With A Dream

In the interests of accuracy Longowner, the Maurice Holmes Vase is actually worth $30,000. I think perhaps the race you were referring to was the Thermo King pace which was run on Friday 2nd Nov for a stake of around $14,000. Apart from that race, most of the open class lead up races in Canterbury have been worth around $30,000 plus. I am sure that the Met would like to put on higher stakes for the supporting races on Cup Day but the reality is that money has to come from somewhere and I wouldn't like to see other stakes reduced to supplement supporting races on Cup Day. Also worth noting the support races on Auckland Cup night are $20,000. I am as critical of the Met as anyone when it comes to things they do I don't agree with, but I think we have to cut them some slack over supporting races on Cup Day.

I think you miss understood my post Happy Sunrise. I was pointing out the stupidity of Cross codes post that Dalgety is out of form.

Trainers udr ,3254. Not bad for an “out of form” trainer.

I remember he gave a very amusing speech. I think it was after his dominion win. If I remember correctly Muldoon was prime minister at the time and was on course. Slim said words to the effect that since stake money is treated as prize money you won’t be getting any tax of me from my winnings.

I’m surprised Matty Williamson hasn’t been getting better drives. He seems to have driven more than his share of long shots lately.

He is well placed to get a number of Bettors mares

Sweet Lou seems to be doing a good job in USA

Thought that myself Globe. I don’t know when Soky Atom died but the mare must have been served with frozen semen, possibly preserved for some years after he went to that great race track in the sky.

He has been very quiet of late.

Good to see a field of 11 for the Hannon Memorial. Good stake with no acceptance fees.

Funny you should say that Enteebee. Found the same thing myself. ATC have a couple of nice girls on their front desk who are friendly and always try to be helpful. Always feel at Addington the usual person on the desk gives me the impression she is doing me a favour by handing out the passes as if she was the gatekeeper.

Just look at what happened when some elements in the Catholic Church tried to hide from their scandals, it never ends well. Only way is to be upfront otherwise it implies innocent people have something to hide. At the very least Jensen needs to apologize now for his actions and make clear the press are always welcome. & if he doesn't then he needs to resign or be removed from his position.

If the TAB open a book on the premiership I’ll have $5.00 on you. 1000 to 1

Going to make the drivers premiership interesting this year. Zac Butcher, Matthew Williamson , Ricky May, Sam Ottley could all be chances now

True. I got his name wrong way around

Perfect pitch

Oops, I should have gone to spek savers

I got the 46 age from an old article back in 2008 saying she was 36. It must have been wrong.

Natalie I believe is 46 years old. Reports are the woman involved is 41. Either it is someone else or the reported age is wrong, which is not unlikely

Excellent post Galah. Agree with everything you say. But hrnz need to fight against the proposal to allocate profits from TAB to codes based on local & internatioal share of turnover, rather than share of domestic as it is now.

The disaster for Harness Racing in this report is that distribution to the seperate codes will be done on share of total turnover of each code rather than share of domestic turnover of each code. This will mean potentially millions taken off harness & given to thoroughbreds. We could see harness stakes plummet. Hope I am wrong but this is result of report focused on thoroughbreds only. There was good article in ODT on unfairness of the scope of report.

I take your point about the race tracks. When they run home in 25s from the front it does make for boring racing. My original point still stands though. In the 80's studs were importing stallions from the U.S. that probably wouldn't have won a maiden race here. Card Shark, Sholty to name a few and I could go on forever. The problem with in breeding really comes from the large number of mares a stallion can serve each season. Also, the trotting breed is not as inbred as the pacers. Possibly because Europe provides out crosses for North America & Down under bloodlines.

When you look at the breeding of Our Mana it reminds me of the rubbish stallions we use to bred to. At least we have made giant strides in that regard.

This is the big worry. My worry is that we could see A bias in the amount of thoroughbred racing broadcast from overseas thereby increasing galloping share of betting which they will then use to justify taking funds off harness & Greyhounds. Hope I am wrong but I don’t think Winston’s is in the least bit interested in helping anything but gallops. I think he would happily sell harness down the gurgler to help his mates. Harness leaders must lobby politicians to make sure this doesn’t happen

Seems ironic that the man who made a career out of campaigning against foreign control is leading the charge to sell out the TAB to foreign interests. Lets hope any windfall will be shared fairly among all three codes.