Breaking the streak . . .
It was a day off last Friday for Racing Matters, so what else to do but tune in for the first time to watch the super sprinting greyhound Swimming Goat stretching his unbeaten streak to 24.
One problem — he didn’t. He had to settle for second . . . leading Racing Matters to wonder whether we somehow swapped the Curse Of The Billy Goat (which until yesterday had cursed the Chicago Cubs baseball team since the 1940s) to the Curse Of Racing Matters with Swimming Goat.
. . . but swimming downstream
Regardless, he bounced back with his traditional zippy box speed at Addington on Wednesday night, galloping the 295m in less than 17 seconds. Not many greyhounds cross the invisible wall into the mainstream media, but Swimming Goat — what a truly odd name — is one of those. Oddly enough, he’s the exact opposite to the last New Zealand greyhound to be a media darling — Swift Fantasy.
He’s a boy and she’s a girl; he loves the short distance, she was an out-and-out stayer; he likes to sprint out to a 10-length lead, she liked to drop 10 lengths last with a lap to go. What they both bring is something out of the ordinary, and that can only be good for greyhound racing which has had bad press across Australasia for the last couple of years. Rightly so, might we add.
Keeping it clean . . .
No, this isn’t a reference to the, ahem, sights and sounds of Flemington splashed all over the internet on Wednesday following Melbourne Cup day. Rather, it’s a tick in the box that all horses in the Melbourne Cup — and the rest of the card for that matter — made it round without a single death for the anti-racing establishment to get up in arms about. In fact, Almandin’s jockey, Kerrin McEvoy, did not even use the whip in the final moments of the cup, although he admitted afterwards that was partly due to the wind and his grip of the whip making it difficult to flick it around. Either way, there was plenty to be happy about from a welfare perspective.
. . . and keeping it classy
While we’re on the subject of the Melbourne Cup, how good is commentator Greg Miles? Of the 24 runners in Tuesday’s great race, 10 of them were in navy blue or royal blue — only differentiated by different caps, epaulettes or logos. Yet he didn’t miss a beat. Give that man a VB. Or preferably a beer which isn’t completely awful.
Lazy Fiver
Walkinshaw let us — and plenty of other punters — down when he galloped at the start of race 8 at Kaikoura. Star Galleria is at a fair price (about $4) to win the sires’ stakes final at Addington on Tuesday. He just needs to ward off the attacks from the All Stars Stable contingent.
