I’m not looking forward to it. The 30-minute trial that is. Nine races are hard enough for me as it is, but 30 minutes between each race? If you wait say five minutes for correct weight and the horses have to be in the mounting yard some 20 minutes prior, that leaves just five minutes to dash around the stalls and check out say 20 or 30 horses and then have time to cast an eye over the parade ring. It’s obviously the first step towards a ten race program for armchair punters at home. Soon they will be ghost meetings! I don’t like it. Not happy Jan.

I struggled again with the two-year-olds. The Chris Waller filly Gretna looked terrific in the yard and led them up to the 200 before totally compounding. Another weak filly. I got my money back on Pat Carey’s Dan Zephyr on the short back-up, but with absolutely no faults. I celebrated by ordering my free drink in the Medallion Bar. The barman couldn’t believe me when I asked for a Diet Coke, but took pity on me and searched around for the biggest glass he could find. Only three more weeks of Febfast to go!

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Rumour, gossip, innuendo, swirl around a racecourse. But ordinary conversation is always interesting. Today I was listening as well as watching horses:

Overheard out the back (1): “You bite me, and I’ll bite you back!”

Overheard out the back (2): “Gosh! A man just jumped out of those bushes!” “At least he’s got his clothes on!”

Overheard in the Island Bar: “Seriously, Stevie Wonder would have seen you down there!”

Overheard on the mounting yard rail (1): “I don’t like that jockey!” “Yes, but his mother loves him!”

Overheard on the mounting yard rail (2): “Geoffrey, what do you like?” “Number three”. “Anything else?” “No!” Number three, All Cerise, won in a hand canter.

Overheard on the mounting yard rail (3): “Go Chile Express! I patted him!” “Well, if it wins you’d better not wash that hand for a week!”

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I’m not going too well with the two-year-olds at the moment, and for the second week in a row I bombed out. Climate looked perfect in the yard, with no faults, but turned out to be a weak filly, that quickly ran out of steam. But I redeemed myself in the mares with Vital Importance. The horse looked alert, interested and very fit, and ran on well from the rear to snatch third at $4.20 for the place. It had already drawn my attention out the back with chains on the tie-up.

I can’t remember ever seeing these before. Obviously saves a bit of wear and tear on the tie-up! The photos are a bit blurry, but give the general idea.

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I’ve been missing in action since Sandown Cup day. I’ve got good excuses though. First it was a bridge too far. Ballarat is a long way from town for a city slicker who just attends Melbourne Metro! Then it was my wife (aka The Missus) who fell seriously ill visiting our offspring in Townsville. They saved her life in the Townsville hospital. She’s back home now and making a slow and painful recovery. I managed to surface briefly for the Flemington meeting on 12 December. Paul Richards (aka Richo) was doing a story on the new book for the Winning Post. He followed me around for three races where my selections met with mixed success. In the first Hetuka Zarsho pulled up lame, in the next Precious Gem was a winner and in the third Our Voodoo Prince broke down and was humanely euthanased. Richo’s generous story was published in the Winning Post the next week. The only problem was that the races were cancelled because of the heat so that there was no need for punters to buy a form guide!

And so to Flemington, nice and early for the two-year-olds, the first race of the new year. The favourite Sword Of Light was extremely agitated. I narrowed it down to three horses – Gimlet, La Renarde and Want To Rock, but couldn’t decide which one to back. All were good, with a very bad favourite. So I laid the favourite. Then the warning siren. The favourite is scratched at the barrier! My lay bet is history! And the three selections go on to run the trifecta!

Not much else to report. An excellent sloping strapper with Houdini The Great. I haven’t seen an angle like that in yonks! This variable is mildly positive, but intuitively I regard it as a negative. But it does point to a big strong horse requiring a lot of strength. And there is an Indian Turtle Dove nesting in stall 24, usually occupied by Lloyd Williams’ horses. It must be an omen of some sort. Let’s hope for a year of world peace.

Happy New Year.

