You can just feel the love. Lucky Lindsay is a nine-year-old gelding. He’s had eight jumps races, and is so successful that he’s finished second twice (against a group of numbnuts), and third once.
In 2012 he’s had three jumps races:
So, it hasn’t been a great start to 2012 for Lucky, Lucky Lindsay…..especially when we learn that in the race where he finished nearly 30 lengths from the winner his jockey was found guilty of whipping a horse that was out of contention! How much love can a horse take?
A star at work….at the back of the field where Lucky Lindsay seems to do his best work. Still, a spanked bum for a horse that finishes 30 lengths from the winner was even hard for the Stewards to accept.
Anyway let’s take a look at the previous year when he gained those two stirling second-placings – an analysis of the two races reveal the quality of the horses he beat:
Note: These figures are up to date as of now – only one of the horses that finished behind him has ever won a race – and that was after these two races. That horse was Fergus McIver. He died at Sandown a month or so later trying to chase Black and Bent home.
Now here’s an interesting bit – these two Warrnambool races were conducted less than twelve months ago, yet six of these horses are now without a trainer. One because he died, but the others?… well, why aren’t Pulse Maker, Celtic Empire, Hayashi, Global Conqueror and Fabienne Gold currently allocated to trainers? Heck, we don’t know. We presume their loving owners have put them into a nice big paddock… (you know the rest!)
Dontcha love jumps racing? We do. We love it to death.
Jumps Racing: The Musgrave Ritual continues……
Thursday: May 3rd 2012. On any Thursday in Melbourne, at 12.30pm, you’ll find that Channel 2 is showing The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Today’s edition was The Musgrave Ritual.
For years we’ve been hearing about the great jumps-trainer Eric Musgrove, however Warrnambool – and even Oakbank before that – was not the same for the great man in 2012. Take a look:
Above: Isn’t that fun? Ron Reed in the Herald Sun says that Our Aristocrat ‘slipped’. The Stewards said he ‘fell’, but hell, what would they know compared with a genius like Reed. Our Aristocrat has had ten jumps races, and won four of them – all from just six jumps races in 2011. He won the Australian Hurdle and the South Australian Grand National – it all looked so good back then….just a year ago (see our post of April 2nd).
It’s a different game for him this year – Above Average, Tigeriffic, Cat’s Fun and Black & Bent have all beaten him. It’s not the same….especially at Warrnambool where he’s learned how much he enjoys it by almost breaking his neck. Ron Reed felt no pain at all. Nor did the trainer.
Our Aristocrat’s fall occurred on the Wednesday – then came Thursday, and another hurdle race – and now it was Our Aristocrat’s stablemate’s turn:
Like his stablemate Our Aristocrat, Goldtown also enjoys jumps racing, even though he’s had a shorter career. He’s had eight jumps races, won just one of them (a chickenshit 2900m hurdle at Oakbank) and can now include a headache in his accomplishments. He was conceived in Japan, a son of the (then) most famous stallion anywhere in the world……and brought to the yearling sales in Sydney where he cost $1.5m. Look at the poor bastard now.
He’d knuckled at the final jump at the same track last September, and now he’s done it properly – there probably wasn’t enough enjoyment in just knuckling! Anyway, he loves it ….you can just tell from the way in which his neck is extended. Exciting for the spectators, huh? It’s hard to think that a few years ago he was running in the Tulloch Stakes and the AJC Derby! But hell, this is much more fun!
Anyway, Our Aristocrat and Goldtown represented one of the most famous stables in jumps racing – look at the scoreboard – this is how we see it, but of course we could be wrong:
Oh well, you can’t help bad luck. Still, these poor bastards will all be sent out again for their own enjoyment.
Jumps racing: The horses (and us) just can’t get enough of this fun!
Jumps Racing and the classics – Scouting and Gravitas
When it comes to classical music we can’t say we’re experts, especially with regard to the works of Igor Stravinsky. Nor do we claim to be experts at jumps racing; however we’re gradually getting the hang of all the bullshit that is put forward for the gullible to swallow.
We were never surprised that Scouting, a son of the sprinter Stravinsky (a son of Nureyev) might find the demands of jumps racing a bit hard for him. In five jumps races he won a minor race and ran a third placing. His only success came in a Pakenham hurdle when he beat his stablemate Gravitas and a group of champions: Luvizpet, Stillman, Questrian, Donovan’s Reef and Bologna on May 17th last year (2011). Anyway, here’s our lad at work shortly thereafter (July 16th) in a Pakenham hurdle:
He’d already fallen during the race. Now the disoriented gelding falls again, and Stewards reported, “At the tenth hurdle near the 600 metres on the final lap, Scouting (NZ) made a faulty jump and as a result fell and dislodged its rider, T Wells. Scouting (NZ) galloped riderless for the remainder of the race until after the winning post where it attempted to jump the outside running rail and as a result fell and was severely winded. Scouting (NZ) underwent a veterinary examination which revealed the gelding had deep tissue bruising to the off shoulder and stifle, and an abrasion above its right eye.”
