October
JanuaryBetting blind
Winning Post for January 22 carried full fields for New Zealand’s Trentham meeting, which included the time-honoured $NZ1 million Group 1 Telegraph Handicap, a race of interest to us in Australia as this quality field included horses who have performed at the highest levels at our carnivals, especially in autumn and spring, and others that we might expect to see here in the coming months.
It also included three well performed Australian horses from leading Sydney and Melbourne stables flown to New Zealand for the event and attracted six of Australia’s leading riders — Williams, Dunn, Payne, Nash Rawiller, Bowman and Brown — to the meeting, maybe a first.
Tabcorp was betting on this meeting.
At Flemington racecourse there was neither radio nor TV (Sky) coverage of this race (or others).
There was no dedicated betting screen leading up to the race and no result service on TAB screens. Customers had to obtain results from machine operators. No doubt punters in TAB outlets would have seen it all on one of the Sky Channels in those outlets.
We, the supporters of racing on course, deserve much better in this advanced technological age …and we should not forget that the New Zealand racing industry plays a very integral part in our own.
Canterbury (Vic)