Chief Stipe

Then why did Swayzee lose form? In average time. Ran second in a Group 2 beaten 1 length giving the winner a 10m headstart in Handicap.

Yep another BS race based on no pattern. A sweepstake! Promo race! Bit like The Everest. Only had 4 starts since. That Nullabor field was crap so didn't beat much.

Geez the conspiracy gets even better! Godolphin is in on it.

So you are an expert on analysing camel racing performance as well?

You're behind the times Galah. You probably thought they'd never break 4 minutes for 3200m. The record is 3:05 for 2600m or about 60 to 70 metres faster than 3:10.

Really? Where do you get these so called PED's? Swayzee has always been an exceptional horse. Running 1.54 in its first race as a 2yr old is top drawer. In my opinion he was poorly trained until Grimson got him.

So you would have us all believe that Grimson a few days before Tuesdays race sneeks into the country some secret undetectable PED and injects the horse which then performs exceptionally. Well it doesn't perform exceptionally and certainly not a career best. If this mysterious PED is so good why didn't Cya Art run a career best performance and actually win the race given the run it had?

It wasn't a particularly fast time. Nor was the Junior FFA. You don't seen to assess race by race performances.

Ben Yole wins the Tasmanian Championship year in year out based on sheer numbers.

How long was Swayzee here for prior to the Cup? You have no idea about Grimsons travel arrangements and can only speculate. The Telfers may have given the horse regular vet checks but not many trainers do full blood analysis and adjust feed and supplements relative to those tests. Pre-race blood testing was done and the horse was swabbed. It is a nonsense that there is a mysterious unknown drug (restructured peptide) that is freely available and cannot be detected. What experts? As I've said you can test for everything and anything especially when you have a reference sample. As they did in the Fishman case. @Archie Butterfly is talking nonsense when he posts the Horse and Camel Supplies website as a source of these injectable drugs. Do you really think these so called experts you mention can't source samples from Horse and Camel Supplies?

But it wasn't a significant rise in performance and the race was run well below the standard for the race and its class. I estimate about 30m slower.

AM Butt was once too. They don't have a particularly high UDR the Telfers which would tend to indicate that their premiership win is based on horse numbers.

I would have said they bought the horse after Kaikoura and were running tests on it before then. So at least 2 weeks training and other information longer. 99% of the time as I've shown with Swayzee the improvements aren't all that significant. Arguably you can say the same for Cya Art. With no evidence for performances that based on the horses previous form is attainable. Do you really think that given all the publicity, innuendo, inference and accusations of wrong doing that Cya Art and Swayzee weren't being closely monitored by the RIB over the last two weeks? Pre-race blood testing was done and both horses were swabbed.

Explain why the performance was exceptional for Cya Art? It had the run of the race, spent nothing from its draw of 1 and sat behind the winner for the entire race. They really only sprinted home the last 800m - another top drive by Mark Purdon. When Cya Art came off the winners back it just kept up beaten 1.3 lengths. Cya Art ran a near identical race in April at the Met in the same time but was the performance of that race. Sitting parked for most of the first lap. Then shuffled back a bit before running the fastest last 400m of the race to finish second. That was an R55-R67 race and he ran up to that performance in the Junior FFA which arguably was run well below its normal standard. They've run two seconds quicker in the Junior FFA in the previous two years.

Well done @JasonTeaz

I also notice that Swayzee had a 10 month spell between September 2021 and August 2022. He then had 19 starts to April 2023 when Grimson takes him on. He had still been winning and running good time but below his previous form prior to that. Grimson gives him a month off racing. The horse comes back and improves by 1.5% I.e. about a second. His races under Grimson have been well spaced by comparison to the previous trainer who in my opinion thrashed the horse. I see a similar pattern with some other trainers where a good horse who shows talent early is raced hard and not placed well. Subsequently their form drops off. Harness horses that can run top time as a 2yr old don't get slower they get stronger as they age Grimson is placing Swayzee very well. He could have undone everything with the horse if he had backed up in the FFA.

I have a suspicion that detail on what happens to each horse is now being done in the bunker post race or even well past the race meeting finishing (bit like Rugby's TMO). The delay seems to be variable relative to the importance of the race meeting. Big Saturday meetings fairly short time frame. Sunday meeting not so quick. Probably not Oathams job anymore either but the bunker Stipe. I'm not defending him I just suspect the process has changed. Don't be surprised if you see a "Stipe Comment" sneak into the form line I'm the next couple of days. As a slight aside I notice from time to time there is a bit of a Government bureaucrat mentality with regard to work time. If you watch the trial videos upload you'll notice that trials at a major venue are uploaded easily inside 30 mins except there is a delay which corresponds with lunch time which can be as long as 90 minutes. Videos from a smaller venue can take 1 to 3 days even though we are led to believe that every official venue must have a data uplink. As the saying goes the more things stay the same.

Swayzee did run 1.53 as a 2yr old. Bolted in in his first race as a 2yr old at Menangle winning by 14m. Trained by AM Butt and driven by Jason Grimson. Perhaps the questions should be asked about what has gone wrong at the Butt stable? https://www.harness.org.au/racing/fields/race-fields/?mc=PC210420 1.54 maiden winner running last 1/4 in 27. Looked a potential champion on that performance.

Don't forget Moroney and Stackhouse winning the Blue Saphire with Run Harry Run.

Not so sure. She needs a perfect run an her style is to be held up with cover for the last dash at them. Te Akau haven't had their normal weekend of success.

Trackside Premier (64) is BS. 3 mins out from NZ Cup and we get a drone shot of tents and then a shot from 1000 feet in the air of Gulliver's Travels size horses walking around the back of the starting gates.

Woops my mistake I was on Channel 64.

Is this an Aussie cheer leaders Topic?

Why? Every horse gets a chance and the track surface is impeccable.

Although the Steward report says he got a hopple shortener cord caught in a hopple. I reckon it was related though to Mark's reaction.