The stars were out in force. Fiorente, Green Moon, Mourayan. All Cup winners. Mourayan! One of my favourite horses, and I missed the $17.60 the place! I’m still in awe of Fiorente, who looked outstanding, but was too short at $1.20, so I passed on the race. Damn! I’m still spitting chips.

But it was a good day. The omens were good. I was handed a free pen on striding into the course. How good is that! How many times do you see a desperate punter buy a pen for $3 when they get their book. How hopeless is that? Who goes to the races without being appropriately armed? I carry three pens. One as a reserve for the inevitable, and then a back-up for the reserve. Today I ended up with four pens.

Only two bets for the day. Thermal Current at $1.90 and Pinwheel at $3.50. I was stuck in an agonisingly slow queue to back Pinwheel and in front of me was a little old lady, seventy plus, with a huge handbag and one minute to go. Here we go, I thought. A flexi quaddy. A lock out. But blow me down, she starts counting out the fifties and puts down $1000 on the nose of Moment Of Change. I’ll be damned! I got on with ten seconds left. Moment Of Change led from pillar to post, but Pinwheel held on for third. Polanski, who was over-aroused out the back, pulled up injured and was carted off to hospital in the horse ambulance.

The best horse I saw all day was Earthquake. You will never see a better filly or a more relaxed horse. But I just watched it go around at $1.50. My strike rate of two out of three means that I’ll never get ahead if I back them at that price. And I saw a nice pony. You never see a horse lying down on the job, but it’s a hard life being a stable pony, up at 4 am every morning!

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