billy connolly

Compulsive gambling/gamblers eventually lose and if it's their own money they're playing with (as opposed to the bank) they're odds-on to go belly up. This guy did it right - https://www.punters.com.au/news/the-australian-turfs-greatest-betting-plunge-20150318/

Dye - 92 Dittman - 88 Cook - 57 Harris - 18 Olsen - 8 Langby - 5 Wouldn't much good to a horse now, fatter than a beached whale.

Mr Worrall hears a dog barking and as he's had trouble with petrol being stolen from his property he gets up, grabbing his shotgun. His wife says, be careful, dear! He goes outside and receives a shot to his left side, fired from 12.5 metres which injures but doesn't incapacitate him, but the assailant is out of ammunition (he has a single-barrelled shotgun). So Mr Worrall, barely able to see in the dawn light, turns around with his double-barrelled shotgun and shoots. The assailant is struck by the ricochet, causing minor injuries to his face. The assailant reloads, runs up to Mr Worrall and shoots him in the arm from 1.5 metres away. It breaks his arm. Mr Worrall calls out to his wife, help me, Kerry! Mr Worrall looks up at his assailant and asks, why me, mate? and the guy says, nothing personal, as he reloads and shoots him fatally in the heart. When the assailant turned up at a hospital A&E with suspicious facial injuries, staff alerted the police and he was taken in for questioning. He denied involvement at first, but later confessed. Kerry Worrall, who'd separated from Bill, then moved back into the family home, planned to pay the killer $15,000, she intended to use half her husband's life insurance money to have him shot. With regards the head post, some handy ponies in that lineup, doubt we'll see a field of that quality here again.

The horse in question lost its footing because the John Wayne on top tried to force a run on the outside of the leader approaching the home turn but was denied that run because the jockey directly to his outside put him back where he belonged causing a momentary falter but not a slip, if it had have slipped it wouldn't have got up and won the race IMO. The John Wayne I'm referring to has been doing this for 25 years and getting away with it and he got away with it again in Race 1 at Reefton !

Like a hippie at a music/weed festival they follow like sheep, last time I went I had to swim out of the place. If the Coast has a month of fine weather beforehand, it's fine on the day and the whitebait is on the house, Kumara maybe OK.

Miss is an honorific for addressing young women and girls but that would be over your head. Would you rather I called her Hit-or-Miss ?

Reefton, Moseley caused his own mount to lose its footing by trying to barge out on the point of the home turn but the horse on his outside (light green colours) was going just as well and held its ground so Moseley had to revert back to the inside. No mention in Stewards report but I note that Miss Veronica Algar was the chair of Stewards so not surprised.

Exactly, if the John Wayne on the winner hadn't have tried to force a run on the point of the home turn, they'd have still been racing and if he wasn't charged with careless riding the Stewards are incompetent.

Entirely Moseley's fault IMO and if he wasn't on the mat for careless riding he should've been.

Imperative that the Starter is on rostrum before last horse loads and Stewards should demand so.

Race 1 Riverton is what you get when a half-baked Starter is nowhere near the rostrum whilst field is loaded.

Soich was a law clerk at the time and was in the sack with Mr Big when he was arrested but was eventually acquitted of any involvement.

It's drawing a long bow to envisage a bank blowing the gaff on their clients. There was a long chapter in the book "The Gambling Man" titled "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" whereby one of the four, the head honcho of an Australian Bank who helped himself to 5.3 mil of wealthy clients funds (eventually losing 1.8 mil) to gamble on the ponies. That was in the late 1960's early 70's which would equate to at least 20 mil in today's money. Yes, more than a few Lawyers and the odd Accountant have been partial to the lure of illicit funds, one being the NZ Lawyer who acted for the Mr. Big/Mr. Asia drug cartel of the 1970's.

Correct, and this is where many of racing's participants are largely inadequate, basic grammar and spelling isn't that hard especially when the likes of Google etc. are only a mouse click away. If more of racing's coal face participants could string a sentence and were half proficient with a puter then forums such as these are an excellent venue to voice one's view... and anonymously.

Most interference in races occurs in the first 200/400 metres, the stewards have all the head-on footage of this interference but are too dense/dumb to take it into account with regards dividend bearing placings. Early interference is also more deliberate, whereas home straight interference is mainly attributable to horses moving under pressure.

And the aggrieved connections won't allow their jockeys to carry whips in future which will cause an uproar, half the field with whips and half without. Half-baked rules enforced by half-baked stewards.

Wrong place at wrong time, 500kg of horse against 50kg of jockey. Unlucky.

Correct, and if the horse is well fed, well trained, happy and paying its way Weir was doing more things right than he was wrong in my book. I've seen a lot of horses who were not well fed and certainly not happy but the bunny huggers cared little about their predicament. The legendary Tommy Smith found a competitive (anabolic) edge long before drug testing procedures detected them. Smith somehow got an ordinary horse from New Zealand (Toparoa) to win the 1955 Melbourne Cup and defeat a near champion (Rising Fast) in the process. Toparoa never won another race after returning to his owner in NZ, funny that ! The most you can do in this game is win, losers don't count and at the end of the day the horse is only an animal, a noble animal but still only an animal and to be frank there has been many a slow, non trying, rogue horse who could've only benefitted from a jab or three with a bull prodder.

Both Riccarton's track manager (Chapman) and CEO (Mills) live on the course, they have access to modern technology (both digital and mechanical) and in November they have at least another 6 hours of daylight time before and after their usual work hours in which to present a safe and satisfactory track for their one important race day of the year. If I was in either the track manager's or CEO's shoes I wouldn't have left a stone unturned preparing the track for Cup day regardless of how long I'd been in the job. If my mail is correct there is considerable resentment towards the two individuals in question.

When was the last time a horse slipped galloping in a straight line at Riccarton and when was the last time a race meeting was canned there??? In my view the Riccarton abandonment was the direct result of incompetence by two individuals, the track manager and Mills. The writing was on the wall when horses were blundering (slipping) at the start on day one and two. The Stewards should also have demanded the track be mowed before the meeting commenced and certainly before the last day, no mention of that in report.

Of course they're not. The Trainers had an opportunity to give Mills the two-fingered salute when he transferred last weeks meeting to the Polytrack but didn't have the initiative to do so.

From memory her husband/partner was under the assumption Neal was tutoring her as a trainee Stipendiary Steward when in actual fact he was feeding her an old part of his anatomy... in a Christchurch motel room. Pricks like Neal thought nothing of persecuting license holders to the point of destroying their careers in some instances. No sympathy.

Rigmarole, it's too late having postmortems a month after an event, especially when the evidence of incompetence has been tampered with.

No doubt swept under carpet, similar to a previous episode of leaving road cones on track for the field to hurdle in first (flat) race of the day approx five years ago. A bit late to remedy the course proper now, Millsey, it should've been seen to after the Grand National meeting in August, in fact it should have been seen to many moons ago. Do you (and a few others) still have the Boards backing, Millsey?

As the head poster on this thread alluded, approx 50 horses slipped (and lost their chance) at the start on the first two days and no remedial action was taken by stewards, track manager or Mills. You don't need to be a track/turf expert to see that any recent moisture on a grass surface which lacks density and is too long will cause the grass to collapse and horses won't get traction which is exactly what occurred. Horses shouldn't slip at the start and they should never slip galloping in a straight line at Riccarton in November.