Now do you wonder why he loves it like he does? He’s a warrior!
Back to his first-and-only (to date) victory: here’s a look at the quality of that field!
Jumps Racing – this is laughable folks! (continued)
Jumps racing is on the up and up…..just look at the success of Sunday’s racing at Hamilton – where they actually attracted fifteen horses in two jumps races – even though the betting was crappy. At Sandown on Wednesday 18th they paid an additional $48,000 in prizemoney, attracted a whopping nine jumpers (we kid you not!) for their two jumps races, and betting (which was *#!*house at Hamilton was even worse – $41,633 less – and that was for two jumps races held at a city course!
Yikes….does this look clever to you? It doesn’t to us, but then again, we don’t know much….well, not as much as the geniuses who run jumps racing. Take a look….
Betting Investment: Sandown 18th April 2012
Total: Win, Place, Quinella, First-Four, Exacta, Trifecta
(Quadrella shown extra) Source VicTAB
Betting Revenue for two jumps races: $135,614 (Average $67,807)
Betting revenue for six flat races: $1,983,792 (Average $330,632)
Folks….this is crazy!
The figures for flat racing do not include the Quadrella of $461,672 on races 5-8, all flat races. Like the Hamilton Racing Club, the MRC didn’t want any jumps races spoiling their party either! They wouldn’t have got anything like $461,672 with a jumps race or two in it. It seems obvious that those looking at the Sandown card were ready to invest – an average $330,632 per flat race – an average $67,807 per jumps race……fantastic! The betting investment barely covered the prizemoney – jumps are booming!
So, Nuff-Nuff – where are all these jumps horses we’ve been hearing about? Where the hell are they?
Anyway, did you take our tip from yesterday when we told you– “watch Lucky Lurch in the steeple, and Desert Master in the hurdle – just go to watch how much they love jumps racing. They really do! You can just tell…..” Here’s how they fared:
What’s the matter? Isn’t this how a jumps horse is supposed to jump? Over ya go Desert Master, and land hindlegs first? Remember this horse is a former Grand National winner....and a good one too, anyway, he earned an extra $2,000 for finishing fourth (and last) which took his earnings to $681,163, more than half of which was earned during an excellent flat-racing career. Now the ten-year-old Galleywood-Grand National winner comes in last in a four-horse race – fifteen lengths from the winner. In three jumps races so far this season, he’s finished a combined 45 lengths from the winners. We suspect we’ll be told that he’s ‘looking for the bigger fences’. Watch with interest.
At the very next jump: That ain’t workin’, that’s the way ya do it...money for nuthin’...... The former champ in action. He last won a jumps race in August 2009 – that seems quite a while ago. We’ll talk more about his efforts soon. Right now we think he’s a horse that wants jumps racing to stop even more than the protesters do. Strangely, we thought he ran-out at several jumps and appeared to inconvenience one particular fellow-competitor . Yet it didn’t even raise a mention in the Stewards’ Report – we must have been seeing things. Told you we don’t know much!
Phaze Action.
Oh, and we’d show you a picture of Lucky Lurch in the steeplechase too….if we could.
He finished fifth in the five-horse steeplechase….we guess that means ‘last’ – and the poor bludger didn’t get into anyone’s photo….still, he won $965 for the day…just for turning up! Not bad money for a horse which last won a race in 2009!
His stablemate Rabbuka finished second-last, but he was only six lengths behind the winner. Poor bastard has won once from eleven jumps races – a poor return for a horse that’s won more than $400,000 on the flat.
What we do have for you is a photo of the winner, Phaze Action going over (make that going-through) the final fence.
Tch, tch….this horse isn’t showing the required ‘respect’ for the jump. (What a stupid word –‘respect’ – as if the animal admired the jump).
Oh, and one more thing: do we owe an apology?
Sorry old fella,
Aiglon
Hope it wasn’t something we said….?
After our latest piece wherein we mentioned super jumper Aiglon, we awoke to find that he’d been scratched from the hurdle, leaving just four runners to contest the event. We suggested Aiglon might be out of his depth.
Hell, he could have earned good money by just turning up!
Jumps racing: you’ve gotta love it! We do. And you can just tell that the horses do too….especially Desert Master and Lucky Lurch.
Jumps Racing – this is laughable folks!
Jumps racing is on the up and up…..just look at the success of Sunday’s racing at Hamilton.