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In the original Watching Racehorses I described a landmark study over 20 years ago by Claudia Feh and Jeanne de Mazières of wild Camargue horses. The horses developed strong bonds with others of a similar age and sex and maintained these bonds through mutual grooming. Two horses would stand head to tail and nibble each other with their incisors, generally in the region of the base of the neck. The grooming seemed to have a remarkable calming effect. Claudia and Jeanne observed that the preferred grooming site was the base of the partner’s neck, in front of the shoulder blade, and including part of the withers. When horses were scratched by humans in this region they had lower heart rates than horses groomed at a non-preferred site low on the shoulder. They suggested the calming effect was the result of a major ganglion of the autonomic nervous system lying close to the preferred site. Hence, strappers who are aware of this effect get very high marks in my race book.

So, here’s Tall Ship, trained by the man of the moment, DK Weir. The strapper was vigorously scratching him with both hands at the preferred site, first on the near side, then on the off side. The horse was calm, motionless, head and neck slightly extended and tilted away, shrunken nostrils. If you look carefully at the off side photo the horse seems to be in a state of exquisite pleasure! The strapper can go straight to the top of the class! The horse ran second to the runaway winner Who Shot The Barman, but no one is complaining about $2.40 for the place.

Reference: Feh, C. and de Mazières, J. (1993). Grooming at a preferred site reduces heart rate in horses. Animal Behaviour 46, 1191-1194.

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Not looking good! Heavy 8 on arrival, then an upgrade to Soft 7. By the end of the day they were coming down the outside rail! I’m no good in the wet. I didn’t have a bet all day. Discipline!

By the way, I noticed a couple of interesting bits of gear this week. Max Dynamite, the cult horse, displayed the rarely seen earplugs on Cup Day. And Arod, like many of the international horses, had a fluffy woollen pad under the cross-over noseband. You would have to think that’s a positive as it would reduce pressure on the bridge of the nose.

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No show! I had the foresight to look at the Melbourne radar. It seems my absence was noted!

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I spent some three hours checking out all the Cup horses in their stalls. Trip To Paris looked a standout! I would describe the horse as “interested”.

How could you back anything else?

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The greatest day’s racing on earth. I’m woken early by a thunderstorm at 5 am. It’s teeming. Uh, oh! There’s 7 mm of rain in my gauge as I leave for the track, a short tram ride away. It’s not looking good. My first anorak day for the spring. I shouldn’t bet. I shouldn’t even go! But I grab the umbrella.

And so it proved. Nothing made ground down the outside. The inside lane was a ride to victory. The Mackinnon winner Gailo Chop had the perfect form for a wet day. Five starts for four wins and a placing in the wet. But I don’t do form. And it had the glue-on shoes so it is obviously sensitive to hard tracks. The glue colour made them virtually undetectable. I stuck to my old favourite Happy Trails, who always looks good.

My first losing Derby Day in five years. I backed Gai’s horse in the Hotham Handicap and thought I had it made with Amicus at 30/1 in the Myer Classic until she was pulled up by the going. One out of three.

Home to find 10 mm in the gauge! I told you that track was off!

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If you are in town for Cup Week then a must-see is The Horse exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. They have rummaged around in their vaults and pulled out some fabulous horse pictures and sculptures. The exhibition is organised into sections depicting the social history of the horse: in mythology, as a noble steed, a workhorse, warhorse, and racehorse. My favourite? Leaving aside lascivious centaurs, attempting to carry off fair maidens, it was hard to pick between several pictures: Winners of the first twelve Melbourne Cups, 1889, by Frederick Woodhouse Senior, The Betting ring at Flemington,1887, by Carl Kahler and The Toilers, 1940, by Septimus Power were all most excellent. But the clear standout was A lion attacking a horse, 1765, by George Stubbs, the supreme equine artist. Nature red in tooth and claw! And fortunately I was allowed to take a photo on my iPhone with the flash off.

You’ll need to get your skates on as the exhibition has only one more week to run!

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