30/05/13
I always think that it’s funny to see the different ways that all the various so called “experts” dissect a race and a nark via email yesterday took me to task to put up publicly my Saturday Morning Mail preview of last Saturday’s Group 1 Doomben 10,000 seeing I’d stated on the Brisbaneracing website photo captions yesterday that I’d tipped the winner Epaulette. The same person then said he’d also like to see what I said about Precedence in his race, given I always slam horses with a CV like he had before the race.
What readers like that bloke must understand is that every race ever run has to have a winner and many races – whether they are run on a normal Saturday or on a Carnival Saturday – are full of what I call “bad horses”. I must say that I wouldn’t like to put up publicly some of the things that I tell my clients confidentially under copyright, as I regularly slam horses, trainers or both. Put simply, in order to tip and/or back a winner, a person has to eliminate every runner in the field – except one horse. As I write annually when the Melbourne Cup comes around with its 24 starters, it’s simply a fact of life that 23 cannot and will not win, unless there is a dead heat. So why pussyfoot around being nice to every horse in a race like most Form Guide commentators do, simply to appease a single owner, or a group of owners, or a trainer. Who cares about the owner/s or the trainer? They are all old enough to look after themselves. In fact I couldn’t care less if they like what I write about their horse. I deal solely in facts and the facts and realities and my perception of “the facts and realities” of a racehorse are generally far from what the owner and/or the trainer’s perceptions of that horse are. In short many racehorse owners haven’t got a clue about the limitations of their ordinary racehorse, or even where their horse should be ridden in a race to maximize its chance of winning, etcetera. Many owners are simply strung along by their trainer who doesn’t want to lose them as a client and who needs their $3,000 or $5,000 or whatever figure it is a month from training fees, as if that client leaves the stable, the trainer now has to find a new client. In some senior roles that I’ve had in big business in my lifetime, I can assure you that it’s far easier to keep an existing client than to have to walk out the front door and find a new one.
In fact I’ve always thought that racehorse owners are a bit like adult women – in that being talked garbage to by some smooth talking male simply becomes music to their ears. Racehorse owners historically must believe in the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, The Tooth Fairy and all the rest of the fictional characters that we grew up with as they dutifully like hearing all this nonsense that their trainer speaks which infers that their slow horse will some day magically have an unannounced Form Guide gear change of “lung and leg transplant on” and suddenly become some revered racehorse that the masses will applaud as he or she returns to scale after a Group 1 win, coming straight on the back of having had 15 unsuccessful attempts at winning a Maiden. A human analogy is that similarly many woman over 18 are stupid enough to believe that some male that they hardly know – buying them flowers and chocolates and telling them copious amounts of bullshit about how beautiful they are, and all that allied nonsense, will some day prove to be the most amazing husband and will father her three healthy strapping and tertiary bound children. Sadly the facts and realities are nearly always far from any wonderful fairytale. In racing “fairytales” rarely happen – I’d say they may surface in about .01 of one per cent of the time.
Many trainers string uneducated owners along and generally the end result is akin, in human terms, to the 60% divorce rate that afflicts married couples after all the “bullshit” has been eroded in the passage of time. Almost every time the “relationship” ends in heartbreak and the horse never reaches the heights its trainer thought it would.
So I slam horses with gay abandon, with a reasonably accurate degree of success or I wouldn’t have a business in this caper after 16 years – and here is the end result of what Saturday Morning Mail clients received last Saturday at 9am on the Doomben 10,000:
HORSE
COMMENT
RANGIRANGDOO
Hasn’t won a race in the last 25 months and won’t buck that trend here.
BUFFERING
Had 14 goes to win at Group 1 level and hasn’t won yet, so I have to look for something to beat him today.
MANAWANUI
Hasn’t won a race in the last 19 months. Raced well when he resumed from 31 weeks off at Randwick on 27/4/13 but he’s not a horse of mine.
RAIN AFFAIR
Hasn’t won a race in the last 13 months and always manages to find one better, so place chance best.
SPIRIT OF BOOM
Hasn’t won a race in the last 16 months and I’d wait for him in a handicap.
