Racing news this week.
Time to ...
It's a shame the proposed claiming races for lower-grade pacers in Southland have not got off the ground to date. Roxburgh trainers Geoff and Jude Knight nominated three horses for the first scheduled heat at Invercargill earlier this month, but only one other horse was nominated.
Claiming races are a rarity in racing in that you can turn a profit in a short space of time. Look at what Craig Kennett and his son, Josh, managed with Montecrengle last month.
They claimed Montecrengle for $5000 on a Sunday and he was claimed back by Graeme Anderson on the following Thursday for $8000, but not before winning the Thursday race and pocketing the $3250 winning stake.
... stake a claim
Sure, you can't do that with all the claimers, but at least you'll be racing ''like'' horses, as Geoff Knight likes to say, and you'll have a runner's chance of returning a cheque if you have a horse in the race as opposed to getting thrashed by a 3yr-old racking up penalty-free wins like Ronnie O'Sullivan cleans up a frame on the snooker table.
If your horse gets claimed, you might have lost a horse, but you can come back and claim one the next week for a very similar price and with the $3000 in the bank to buy it with. Actually, if I had a spare $3000, I might get in there myself . . .
From the Twittersphere ...
Some would say I lack in originality, so I'll live down to those expectations and borrow a salient point made on Twitter yesterday by The Punters Forum (@ThePuntersForum) about today's thoroughbred meeting in Timaru. Or is it Washdyke? Or Phar Lap Raceway?
As The Punters Forum points out, no wonder newcomers to racing get confused when the New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing website calls the meeting the South Canterbury Racing Club at Phar Lap Raceway, while the TAB site describes it as the Timaru races at Washdyke.... today, tomorrow, Timaru?
To the uninitiated, these could look like entirely different meetings, but they're not. Let's make it easy for fringe punters to get to grips with racing form, let alone trying to work out where they're running. I'll leave it to the NZTR and the TAB to decide who will flinch first.
Lazy Fiver
Heapzacash did not make it to Te Rapa on Saturday, being late scratched on vet's advice so another neutral result.
I'll go outside the square a bit here, and head to race seven at Melton tonight, when the former Southland pacer Motu Crusader takes on Bitobliss, Smoken Up and Melpark Major. The latter two are fresh-up while Motu Crusader is match-fit - having won his last start at Melton - and could easily sneak a place, even against this field.
