RVL and Dr Naff do it again….

You can’t keep a good doctor down, now can ya?

Fresh from his pronouncement that Victoria was flooded with jumps horses, we note that RVL’s jumps racing program seems to indicate that there are two hurdle races programmed for Warrnambool next Monday, 5^th September. We had recently read the following:

“The most important thing is that in April this year we had 73 horses ticketed to jump and now we have 222,” Napthine said.

Adrian Dunn Govt cuts to the chase, Herald Sun August 11th 2011

However, the race-day fields for each race as released by RVL now shows just one jumps race, a maiden hurdle with eleven entries in it. Why is it so?  Where are all these 222 jumps horses?

There were eighteen at Sandown on Sunday. There were nineteen at Pakenham on Tuesday. That’s thirty-seven. There’s eleven nominated for Warrni – that makes forty-eight (and some are doubled up).  So where’s the other 174?  Well, yeah, we realise you can’t really count Zealous, Squire Rex. Java Star, Fasilenko, Casa Boy, Shine the Armour etc, so that reduces it to 168….so where the hell are they all? Surely not being saved for the Spring carnival…..?

Next Monday will also give everyone a chance to once again see one of the great up-and-coming jumpers, Show Dancer. We think he’s obviously ‘looking for the bigger fences’. After all, he’s a born jumps horse:  one third placing in three jumps races, and he’s by Zabeel….just like superstars Zealous, Chatillion, and Megapixel.

By the way, has anyone seen Megapixel following his wonderful effort in coming second in a two-horse race? He’s one fellow we expected would truly fit the Doc’s example of a horse which upon seeing a jump would smile and then attack it. After all, we read the Stewards’ Report following that glorious piece of work in that two-horse-tango, where we noted that Megapixie attacked most of the jumps…..and we mean he really ‘attacked’ them.

Now, as usual, we recognise that we don’t know much about jumps racing, however, we’re trying to learn from the experts who run it. It’s not easy. So if we’ve written anything that’s incorrect, (and that’s always possible), just let us know and we’ll correct it. In the meantime we’ll keep trying to understand why these horses love to be jumpers. Wasn’t it John ‘Jumps’ Adams who said jumps horses were looked after better than any other pet in Australia? Gosh, I’ll bet Fergus McIver would rush to agree with that if he could speak. Sadly, he hasn’t said a lot this week.

Ain’t jumps racing great? We just love it.