Mornington: this is a joke, isn’t it? Part B…. the horse that actually thought he’d won the race….
Tarawera has an interesting weekend ahead: if he runs in a flat race at Flemington on Saturday he’ll carry 54k. If runs in the steeplechase, as we expect, at Mornington on Sunday he’ll carry 68kg. Big difference!
If he runs at Flemington he is rated 72, and has 11 of the 18 horses rated above him….however, there’s a chance to snare the lion’s share of $200,000.
If he runs in the Mornington steeplechase he is the highest-rated horse, and has a chance at a share of $75,000. Word is that he likes jumps racing a lot. We’ve seen the pictures…..here’s one of them:
Tarawera head butts the ground at Sandown in last year’s Grand National Steeple-chase at Sandown. He’d started his jumps career earlier that year carrying 64kg in a restricted hurdle (2900m) at Oakbank, and finished the season as topweight with 69kg in the Grand National Steeplechase (4530m)….one helluva task for a horse that only turned five fifteen days earlier.
Tarawera is a pretty good horse, still only a five-year-old, and has already won the Australian and Crisp Steeplechases. However a big year lies ahead of him. He’s already contested three flat races, several jumps trials, and a steeplechase, however we thought the best commentary was included within the following:
On March 23, he ran his rivals off their legs in a 2400m flat race at Betfair Park Sandown, before being nabbed in the final stride of the Brierly Steeplechase (3450m) at Warrnambool on May 2.
(Trainer Fran) Houlahan was thrilled with that performance and said that with his main aim, the Grand National Steeplechase, not until August he should have taken plenty of benefit from it.
“He’d been a long time between runs, we thought it was a really good effort, he just got nailed on the post and I think the horse actually thought he won the race,” Houlahan said.
http://www.racingvictoria.net.au/news/rvl/n_Versatile_Tarawera_a_stable_asset.aspx
Doesn’t jumps racing produce the best comedy? We’ve recently reported how Toulouse Lautrec’s trainer said the horse was doing “handstands”, and how Racing Minister Denis-the-Menace Napthine told us that some horses “smiled” when they saw a jump and then attacked it…..and now, Fran Houlahan’s horse returned to scale after believing he’d actually won the race instead of finishing second. It’s just keeps getting better!
Don’t they tell you that if it wasn’t for jumps racing these horses would have to go to the knackery? Yet here’s a horse entered in a $200,000 flat race. Still, what would we know?
thrillsnspills 
Exactly which horses does Dr Napthaline believe ‘smile’ when headed towards an obstacle? Paging Dr Napthaline…
What point are you making here? Is it that the trainer thought that her horse had won in a close finish? Or that a jumps horse is racing on the flat? Or that a fully matured horse shouldn’t carry 69 kilograms, which is lighter than most people? Or what?
No, it wasn’t that the trainer thought the horse had won, it was the concept that ‘the horse thought he’d won.’ What, did he go home that night and tell all the others that he was sure he’d won, but was surprised to find he hadn’t? This is part of the jumps reportage that is rushed into print…..it doesn’t come as surprise: nothing about jumps racing ever does, e.g.: ‘horses love to jump’, ‘they’ll all go to the knackery’, ‘he’s looking for bigger fences’. Still, at least they’ve stopped that old saying which regularly appeared in racing media of yesteryear: “you don’t have to be mad to be a jumps jockey, but it sure helps’. We have considerable respect for the skills of the jumps boys, and think they’re massively underpaid.