However, if you think that giving $40,000 in prizemoney for an eight-horse steeplechase that attracts $76,445 in betting (whereas the $50,000 for the Hamilton Cup attracted $326,543) is terribly smart then we suspect you’re nuts. We could be wrong, but take a look at this:
Betting Investment: Hamilton 15th April 2012
Total: Win, Place, Quinella, First-Four, Exacta, Trifecta
(Quadrella shown extra) Source VicTAB
*Means for every dollar of prizemoney, this is the amount of betting investment it attracts, e.g. in Race 1, there was $1.91 in betting investment for every dollar offered in prizemoney.
Betting Revenue for two jumps races: $177,267 (Average $88,633)
Betting revenue for six flat races: $1,203,723 (Average $200,620)
Bit of a difference!
(Figures for flat racing do not include the Quadrella of $267,479 on races 5-8, all flat races). It’s not hard to see why the Hamilton Racing Club didn’t want a jumps race in their Quadrella!
So, give $50,000 for a flat race and attract $326,543. Give $40,000 for a steeplechase and attract $76,445. What genius!
Note the performance of Ballybeg: he’s just a three-year-old…..and he finished fourth in the hurdle, only twelve lengths from the winner – but he did beat home the famous Champion Chestnut. The ‘champ’ is top-shelf – an underrated horse – don’t take any notice of his record of one win in a restricted hurdle in Adelaide in 2010. Concentrate on what he beat that day: Rousillon, Ruby Beads, Trinity Flame, Gasping, Doubly Sure, Rolling Dale and Andy’s Angel – all top class. Wow, one win in thirteen jumps races for Champion Chestnut – next we’ll hear that he’s ‘looking for the bigger fences’!
Tigeriffic sprawls at the final hurdle at Oakbank. He went on to win the $100,000 event, but is now being aimed at the Brierly Steeplechase. See - he's also looking for the bigger fences! The seven-year-old has won four of his seven hurdle starts, so why is he to become a steeplechaser – so soon? After a jump like the one above we’ll watch with interest! Look in the background (far left) – there’s a stablemate of Gravitas – and Scouting – his name’s Aiglon, and he’s another champion in the making (see below).
Here he is again – at the final jump. Oops! So it’s not a great jump, but remember he’s running in a $100,000 race at his first jumps start – we can’t say we’ve seen that before, but then we don’t know much. He earned $5,200 for finishing fourth, twenty-two lengths from the winner. He’s in action at Sandown tomorrow (Wednesday) in a $50,000 hurdle where he takes on Black and Bent and Our Aristocrat. Don’t say we didn’t tell you how good he is! (Maybe he’ll do a ‘Bradbury’!).
Can’t wait for Sandown today! – Just look at the MRC’s genius: two jumps races of $50,000 each – and they’ve attracted just five runners in each race! Wow, jumps racing is thriving! Aiglon can’t finish worse than 5th – how good is that!
See, the jumps game is thriving…
Take our tip – watch Lucky Lurch in the steeple, and Desert Master in the hurdle – just go to watch how much they love jumps racing. They really do! You can just tell…..
Jumps racing: you’ve gotta love it! We do. How could we not?!
Jumps Racing: So, Art Success is dead too!
The Brisbane Cup winner of 2006, Art Success, winner of $680,000 before he commenced jumps racing was put down at Oakbank last Monday.
So much to tell about Art Success….but that can wait for another day. We just wanted to point out one of the other poor animals that nobody was talking about, yet he also had to contend with Oakbank – Grizz. This nine-year-old has now had 84 races. He’d won $192,000 in flat racing…but was then required to take on jumps racing, and he did. Here’s a photo of him from an earlier time:
This was Grizz at Pakenham last year in his first steeplechase - not quite the perfect landing action!
The year earlier (2010) he had been an excellent hurdler, in fact, look at him below:
That’s him second from left during the running of the Galleywood Hurdle for 2010. He was so good that at the end of the race he split the two Grand National winners Black & Bent (in blue) and Desert Master (the grey). You should know that this was just his second jumps race....not bad, huh? Oh hell, anyone noticed the green screen? More about that later....
We’d seen Grizz’s first jumps race (at Sandown) when he’d nearly caught Black and Bent that day – now that’s a good effort! Especially for his first race……anyway here’s a picture below of him getting a good thrashing in a manner some ‘do-gooders’ might think contravened the rules about whip use:
Sorry about the shot taken after the race – he’d just been ‘encouraged’ awfully hard! Consider what he’d beaten – Tadgh (a handy jumper), Desert Master (Grand National winner), and a fellow named Prince Vitality. Remember him: we do – he was killed soon afterwards.