MY QUEST FOR PEACE
Resumes here from 28 weeks off after having run 10th in the Melbourne Cup last year, so faces mission impossible given he’s never won under 2012 metres. Blinkers go on for the first time today.
JETSET LAD
Hasn’t won a race in the last 15 months and needs to be in a handicap race to be competitive.
YOUR SONG
Scored an extraordinary five lengths win when resuming from 31 weeks off in the BTC Cup on a heavy 9 at Eagle Farm 14 days ago. Now hits a much firmer surface but he’s beaten most of these horses pointlessly last start, so has to be conceded a winning chance.
SEA SIREN
A three times Group 1 winner that has been racing dreadfully at her last three starts, so is impossible to have.
EPAULETTE
Chased home Black Caviar when resuming from 26 weeks off on 13/4/13 in the T.J.Smith at Randwick. Easily beat home Bel Sprinter and Rain Affair that day (by 2.25 lengths and 2.75 lengths respectively) and Bel Sprinter then ran second in Singapore at Group 1 level the other night at his next start and Rain Affair came to Brisbane to run second to Your Song in the Group 1 BTC Cup. That gutbuster to try to chase down Black Caviar saw him flat second-up, but his astute trainer has given him 28 days off to get over all that. Beaten a short-half-head by Pierro at Rosehill on a dead 5 on 24/3/12 so has a touch class on his side. Should finish in the first two. A visor goes on for the first time and the winkers come off.
YOSEI
Hasn’t won a race in the last 23 months but she is at least a three times Group 1 winner, so she could run third here without surprising. Winkers go on for the first time. Place hope at big odds.
PUNCH ON
Hasn’t won a race in the last 16 months, so is wasting her time here.
PANE IN THE GLASS
Hasn’t won a race in the last 21 months, so needs it much easier.
STEPS IN TIME
Resumes here from a nine week let-up and is a talented mare but I couldn’t have her at this level.
BETTER THAN READY
Has never won past 1200 – and this is 1350, but he wasn’t disgraced when running on behind Your Song last start, so he’s another with a place chance.
Additional comments: Another race chock full of “long term losers”, as 8 of the 15 haven’t won a race in the 12 months. I’d back Epaulette each way.
Epaulette was also named in the report as one of two best bets on the day.
Here is what I wrote of Precedence in the last race. He was not a “long term loser” as he had won a race in the last 12 months which the website email detractor failed to notice:
PRECEDENCE
Just the one win in the last 29 months was on 15/9/12 at Moonee Valley but ran a terrific third with 59kgs to Tanby over 2400 at Sandown on 17/11/12 and if he could repeat that effort here – he’d be awfully hard to beat at big odds.
And the only place in Australia that potted and tipped against the “good thing” of the day at Doomben last Saturday – Arinosa – was Saturday Morning Mail. How many punters and tipsters bothered researching her chances with the detail below that appeared in my clients report? Certainly none that I heard publicly. My thoughts to clients read:
ARINOSA
Going for four wins in a row today and nine from 27 in her career. Resumes from 42 days off here. Beaten at 2/1 at Rosehill on 27/10/12 when she tried to win off the exact same break. She’s better than these on her best form but running horses every 42 days and expecting them to be at their top is historically very fraught with danger and she also has to set a personal weight carrying record to get home here at her very short quote as she’s never won with more than 57.5kgs (15/9/12) and today she has 58.5kgs. I also question why a supposedly sound horse that has won at tight tracks like Canterbury and Warwick Farm in the past suddenly needs a gear change of “lugging bits on first time” today to get around Doomben. She’ll probably run odds-on in this race as the whole world wants to tell you she’s a certainty – but I don’t think that she’s any put-in-take-out job.
Today on www.brisbaneracing.com.au there another in the popular “What’s In A name” segment. On www.sydneyracing.com.au there are two stories, one involving two people who have been disqualified in New South Wales, including the trainer who stewards obviously concluded knowingly employed a disqualified person, whilst on www.melbourneracing.com.au Matt Nicholls has an interesting story on Bart Cummings, penned by Brad Bishop.