Racing is the home of the bizarre and the beautiful, something this column observes regularly, writes Jonny Turner.
So I am not taking it lightly when I suggest last weekend was simply surreal.
The bizarre scenes started on Friday night when a barely ready Lazarus gave his five open-class rivals a good old-fashioned towel-up at Addington.
The absurdness of the race actually started on the Monday prior when only three horses were nominated for the $50,000 event, but what occurred on race night
glossed over that.The thumping by Lazarus came on the back of his co-trainer, Mark Purdon, declaring to the media the horse was simply not match fit. It was a fair assessment if you had seen his rather quiet workouts leading into the race.
Purdon was spot on. Lazarus was short of a run and raced like a keen, fresh horse.
But what many forgot before the race and were quickly reminded of afterwards was that he is, quite simply, a champion. He does not need to be finely tuned to beat most horses; he is simply better than them, especially when he steps to the front and then lands the trail.
In an even more bizarre scene, hype-horse Heaven Rocks, who was backed into hot favouritism for the race, paced like a crab and then dropped out to run last.
I quickly made my way to the stabling area to talk to the All Stars team and as I interviewed Purdon, a rather concerned-looking Natalie Rasmussen walked past with a clearly lame Heaven Rocks. Both trainers thoroughly examined the horse’s near front leg before he was vetted.
The consensus that was relayed to the horse’s owners and then to me was the pacer may have injured his fetlock bone.
It was a message that spread like wildfire throughout the harness racing world. Just as Lazarus had risen again, Heaven Rocks had fallen.
But within 12 hours the horse’s career rose from the ashes through a diagnosis of greasy heel — a common skin complaint.
It’s a tall tale, one some ill-informed media commentators have disputed, but that is how it happened. After all of that, things only continued to get more bizarre, only this time it was the thoroughbred world’s turn. The code proceeded to represent itself as a shambles — a bunch of cowboys running a ring circus — all while being beamed to tens of thousands of Australians. Television pictures of the Hastings racecourse on New Zealand’s biggest spring race day showed a tractor take to the track in a desperate attempt to magically turn a dangerous and slippery surface into one suitable for the country’s best thoroughbreds.
I could only imagine what the Aussies were thinking, especially when you consider what else they were seeing at the time, too. The magnificent and perfectly manicured Flemington racecourse was set to play host to the best horse in the world.
As Winx was strapped and saddled in preparation for what would be a breath-taking performance, Aussie viewers flicked their attention over to New Zealand where a key lead-up to the Caulfield Cup was about to take place.
Kiwi cult-hero Gingernuts was to have his final hitout in the Livamol Classic but, as we know now, that never happened.
The race’s cancellation meant tickets on the horse in the Caulfield Cup were ripped up as that campaign was cancelled. Another cancelled meeting, standard stuff for us Kiwis, but something that could stick in the minds of Aussie punters. These are the Aussie off whom we want to take millions through the race-fields legislation, remember.
Thankfully there was the wonderful Winx, who wowed us once again.
It is a good thing all right, because if you spent the weekend counting the cost of the continued shambles that ensues from abandoned race meetings you would only see despair. That’s a job for Monday, isn’t it? For the people in Wellington with their flash job titles and their big pay packets? They’ve got a plan to fix it, haven’t they?
I hope so, but who knows what this weekend could deliver, possibly something so absurd we will forget the last one even happened.
Happy trails.
