Racehorse TALK

Selling the farm, and mostly due to the insanity of TAB privatisation.

Im heading out to the last Cheltenham meeting today with a group of friends and family.  Lets see if I can back the last winner ever at Cheltenham. If i lose on the punt I might just have to knock the kids over to get on the bouncing castle or the pony rides.....

R8 No5 Rikbat

What an imaginative name for the last race to be held on the track.

Listening to the radio this morning, this may not be the last day.
Gawler will be out of action for a long time and the Morphetville re-development could take longer than expected.
There could be a shortage of tracks.

They sound very well organized over there... 

Geoff..it is named in honour of a very "famous" Australian....the Jolly Swagman in fact...

Andy sat
Andy watched
Andy waited till his billy boiled...

   

The name of the second last race would have been far more appropriate as the name of the last race.

The final race name was draw out of a hat of private corporate sponsors.  That bloke was involved in sponsoring the charles sturt hcp over the last 7 years (which is what he explained at the presentation).

The race club does has hold of the racecourse for a bit longer due to the surpreme court action that the local residents have against the government.  It was used for trials on Monday andwill be used for trials over the next few months.  The closure of Gawler for the upgrade is not a factor as its a provincial racetrack and its meetings have already been allocated elsewhere.  The inner track is due to be ready for anzac day at Morphettville.  Morphettville at this time of year is generally the main track except for easter and one or two other meetings between now and mid May (last year there were 4 meetings at Chelt between now and June on a Saturday).  Oakbank has taken an extra Saturday and there is one less meeting this year with the MM raceday no longer and that race moving to Adelaide Cup day.

The three clubs were amalgamated in 1975 when teh state government favoured that over turning Cheltenham into a training base only and moving races to Morphettville and Vic Park only.  In the 70s Adelaide racing was up there with the best in the country so merging did not detract in that way.  And if you do a search for Cheltenham racecourse on google you end up coming across the council public consultation for Vic Park and most of the respsonses were from the APPA comment sheets whatever they were (yes their leader Jim Daly has three responses when you go through them).  Some of them make interesting reading.

Backed Andy Said at Sunny Coast 

I see Rikbat can manage to get up today but the er couldnt do it for me last week