Dr. Geoffrey Hutson's breakthrough book Watching Racehorses is out now! Learn about behavioural handicapping: how head tossing, pawing, salivating and other behaviours provide telltale clues about a horse's readiness to run.
Order Online

The Caulfield Cup

October 20th, 2012 0 comments

I spent a couple of hours out the back looking at the cup horses. The biggest crowd was around the two previous Melbourne Cup winners, Dunaden and Americain. The crush was so big it was hard to get a good picture of the winner, totally relaxed in his stall. Americain was imposing, has a nice positive French strapper, but had the concussion plates on. It is hard to photograph the feet, but if you look carefully you can make out the thin strip of black rubber beneath the plate. And lucky I did take the photograph because he lost both front plates in the running! He obviously doesn’t like the hard ground! Alcopop had his pony there and would have been the lightest looking horse in the race. From behind he looks totally wasted! Lights of Heaven was hand held by the strapper and relaxed. My Quest for Peace looked a nice horse, but was a bit agitated, pawing and lifting his off hind to kick. The Gai bubble has certainly burst and there wasn’t a soul checking out Glencadam Gold in his stall. Gai didn’t even appear to saddle him!  December Draw had a dream run but sweated up before the race. I took a box trifecta, but missed the third horse Lights Of Heaven. A pity Americain didn’t keep on coming!

And the Spring Carnival can be deemed to have officially started with my first sighting of Francesca. She’s a chip off the old block, wouldn’t you say, and both of them probably need a good feed.

 

Leave A Comment

All fields marked with "*" are required.





Allowed tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>