Chief Stipe

Yes was devastating winning in a time faster than last years star studded field. The Flemington track record was set 22 years ago. Those sorts of times have been harder to reach since the major renovation of the track and the introduction of the new maintenance programme. https://www.races.com.au/races/group-1/champions-sprint/champions-sprint-results/

The Moonee Valley StrathAyr doesn't produce comparatively fast times as other non-StrathAyr tracks. However she also won easing up and was never anywhere near being ridden out.

But do you agree that when you say the race franked The Everest rating that Imperatriz on her form yesterday would have been in the top 3 in The Everest? What's your opinion of the TRC ratings? They rate her (6) above Think About It (11) BEFORE yesterday.

By your own admission you don't understand how an individual race is rated. Time on its own isn't the sole consideration. However are you suggesting that In Secret, Buenos Noches and Espiona ran BELOW their Everest performance yesterday?

My old college and a green light for brainlessness www.conservativewoman.co.uk AN EMAIL from my old college announcing a ‘Green Giving Day’ has just landed in my inbox. I shake my head. I grew up in a family unused to further education. All of my parents’ generation left school at fourteen. They were dockers; they were Fleet Street printers; they worked in small East End factories making shoes or machining eiderdowns. Anyone who passed the School Certificate was quickly diverted from further dalliance with the classroom and sent out to supplement the family income. The books in my grandparents’ house, though revered, could be counted on your fingers. When the school-leaving age was raised to 15, my generation were allowed to stay at school long enough to sit their O-levels. I was the second in my family to enjoy an extension of this reprieve for a further five years of sixth form and university. This, of course, was in the days before academia had become an international business, and State and County Major Scholarships still guaranteed assiduous working-class students a debt-free post-graduate future. I was not particularly assiduous. Nevertheless, I ended up with a respectable degree, and, more importantly, with an ingrained respect for honest and painstaking scholarship: the kind of scholarship which requires acknowledgement and examination of all the facts before drawing conclusions, and which assumes an open-mindedness willing to adjust those conclusions, should further evidence make them untenable. Three years of presenting essays to serious academics was enough to convince me that omitting essential considerations to bolster some pet theory of my own would meet with short shrift. So why did I shake my head when this email from my college’s Development Office arrived? What is so disturbing about a ‘Green Giving Day’ to finance ‘sustainability improvements’? Here are the projects which are envisaged: · Setting a target and roadmap to achieve Net Zero · Measuring and improving the biodiversity of the gardens (eg purchasing camera traps and other kit for a team of student researchers) · Creating opportunities for students to gain the practical skills and knowledge needed to make a positive difference for the climate in their career (by inviting alumni speakers, raising awareness of college initiatives, providing practical opportunities to support the biodiversity of the gardens) · Further decarbonisation projects on the college site · Creating a working group of alumni with expertise in sustainability to advise the college. There can be no objection to improving the biodiversity of the gardens, or to insulating college buildings in an effort to keep down costs, but the use of such terms as ‘Net Zero’ and ‘decarbonisation’, and the goal of making ‘a positive difference for the climate’ suggest that this initiative is being