Note to self when off to The Heath, otherwise known as Caulfield.
(Called The Heath apparently because back in the late 1800’s, jockeys had to fight through bush, sand hills and uncultivated land – must have been some distinct bias back then before the real racetrack took real shape.)
Anyway, some digress – it’s not about getting there early so you can stand in a queue with Beryl and Gordon waiting for the barriers to open just some 30 minutes prior to jump time in the first and you are left to banter on with some mindless chat about Willo’s rides for the day or ‘are you watching the Matilda’s tonight?’
And with Saturday kid’s sport and ridiculously early start to a now long 10 race card, who can get there before the noon yardarm anyway.
(Mind you, it makes you wonder how those resilient Perth punters go during daylight saving when they are having a bet on the first in Melbourne about the same time they are smashing the avocado onto the sourdough for brekkie.)
No that note says, always take a coat! Doesn’t matter what the late mail from the bureau says about the temperature, you can wipe off five at The Heath.
As the noonday sun heads to the west over the Caulfield grandstand and past the now impressive construction zone that will form some of a magnificent new racing and entertainment facility, the mounting yard might be bubbling with expectations and dreams but with a touch of chattering. Literal and teeth that is.
But I am lucky enough to be in the warmth of the Black Caviar room, named of course after the unbeaten champion mare that had called Caulfield her home a decade or so back.
I am a guest of one who is a guest of a corporate bookmaker who plays captain for the day, so I’d suggest my man doesn’t have the same record on the punt as Nelly did on the track. (And then he went about proving it.)
But I digress, it is on the track that we are here for and there is nothing better than being amongst it, the television can only give you so much (and can certainly give us so much more with a little more effort and enlightenment.)
But I digress again. Back to the track – where it matters.
The first group I of the season is run at Royal Randwick, the Winx Stakes, and at least I have the etiquette to be wearing a W4 lapel badge (that’s Winx four Cox Plates) whilst watching from the BC room, one kindly handed on to me by the owners of the special mare and hopefully one day a collector’s item.
Naturally Chris Waller has stacked the decks but fittingly his 150th Group I comes with Fangirl, raced in the cerise of the Ingham family including one of racing’s number one fan girl’s Debbie Kepitis, part-owner of Winx.
Debbie would laugh and bubble with a maiden winner at Narrandera (and they are on there tomorrow, but she is runner-less), but the synergy of the Winx Stakes win is not lost on Waller or anyone obviously as the microphones are pressed and the stuttering into tears become as real as they are expected.
“She took over my life and was so good for racing,” summed up best the passionate post-race summation Waller said of Winx as some suggested may lead to a track downgrade.
An hour later in Melbourne, the microphones were left to Craig Williams, a dangerous position for television producers, but brilliant for the sport in the same way Waller is.
As appropriate was Waller, Kepitis and Fangirl at Randwick, was Williams, Lindsay Park and the ownership rock crew that race Mr Brightside at Caulfield, where huddling for heat off exuberance was welcomed. (I told the backstory here)
First Mr Brightside the horse, more Harry Grant than Cameron Munster, maybe more Jack Riewoldt than Dustin Martin, stars in their own right but more tradesmanlike than the real hero he could be this spring.
“He’s just gone to another level, which is quite scary,” Williams said, as I try to scrape out the most succinct part from his P B Lawrence epilogue.
Which gives me the chance to invoke the Riewoldt link, for not far away at the Melbourne Cricket ground, Riewoldt, himself on the retirement end of a sturdily brilliant yellow and black career (through good times and bad), was effectively playing his role in the Tigers win over North Melbourne.
That same stage, but a bigger one when he joined international rock stars The Killers after the 2021 AFL Grand Final to reprise the band’s mega hit Mr Brightside “coming out of my cage and I’m doing just fine,” he sang just as the equine version was doing just that and promising more at The Heath.
Can I digress? I received a note last was from Fin Powrie, chief steward at the Selangor Turf Club in Kuala Lumpur, and perhaps the officials version of racing journeyman Paul Hamblin, as I digress, who won a race at Doomben on Saturday (and you can read his incredible story here).
Fin, via WA, Dubai, New Zealand, India, Bahrain and Greece, before landing in Malaysia, had asked Williams to zoom speak to the local apprentices for 45 minutes. “Craig asked to speak for 3.5 hours, LOL)” messaged Fin, and it doesn’t matter if that is totally true or mayonnaised.
Every week now, you will hear, “can’t wait to get to so and so on Saturday….”- “we are really on the verge of spring now….”
From my Caulfield experience, the Vain Stakes is normally a decent guide, well Giga Kick won it last year, and Godolphin added Cylinder to their recent race winner Ingratiating and Bivuoac of th race in a photo finish result that would have had Judge Anthony Harrision as popular as the goal umpire in the Swans/Port Adelaide game had he declared it a dead heat at best.
But I digress.
Oh Jamie Kah who rode Zaaki into second in Fangirl’s Winx Stakes in Sydney, landed her first winner back from her serious injury and other matters at Cranbourne on Sunday, that paying All Black for Price and Kent Junior.
As the sporting world embraces the Matilda’s and racing works out how to embrace it’s unique female inclusion, as much through its nearest version of Sam Kerr, Kah goes into spring with a not guilty plea into “conduct prejudicial to the image of racing” over some well publicised “white powder stuff, conveniently pushed back until the spotlight of spring dims from public view.
Which gives Kah and racing, the so called “laser focus” on what really matters – its talents, its stars, equine and human, not that gimmicks that were Pidgeon holed last week by the Racing Victoria board.
Yes racing needs to chase that elusive new audience, and full speed to it in doing so, but not at the expense of those who like to stand at the gates of Caulfield hoping to get in.
With or without their coats. I’m with the former, but I digress.
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