October
MayWinner, winner
Having recently reached my ninth decade, and the first in whih I have not been a regular racing attendee, I can reflect on the folly of following so-called betting systems.
Such are constructed backwards: which is to say, that after a set of race results is known, commonalities are found in the preceding form, breeding, courses, track conditions, weights and/or riders. Then a betting system comes to fruition and is flogged.
Betting systems are well named: money is lost quite systematically.
In my so-far 80 years, I am aware of only one winning system at the races.
It involved a group of three very regular racegoers, back when meetings were fewer and big crowds attended. One of three had the benefit of a minor spoil in the form of an entry pass and luncheon ticket, hard-earned by significant betting turnover.
The Three Musketeers as a moniker for this group would be drawing too long a bow, The Three Mouseketeers too trivial for their appetites, so I am left with The Three Muscateers, for their taste in tipple.
When they went together to the various luncheons, the holder of the voucher after a time felt the guilts for the largesse lavished upon him and not his mates.
Ans so he hatched a plan to put the pass in the pot, to be divvied up so that one freebie and two paid-for luncheons at $12-per would total $24, and have each of the Muscateers pay $8.
This equitable course was undertaken, but after another little time and on a busy cup day at Moe, the legit ticketholder was leading the Muscateers in the queue for lunch while idly clicking in and out a multi-coloured Biro of a type then relatively new.
Clicking blue then red then black and coming to green — of a colour favoured by auditors — inspiration and perspiration coincided fortuitously. Plucking from his hat the aforementioned voucher, with his now-green pen he endorsed the ticket as follows: “THREE (3) ONLY”.
On reaching the cash register, and leading his orphanage-appetite Muscateer mates, he presented the amended voucher and, leaning over to the Keeper of the Till he asked in a suitably conspiratorial tone if – just this once — the treasured ticket could feed four.
“Oh, no, no no!”was the cashier’s cry. “There it is, plain as the nose on your face, three only!”
“I quite understand. You are just doing your job, and I commend you for you conscientiousness,” came the voucher vagabond’s reply.
Magnanimity of this magnitude is a rare quality.
Over many years of its operation this winning racing system would, three, four or perhaps even five times in a good year, see a fourth person in a luncheon queue — and a total stranger to the Muscateers — fed and watered free.
Rutherglen (Vic)