ideologically driven by ‘academics’ who have sold out to the climate-change agenda and in so doing have abandoned any pretension to either detachment or honest, painstaking scholarship. They appear to have been convinced by the BBC that ‘The Science’ can be settled by consensus, and to be content with turning a blind eye to the many inconvenient truths overlooked by the likes of Al Gore. There is no ‘consensus’. Those who take the time to investigate for themselves cannot remain unaware of the many, many eminent scientists offering well-evidenced grounds for contesting the hypothesis of carbon-dioxide-induced climate devastation: far too many for any self-respecting university to be justified in promoting the unproved, and unprovable, belief that the ‘carbon footprints’ of mere human beings are either responsible for, or capable of seriously mitigating, the workings of a climatic system awesome in its complexity. Why waste time and money, and destroy all academic credibility, by rallying alumni to proclaim such controversial dogmas to the next generation of students as if they were established facts? Details of the Green Giving Day project are introduced by a pious word salad: ‘The environment we curate has been handed down to us by people who believed in the power of education, and who had the courage to take pioneering steps towards a better world. We have a responsibility to preserve and continue their work.’ One might question what kind of a ‘better world’ the promoters of Net Zero imagine would result from producing ‘a colder, hungrier population or massive depopulation.’ More to the point in the present instance: what would those ‘people who believed in the power of education’ think of successors who are no longer encouraging students to examine the evidence and think for themselves, but enlisting them in an emotive and highly politicised crusade based on questionable assumptions? This is not education, it is inculcation. It is not teaching, it is preaching. There are, of course, useful measures which could be taken by colleges amply provided with grounds to promote greater sustainability in areas, such as food production, which are now under threat from government climate policy. For instance, to compensate in some small measure for the land which is being lost beneath hedge-to-hedge solar panelling, they could turn over some part of their gardens to the production of organic food and orchards, providing not only nutritious meals for their students, but an opportunity for members of Junior, Middle and Senior Common Rooms to enjoy healthful breaks from the excessive mental exertion which appears to be addling their brains, and a greater spirit of camaraderie as they unite to tend their crops. This need not preclude possibilities for enhancing biodiversity: space could still be made available for hedgerows and wild-flower plantations, and perhaps even a hive or two for the honey bee. Enough of flights of fancy! Unfortunately, my old college is not alone in its proselytising fervour. When universities are promoting such partisan ‘green’ initiatives as the 1 in 5 Project, ‘a framework to allow the academic community to focus some of its collective brainpower on climate and biodiversity’ which urges students to skew their final dissertations in any subject towards highlighting and tackling the fashionable doomsday obsessions of Greta Thunberg, scholarly integrity appears to be a lost cause. The word ‘green’ has become enhanced in recent years by all kinds of favourable connotations: environmentally aware; nature-loving; anti-pollution; holy; holier-than-thou; etc; etc. Perhaps it’s time to give a bit more consideration to some alternative, more traditional, synonyms: ignorant; uninformed; incompetent; inexperienced; uninstructed; unpractised; unseasoned (cf Polonius to Ophelia, ‘You speak like a green girl’). No doubt you can think of many more.

