chiknsmack

I would've been very keen on Prince of Arran had he gotten a run. Looks like he'll go to the Geelong Cup on Wednesday instead. Got it down to 2-3-6-10-11-15-16 at first glance.

Look at the ground it made up in the video between the 16s and 24s marks. At that rate it's going to win by a couple of lengths. Then watch it change stride and slow down at 24s, then put in a couple of decent strides at 27s, then ease up again to lope along outside the leader, refusing to go past. THEN remember that prizemoney comes from the punters, and they only have so much patience for backing the best dog in the race and watching it play silly buggers and throw the race away. "Don't back the dog if you don't trust it to give 100%". Yeah, sure. But if there's one of them in every race then punters won't bother betting in any races; if you can't trust a dog to try, you can't trust it not try either. You can't back it, but you can't bet against it. Sport is easier to figure out than greyhounds anyway, and you get more entertainment for your buck from an 80 minute game than a 31 second race. Plus if you tell people you like greyhound racing they think you're weird, while if you like Rugby or Football you're a normal bloke. If it wouldn't have even gotten a warning in Australia, maybe it should head over there. I took part in the Kiwi Punting Champs heat last week, on Friday's Addington meeting. It was hard going early on; the fave in the first had had two tickets for failing to chase and wore blinkers, in Race 3 the fave had marred on debut then taken three trials to (hopefully) get right, then Race 4 had a favourite who had marred on debut and needed SEVEN trials before being allowed to make his second start, 602 days after his first. If I hadn't had to bet on every race under the rules of the competition, I wouldn't have gone near any of those races. I avoid Addington in general, even though I bet more on NZ Greyhounds than anything else. But I didn't realise it was this bad.

Sold at the yearling sales, but not Karaka Million nominated. He IS nominated for the Ready To Run sale though.

Box 6.

Winx? Or are we not counting her and her Sunshine Coast Guineas win (or her Queensland Oaks win, like Ethereal) because then we'd have to mention The Bostonian won that same race three years later (and a Sydney Autumn Group 1 winner named Tivaci won it in between them). The Everest is starting to look like a bunch of backmarkers will let Redzel roll along in front again. Maybe Sunlight can go forward with him and make a race of it. Or maybe a big strong 1400m horse can go hard all the way and run them off their feet. A horse like... The Bostonian?

This is an incentive to race stayers. Instead of getting them fit at the trials you can give your unfit stayers quiet runs over 1600m and go down a rating band or two. But then you get some cheeky buggers starting their stayers over sprint trips. That's not on. Great to see NZTR doing something to encourage stayers in this country. Also great to see them not kowtowing to the elites - like those blue and white colours - and letting them get away with taking the piss. Integrity and intelligence of the highest order from NZTR; they ought to be congratulated.

I *think* it did. They were able to pay out win/place/quinella/trifecta bets when those results weren't going to be changed by the enquiry (eg. if the protest was 5th vs 4th they could pay out everything but the First Four. If it was 3rd vs 2nd they could pay out the win bets but not anything else). I'm not 100% sure though.

paperspast.natlib.govt.nz is a great resource for looking up snippets from old newspapers. At a glance I found THIS dating back to 1878.

Punters or Racenet are alternatives for black books, but my TAB favourites have been working fine via email. I've never bothered with txt.

The ride on Rodmar looked pretty aggressive. Firstly the whole "jumping up and down every second stride" thing looks rough, nevermind looking over the shoulder at the 100m, seeing you're home, then smacking the horse three more times anyway for fun. It wasn't balance, poise, and letting the horse do its best with the odd bit of encouragement/persuasion if needed. It was a physical, over-the-top aggressive ride. If a $500 fine gets all jockeys to decide not to ride in such an ugly violent manner, that's great.

He rode a few at the jumpouts last week. He's carrying a couple of extra kgs but might ride a couple at the top of the weights on Horlicks day or Spring Classic day.

For Plushenko you can go to tab.co.nz/racing, near the top of the page where it says "Yesterday/Today/Tomorrow" etc click yesterday, go to the field for Race 1 at Matamata, scroll down to the field, click on the downwards-pointing arrow below the picture of the silks of Plushenko, then click the Bookmark icon to the right of the "Comment" section. It appears you can no longer go back to look at fields older than yesterday, so going back to April for Hurricane Fighter's last start isn't an option. As Hacko mentioned, if you've backed him before you may be able to add him from your betting history.

Thanks. The info is up now on GRNZ. He won in 23.99 over 410m at Palmy last Monday. I'd have him clear second pick on that (at $3.50, with Bigtime Stella $2) so I've had something on him at $9.

Anyone know anything about this dog, on debut in the first at Palmy tomorrow? There's no qualifying trial details on either the TAB or GRNZ websites. I thought maybe he qualified on Friday and so info hadn't been updated, but wouldn't he have been nominated for the race last Tuesday? Are you allowed to nom non-qualified dogs? Or do you not actually need a qualifying trial to be allowed to race? (I'm a punter and former licensed owner who never actually owned a dog, so I don't know all the ins and outs). It's a maiden, the field is Bigtime Stella vs Harpoon Harry vs not much else, and Stella's no star by the looks of it so I probably won't be betting. But it'd be nice to know how Harry goes, if anyone's willing to share any mail.

William Scott. Or Catalyst.