Anyway, his third race took place at Pakenham eighteen days later, when he narrowly won a maiden hurdle (remember, he’d run second in a Galleywood and was still a maiden!) Good huh? Anyway, he won his hurdle against a group of maybes (one was Zealous, killed in 2011 at Warrnambool) and the others have probably gone somewhere they don’t want to talk about (starts with ‘k’ and rhymes with quackery). The remainder of the season went like this:
There you are: seven good efforts. He earned $59,925 for the year – even picked up money for finishing last in the Australian Hurdle! How good is that?
Then came 2011:
Eight tough races to win $97,710 – that’s a pretty good horse, but he has endured a lot of hard racing. So 2012 arrived, and let’s check the scoreboard:
So there you have it – he might have been looking for the bigger fences last year, but they don’t seem to be included in his reckoning this year. Still, he’s alive, and loving it! Here he is at Oakbank last weekend. Notice anything?
Aren’t they supposed to take-off from both legs? Our first photograph was captioned ‘Not the perfect landing action’, but this one has a different query. Where’s Grizz’s other hind leg – trying to climb over the fence? We get the awful feeling that this fellow is one to watch – for all the wrong reasons!
Oh, one more thing – about that green screen at Warrnambool we showed and mentioned earlier – Sirrocean Storm was using it at the time. Notice his hind leg (below) pointing backwards? The horses love it, you know.
Shameful! An industry that can justify this has lost all claims to any moral compass. Just disgrace-ful….and the racing industry still can’t see anything wrong!
Jumps racing – the horses love it. You can just tell!
Thomond Park: Apologies, apologies…..we were wrong – again!
We were wrong, and we’re not afraid to say it. We told you to load up and back Gravitas…and the poor bastard failed-to-finish. Here were we telling you to even raid the piggy-bank. He was a certainty. Maybe it’s because poor Gravitas isn’t much good…..and maybe he has a mate (below)
Five-year-old gelding Thomond Park will live to be returned to face this cruelty again. At left: he lands on one knee – and then (right) goes nose first into the turf. It almost certainly hurt the horse, but we’re told these animals all love jumps racing. The horses don’t say that – the owners and trainers do. We’d show you photos of the owners falling if we could, but there aren’t any. They don’t do such stupid things!
See, we told you it didn’t hurt anyone or anything. The horse isn’t hurt – it’s OK to do this to harmless animals. Take another look – see how Thomond Park’s enjoying it all. Furthermore, we wish to make it clear that Oakbank Chairman John Glatz wasn’t hurt during the filming of this sequence!
Thomond Park is the son of Thorn Park, a horse which was very fast over sprint distances – nobody could have imagined him ever running in a jumps race, let alone something over nearly 4km. Gravitas is the son of Redoutes Choice – the champion stallion – at his best over short distances. He won the 1200 metre Blue Diamond Stakes as a two-year-old, and the Caulfield Guineas as a three-year-old. Nobody would foresee him siring a steeplechaser seriously contesting a 4000m race. So we were on firm grounds, with our tongue firmly wedged in our cheeks when we nominated Gravitas to win. By the way, Gravitas cost $1,5m as a yearling – poor sod has now won $45,090. He’s only had eight jumps races, yet he’s fallen in a trial, fallen in a race, and today couldn’t get to the finishing line. He didn’t race on Saturday – his connections kept him ‘fresh’ for the race.
Thomond Park ran on Saturday, finishing 26 lengths behind the winner in the 3250m Von Doussa Steeplechase – and two days later fell in the 4950m Great Eastern – quite a task for a young horse that had only won one jumps race – a maiden steeplechase in New Zealand. From twenty-two starts this poor bastard has won $10,503. Do you get the feeling he’s not much good? Lots more to come.
Oh, and the betting was a joy to behold again today, although to give the people of Oakbank a pat-on-the-back, they did include a jumps race in the quaddie. Lovely. It probably buggered the Quaddie but who cares? Anyway, this is how we saw it:
The above table shows an interesting equation: provide $266,400 to get betting investment of $325,465…..yet $204,100 (that’s $62,300 less) earns you more than a million dollars. How about that? They’re mathematical geniuses at Oakbank. Even when you provide a race-meeting where a jumps race attracts the top betting investment of any race, you still go backwards! The two jumps races provided the highest-grossing race, and the lowest grossing race…..they love their jumps racing at Oakbank! Race 1, a pissy six-horse $35,000 fillies-and-mares event outgrossed the $100,000 hurdle! The final four flat races (two either-side of the Steeplechase) paid prizemoney of $144,500 – that’s $20,000 less than the Great Eastern – yet these four flat races provided half-a-million dollars more in betting investment – How about that!
And all the spectators will now transfer their attention to South Australian’s other jumps races, will they? Well, no. That just doesn’t happen. Oakbank is just a big picnic meeting.
Jumps racing – you gotta love it. We do. So does Thomond Park. So did the fellow below – he loved it to death:
(Many thanks to a Special Lady for the terrific photo taken prior to his final race)
