perhaps they should. So yes you have bagged Opie Bosson under the pretence of not doing so.

Disappointing to see the post mortems. I believe if some of you had put as much energy into doing things for positive change rather than bitching constantly about shyte then maybe dog racing would have survived. That's not to say you can't turn it around as there is a glimmer of hope. Rennell was the wrong choice. As was the one before.

Winston has been advised by f-wits on this subject. Probably the DIA being the biggest policy wise but the biggest contributor is those that fund Winnies largesse.

How self prophetic!

Which presumably means a lower margin overall to the NZ TAB.

Hopefully you'll follow your own advice!

You obviously didn't read past the headlines or I'm confused about your definition of "battlers"!

Do you realise how arrogant that sounds? You have GRNZ phone numbers and email addresses too as evident by the number of times you posted them on BOAY. Yeah na Charles you achieved what you set out to do - close down Greyhound Racing. Well done.

Good Knight & Good Luck issuu.com by Jessica Owers Melbourne Cup winner Knight’s Choice was a Magic Millions graduate before he dazzled the world in November. He was a small yearling but, as Jessica Owers found out from his breeder, size wasn’t everything. Knight’s Choice was only ordinary, if traffic was to be believed at the 2021 Gold Coast Yearling Sale. “You know how it goes,” says the horse’s breeder, 76-year-old Norm Bazeley. “The experts come out and they think he’s a bit small, the kind of stuff we’ve all heard before. Once upon a time I’d flare up, but now I just take it on the chin. Oh well, I say, just give it time, and that’s what happened.” On November 5, Knight’s Choice won the Melbourne Cup in an argument with the Japanese raider Warp Speed. There was a nose in it, a few inches separating the local from the import. The winner was just the fourth Australian-bred horse this century to prevail in the ‘race that stops a nation’, and the first by an Australian-bred sire since Rogan Josh in 1999. He is the fourth Melbourne Cup-winning graduate for Magic Millions, hot on the heels of Let's Elope in 1991, Subzero in 1992 and Shocking in 2009. “It’s a story for the battlers,” Bazeley says, and he would know. He’s one of them. Three hours north of Scone, in the township of Walcha, he has a couple of broodmares on a property called Elswick Park. Two hundred years ago, this was bushranger country. The grass is thick and good on basalt plains over 1000 metres above sea level, and the district has its racing history. The 1905 Melbourne Cup winner, Blue Spec, was bred locally by Augustus Hooke, and renowned breeder Jill Nivison lives here too. Norm Bazeley, Breeder Knight’s Choice “It’s good for horses,” Bazeley says. “People go on to me about Scone, but up here it’s hilly basalt country with naturally good pasture. The only issue is that our winter tends to last four to five weeks longer, so the mares are cycling a bit later.” Walcha is sat along Thunderbolts Way, a remote stretch of road from Gloucester in the south to Uralla in the north. Few people realise it is the fastest route between Sydney and Brisbane because its remoteness, so useful to the scallywag for whom it was named, puts travellers off; they prefer the populated route through Tamworth, Scone and Singleton. Lot 1001, Extreme Choice-Midnight Pearl, (Knight’s Choice), 2021 Magic Millions, with John Donnelly “I am born and bred Walcha,” Bazeley says. “If you see the big house at the end of town there (Langford House, circa 1905) and look down the road a bit, that’s where you’ll find us.” Bazeley hasn’t spent his whole life in Walcha. As a younger man he worked in civil construction on projects like the Pindari and Toonumbar dams, and later in Brisbane. He lost his first wife to a sudden cerebral haemorrhage when she was 45, and these days he is married to Diane. They bought Elswick Park in 2000. Lot 1001, Extreme Choice-Midnight Pearl, (Knight’s Choice), 2021 Magic Millions, with John Donnelly “It didn’t have a lot on it,” Bazeley says. “It had a bit of infrastructure, some sheds and things, but we added to it.” In the end, the most important addition was the broodmare Midnight Pearl, dam of Melbourne Cup winner Knight’s Choice. “It’s like a dream,” Bazely says. “It still is and I’m afraid I’ll wake up” “I got her at a sale for $1000 (in 2013). I knew I’d got a bargain. She was by More Than Ready and I had this idea about going to Not A Single Doubt. So I tried to do that, but it didn’t work out and we ended up going to Extreme Choice, who was still a bit new at Newgate.” Time may have improved the story, but without a stakes winner in any of her immediate pedigree, Midnight Pearl was knocked back for Not A Single Doubt. At nearby Newgate, his son, Extreme Choice, was a second-season sire in 2018 and Bazeley got in for $22,000. Today, Extreme Choice stands for over 10 times that sum. “We laugh about it now,” he says. “I understand why they refused the booking; she wasn’t good enough. We