Dan O'Sullivan's assessment where he rated the Manikato win above The Everest appears to have been spot on.

Well she gets the movie star treatment. https://fb.watch/oe__miJYr_/?mibextid=nWElTZ

Nice ride from Opie. Counted to 15 before pressing go!

Why can't you bet on Fixed Odds for a race on Sunday NOW? The book is closed. Why?

You drink at the Petone Club?

It won't faze her': Imperatriz camp not concerned about straight Imperatriz wins the Manikato Stakes. By Glenn McFarlane 05:35pm • 10 November 2023 0 Comments A strong exploratory track gallop at Flemington just over three weeks ago and a flawless spring campaign has given Te Akau Racing Australia assistant trainer Ben Gleeson confidence superstar mare Imperatriz won't have any issues at headquarters on Saturday. In the biggest challenge for the ‘Tangerine Queen' to date, Imperatriz will tackle straight-track specialist In Secret and a host of leading contenders including Bella Nipotina and Asfoora in a crack edition of the $3m Champions Sprint (1200m). READ | ‘I'm not saying she can't win, but I'm taking on Imperatriz' Having completed a trifecta of stunning wins at the Valley this spring, the five-year-old Kiwi mare can further frank her claims as the best sprinter in Australasia with a victory. Gleeson said the Te Akau camp had faith in Imperatriz's adaptability to tackle her first race at Flemington, but conceded they were mindful of the strong opposition. READ | 2023 Darley Champions Sprint runner-by-runner tips, analysis "She has had one gallop here (at Flemington)," Gleeson said of the October visit. "We sat her off behind one and even though it was only one horse, we gave her a bit of race simulation. She peeled outside and changed legs, and did everything she does at the Valley. "It won't faze her." READ | Champions Mile runner-by-runner analysis, tips Imperatriz has won seven of her past eight starts, with her only defeat this year coming in the Canterbury Stakes at Randwick in March when she was run down as favourite by Artorius. Her hat-trick of big wins at the Valley this season — in the Group 2 McEwen Stakes, the Group 1 Moir Stakes and the Group 1 Manikato Stakes (by a collective seven lengths) — have been breathtaking visually and on the clock. Now she needs to tick off the Flemington box, and Gleeson believes she is in the right frame to do it. Imperatriz is TAB favourite at $1.95, with In Secret a firming $4 second choice. "She is doing everything right." Gleeson said. "This will be a two-week gap between runs for the first time. But we were thrilled with her work on Tuesday morning." READ | Tony Brassel's top 5 for the Champions Stakes The decision to bypass the Everest, where In Secret ran a slashing fourth to Think About It, and keep her in Melbourne was to add more black type to her already impressive breeding page. But a win here in the Group 1 (which would be her ninth overall) would be the most important of her career. The daughter of I Am Invincible will jump from gate eight, while In Secret, who is unbeaten in two starts at Flemington, is in barrier five. Asked if a win would make her the best sprinter in Australasia, Gleeson said: "We are hoping so, but In Secret is an amazing straight horse, so all respect to her." READ | Tips from the big bookies for Champions / Five Diamonds day "She is an obvious worry. We will keep one eye on her. But we have done everything possible to have our mare spot on for this race." An international trip could be on the cards for Imperatriz next year but for the moment Te Akau is content with trying to first tick off the Flemington part of her CV. "There have been a few passing comments about it (a potential overseas venture), but we have had our attention fixed on the Champions Sprint," Gleeson said. In Secret's trainer James Cummings said he was confident his mare would make a race of it with Imperatriz on Saturday. Cummings said: "In Secret has a faultless record down the Flemington straight, where Imperatriz will be tackling that challenge for the first time." "She will no doubt love getting back to Flemington, where the barrier draw is less important. She gets an opportunity to follow the right horse with the right run and she'll let go with a top-class sprint again."

Takes time to change a Public Service culture.

Well Imperatriz odds are getting better. Bella looks the value bet to me.

@holy ravioli you should have taken @curious on In Secret is shortening now at $4.00. Might end up favourite!

But her NZ Grp1 form has been subsequently stamped by those she beat. Anyway my I believe she is up to beating this field which isn't a very string Darley by any means. Last years field was an exceptional field. The only doubts I have relate to the first time at the straight 6 and any track bias however the draw helps her cover that. Opie is walking the track in the morning with another top jock so that will help. Hopefully she settles quickly after the jump and isn't left to set the pace. Bella Nipotina and In Secret I like but they like to sit back. Haven't seen the speed maps so not sure who will lead. Possibly Airman or Asfoora.

Yes but you don't consider Grp 1 wins at Moonee Valley or in NZ as being the same quality. For example Imperatriz beat Roch N' Horse at Moonee Valley in March. The latter won the Darley last year beating the likes of Nature Strip, Levante, Giga Kick, Rothfire, Bella Nipotina, Paule, Masked Crusader, The Astrologist.

The "quality" of the races that In Secret has won. I think Bella Nipotina is good value at $12.

But still age group form at SW + P. Madam Pommery hasn't won in over a year. Sheeza Belter the same. Fireburn has won once at Doomben in May since it's 2yr old win in the Sires a year earlier.

Well your assessment of quality is always subjective. One was a set weight race for 3yr old fillies. The other SW +P for 3 yr olds where she was the lightweight carrying 54kg.

In Secret a light weight straight 6 specialist?

Get on @holy ravioli that is exceptional value.

Will they split? Or will they go left or right?

"good price" - sounds subjective. So $5.50 would be value? There's no such thing as a certainty in racing.

I'm not diverting. Anyone's "true odds" don't need to be substantiated - that's the price they have put on a horse winning. Anything better than that is value. How did you determine $4.50 was a good price?

So you don't bother to work out a price at all? So therefore you can't possibly work out what is value - just gut feel based on emotion? I'm picking @curious if In Secret was priced at $4.50 and Imperatriz at $1.80 wouldn't have a bet. But you'd be "piling it on like brylcreem"!