October
JuneEnough, Mr Ambassador
The Winning Post of June 11 contained one of the best articles I’ve ever read on horse racing: John Wathen-Berry’s international report. It also contained one of the most mystifying — Richard Callander’s continuing quest as jumps racing’s ambassador.
Much was made of the two jumps events at Sandown, mention being made of punters’ reluctance to bet on jumps horses on such a heavy track. Why would that be so when these horses were so experienced in this type of going? Isn’t jumps racing a winter activity?
Comparison was made between turnover on the Australian Hurdle and that on the two-year-old fillies’ race run the same day. Mr Callander omitted to say that the two-year-old event was the first race on the program, and required its seven starters to run a tough 1200m event up a testing slow (7) Sandown straight.
No wonder punters were a little shy: these babies had only had 12 races between them. Yet it attracted $319,470 (with exotics). The $100,000 Australian Hurdle run as race 4 (again with seven runners) attracted just $343,936.
At Flemington last Saturday the VRC’s eight-race program, with similar prizemoney to Sandown the previous week, contained only flat racing. Mr Callander won’t care to look at the excellent betting figures for an afternoon of winter flat-racing in Melbourne.
Asford (Vic)