all have fun with it now and she’s gone back to Arrowfield since. She’s got a lovely filly at foot by The Autumn Sun.” Knight’s Choice was foaled at Elswick Park on September 20, 2019, when Midnight Pearl was 14. In Bazeley’s opinion it was a good bloodline, but it wasn’t a Melbourne Cup bloodline. “I mainly thought that if Knight’s Choice eventually won a good sprint race, or a middle-distance race, that would be about where he was supposed to be.” In 2021, Bazeley took three yearlings to the Magic Millions catalogue in January. Knight’s Choice, as Lot 1001, was neat and tidy and small. With the fall of the gavel, he sold for $85,000 to the Queensland training pair of Sheila Laxon and John Symons, and, as so often occurs in horse racing, it proved one of bloodstock’s greatest bargains. “After the Cup, one of the first guys to ring me was Les Kelly, who had been the underbidder at $80,000,” Bazeley says. “He couldn’t believe it. But I just had that feeling with that horse that he was always going to end up with Sheila and John.” The Knight’s Choice story has been one of swings and roundabouts. Both Laxon and Symons knew the pedigree long before the 2021 Magic Millions catalogue; they had trained Midnight Pearl from 2010 to her purchase by Bazeley on the cheap. They had also trained the mare’s half-brother, Denoninator. Meanwhile, Richard and Kay Waldron, who had bred Midnight Pearl and who had been distressed to sell her for next to nothing in 2013, are now two of the three owners in Knight’s Choice (alongside Cameron Bain). Knight's Choice, the morning after winning the 2024 G1 Melbourne Cup Sheila Laxon had had big opinions of Denoninator, a horse she had thought could have reckoned with a Melbourne Cup. “So when John saw Knight’s Choice in the Magic Millions catalogue, he really liked what he saw and decided to buy him,” Laxon says, but Symons remembers there wasn’t much of a horse to buy. “He was only little, but I know the sire was little,” Symons says. “Still, he had all the attributes that I really look for. He was a good walker and had a really big jowl for a little horse. He just appealed to me, and of course we knew the family well. When Richard and Kay sold that mare, Midnight Pearl, for just $1000, they were devastated, and I mean really devastated, to get that money for her. But I told them not to worry, that we could go and get the best one out of her and race it, so that’s how it all came about.” Knight’s Choice was above average from the beginning. Just four starts in he posted a fourrace winning streak through Queensland’s 2023 winter carnival. It led to a $2.3 million offer from Hong Kong, which was rejected amid a circus of speculation and public opinion. A year later the horse is a millionaire Melbourne Cup winner, and Norm Bazeley says it is no accident. “John and Sheila are old-time horse people. They’ve trained that horse to perfection, and I believe they’ve made a stayer out of that bloodline. They educated the horse in a proper manner and I hold my hat up to them.” Laxon and Symons put their polish on Knight’s Choice at Macedon Lodge, which Laxon had also done in 2001 when sending Ethereal out to win the Melbourne Cup. She might be the only undefeated Cup-winning trainer in history. “It was a pipeline dream for her to win a second one, and she did it and that is amazing,” Bazeley says. “You’ve got to give it to her. She’s had two horses in the Melbourne Cup and she’s won both of them. I was so happy when they got that little colt from me because they were small-time trainers and they’ve come out with this result. It’s a credit to them.” Bazeley watched the race from his living room in Walcha, Diane at bridge club in town. For a moment after Knight’s Choice poked past the post, Bazeley was pale and grave awaiting the photo finish before the greatest thrill he has known. Within the hour, friend John Donnelly was at his door, three years ago just a local kid who led Knight’s Choice around the sale ring at Magic Millions. “It’s like a dream,” Bazeley says. “It still is and I’m afraid I’ll wake up”, except that the journalists kept calling and the stallion farms kept asking. Midnight Pearl, his 19-year-old broodmare, was an overnight star, no book too good for her now. A week after the Melbourne Cup she went to Hitotsu. “You can see now how it all came together,” Bazeley says. “The whole story is a close-knit, dedicated group of people, their hearts all in the right place. None of them were looking for glory but they’ve got it. It’s just a wonderful Australian story.”

Which makes me think this is a smokescreen as there aren't that many votes in the policy.

Hardly "putting the boot in" and being a horse trainer regardless of them being a woman or from Riccarton is a reasonably good qualification to have a valid opinion. Your qualifications @billy connolly , aside from obviously being a win at all costs punter, are?

Couldn't you say the same about Denby i.e. she should have evaluated the risk and not taken Kavish's line?

Gai can't help herself grooms anything that moves!