The "experts" tipped in this edition of The Australian newspaper on 30 November 1974, as they did every week. In fact there were nearly more "experts" tipping back then than horses racing at the meeting. These days media people still tip in newspapers, but thankfully they are no longer called "experts". As a matter of interest, the "experts" who were tipping this day in The Australian were (L-R) Peter Lovitt, Phil Wignell, Ross du Bourg, Keith Lofthouse, Ron Maund, Ron Taylor, Bob Robertson, Jack McPherson and Bill Collins.

In punting you’ll have good collects when you have your eye in – then you’ll have ordinary times when everything you do is wrong. That rule remains the same across all players in the industry, whether they are a punter, tipster, trainer, jockey, owner, bookmaker, or any other person connected with the industry.

Let’s examine those named groups of participants one at a time starting with trainers and you’d find most trainers will tell you they are “eating paint off the walls.” Well I don’t know how many coats of paint went on the wall in the first place, but I’ve been hearing that trainers have been “eating paint off the walls” for the last 30 years. I have deduced in that timeframe that paint must be quite fattening, for, from my observations, the ones who will tell you that they are “eating paint off the walls” are actually getting fatter each year. Eat your hearts out Jenny Craig and Ron Johnston. If one is starving, one generally loses weight, I would have thought. Maybe in 2010 with all the fast and fat food around you can actually put on weight by simply passing a shop - maybe it’s in the air or something. So ask most trainers how they are going and many will tell you they are “going broke”, to the point where they can’t make a solitary dollar out of training your horse for a fee of $55 a day, in say Toowoomba, so I assume most trainers are doing it purely for the love of it – and there is nothing wrong with that, as long as they don’t whinge about how tough times are.

That brings us to the owner. If you didn’t have any owners, well put simply, you wouldn’t need the trainers to train the owner’s horses, the jockey to steer the said equine oxygen thief, or the horse transport carrier to cart the slow horse to the races and so on and so forth. Bookmakers wouldn’t exist, as there would be no owners of the horses, pacers or greyhounds. The TAB’s would all shut up shop because there would be no racing product. Sky Channel and TVN would go into recess which would mean some of the Sky Channel desperate and dateless who have got a gig since their number of channels expanded could go back to basket weaving, busking, or whatever pursuit they were involved in before two new racing channels were born in 2010. In fact I’m getting to the stage where I wake up with cold sweats in the middle of the night from some of those Sky Channel voices and I get the missus to wallop me with a fly swat, just to make sure I haven’t crossed over and am hearing these voices “calling” from far away – hopefully from up above and not from that hot joint down below.

Talking of bookmakers, they are the “protected species” in this racing industry, as all they have to do is stand there, under an umbrella if it’s too hot, try to look reasonably intelligent, although that latest criteria is optional, then they can slowly relieve you of your hard earned money to the point where if you lose so much to a bookie that you may have to go and busk in the local mall to get enough dough to feed the rugrats. If the bookie should happen to walk past you while you are belting out a tune, he’ll actually pretend that he doesn’t even recognize you. That way he doesn’t even have to put so much as a wee silver coin featuring a platypus in your empty guitar case, which doubles as the collection plate. Those bookmaker people have all 652 variables in racing working for them, so what foolish punter thinks he or she will win the battle with them in the long term? Two houses and three wives later, the poor old punter will realize “that dill from Justracing” was right. Hallelujah. Better late than never I suppose.

Let’s move on to jockeys and what wonderful little people they are – well the vast majority of them are – whilst others are downright arrogant, but at the end of the day we need them to steer our 450 or 500 kilogram slow horse around the racetrack of dreams. In respect of jockeys it always amazes me why jockeys all only want to ride the fastest horse in a race. Why wouldn’t you want to ride the slowest horse in the race if you were a jockey, because the slower the horse, the softer the fall if the thing crashes to the track with a heart attack or whatever? That said, why don’t all jockeys want to ride at Gympie, or Wondai, when they race at those racetracks, as at least if something unforeseen happens and the jockey hits the deck – at least he or she is falling onto sand. A lot of jockeys will also tell you they are “eating paint off the walls” – and you may recall that’s the same vernacular that many trainers use, so maybe both groups are simply beating their drum to the same tune. Yes jockeys are an integral part of the industry, as it wouldn’t make for good television if sumo wrestlers started riding our horses – in loincloths. On that topic, I can’t understand why they bow those sumo wrestlers, if I was that big I wouldn’t be bowing to anybody, but then I’ve never worked out how people in our armed forces can spend 20 years of their life going to work all day saying “Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir,” then come home and have a blue with the partner.

Then in racing you have the “experts”. There are two words in racing that get used far too often, one is “champion” and the other is “expert”. I’ve only seen a handful of “champions” across all three codes of racing. They are indeed a rare commodity.

There have been many wonderful thoroughbreds, pacers or greyhounds down through the ages, but there are very few champions. But with experts, well the world is full of them as racing contains a myriad of the phenomena known as “experts”. Most of the “experts” are tipsters – and I cringe. I’ll tell you what the hardest thing in the world to do is – and it’s not Monica learning how to capture a United States President’s attention with her extraordinary ability to blow smoke rings with a cigar in the Oval Office, or Edmund Hilary hoisting his flag at the summit of Mt Everest, or building an “unsinkable” ship like the Titanic – or any of that stuff, it’s tipping winners at the races. I’m amazed at the number of “experts” who want to try to tip the winner of every race ever run. They all knock themselves over to get their tips out on radio land, television land, or Internet land and like I say, I just cringe. I always say the more you tip horses, trotters or greyhounds, the more you will be wrong – and that is an accurate statement as given the variables involved no one ever born will ever tip enough winners to earn the tag “expert”. Regular readers will know from my recent historical race fields that I reproduced and put up on this website that we had what the “experts” tipped – and at that Moonee Valley gallop meeting there were nearly more “experts” tipping in The Australian newspaper that day than horses that were actually racing at the meeting. These days at least the newspapers don’t say, “What the experts tip”, as I’d have finished up on skid row in life had I followed what the “experts” tipped.

So don’t take much notice of what I tip either, as I’m no “expert” on…..ah, anything.