Strategies for punters: Mark Read

[Wingman]

Some must see how the horse they intend to back looks and I respect that point of view. Some are less concerned, focusing primarily on form lines and last performance and I also respect that point of view. We all have different lines that we draw and will not cross. With that said here is a true story, no embellishment and I can record it accurately because I was the main player of the following story.

Once apun a time a long time ago, 40 plus years I was a teenager at Trentham with $40 in my pocket. Back then they had on course trebles. I really liked the chances of a ten dollar shot in the 1st leg, race 2 so put $10 to win and took a treble, with the field, ten runners in race 3. 50% of my funds spent however the ten dollar anchor won and no matter what I was going home a winner. Now for the weird ,difficult part. Back then the 'system' could not handle a third leg so everyone who had a live ticket or tickets had to exchange their ticket for their runner/runners in the last leg. A good friend older and more experienced, asked me what I was going to do. I should mention that the 2nd leg was won by the rank outsider $60 and the bush telegraph was shouting there were only a handful of live tickets. I told him I could not see the favourite lose (number 1) and that was that. He came back to me and said it went down in its preliminary looking like a crab with a hamstring problem. I refused to budge although, yes I was concerned. The favourite was called Amyl and bolted in winning I think the Wellington Derby for 3yo. The treble paid somewhere around $800, probably 10-15K in todays money and understandably I have never bothered about preliminaries since. I do not however like to see horses in a bad sweat. The biggest point of this story is that after the race the trainer said in an interview with journalists, "don't worry about his action. he always looks like that, UNTIL he gets into a proper gallop."