And The Winners...

1. Terravista (5 yr old gelding by Captain Rio from Parfore);

2. Chautauqua (4 yr old grey gelding by Encosta de Lago from Lovely Jubly);

3. Lankan Rupee (5 yr old gelding by Redoute's Choice from Estelle Collection).

 

Terravista, a lovely chestnut 5 year old, took out the Darley Classic today in Melbourne. I wasn’t really watching for this horse but it won in a hotly contested finish with the two horses I was most interested in, running second and third.

Terravista

The thing about major races that a lot of people fail to think about, is that there is big prize money for virtually every position all the way back to eighth. Horse racing exists for the breeding industry, and so, once a horse can fill a particular higher level – or ‘class’ of racing – the prize moneys are spread around in order to support and encourage animals to get in and to stay in those types of races; and of course, as a result, for breeders to look to producing that superior class of animal.

It is my own personal belief that the two that filled the minor placings – are being prepared more for next year’s Southern Hemisphere Autumn, rather than continue to try and prove anything more in this campaign. Even so, they won $180,000 and $90,000 respectively, for running second and third just in this race alone.

I thought it was a fascinating race, down the straight at Flemington – no turns – and this permitted the winner, who normally is used to going around in an opposite direction in races around an actual circuit, to still maintain the same leading-foot style for ‘left-to-right’ (clockwise circuit) racing that it is used to without having to adjust to the opposite way of going around.

 

Corthay's shoes...

typical French stuff, and good for New Orleans!

This race itself proved nothing other than that any of the first four or even five are extremely good race horses.

It’s very hard to try and convince someone who is not a racing fan to ‘understand’ and appreciate what good horse racing is all about. But hey, when you are back on the creaking deck-boards, late into the warm, dusky evening, and your polished Corthay cordovans are pampering your worked feet, and there is someone to talk to over your Bourbon, you need to have a topic of conversation that fits in with the atmosphere. It’s either Hank Williams singin’ or Jerry Lee Lewis honky-tonk rock-and-roll playing, or the breeding of the black type class race horses of the year and of the coming year. What else could it be?!

 

A brilliant conversationalist

The orange sun goes down, the paddle steamer splish-splashes down the river, the Bourbon stings your tongue, a meteor flashes across the night sky. Ah, life is good and has ever been thus.

Try and convince old money otherwise...

 

A Million Buck Race

So tomorrow, the 8th of November, two of the greatest sprinting horses in Australia will contest the million dollar Darley Classic.

 

Lankan Rupee is rated the best sprinter in the world at the moment - literally in the whole world based on weights carried and times and percentage of wins from the start of his career.

Lankan Rupee

 

Chautauqua, a four year old grey-bay (an unusual colouration) gelding, is emerging as a contender for the title of 'Sprint Monarch.'

 

And there is an important foreign horse coming in for the first time - Slade Power. Slade Power, which is an Irish Stallion, is regarded as Europe's best sprinter at present.

 

Who knows how to separate these three?

 

Chautauqua

 

Certainly not me.

 

But they are three truly exciting horses and just to watch them is like watching art in motion.

 

And it is going to be an amazing race.

The Dust Settles

This year’s Melbourne Cup is at last run and won. I can now concentrate on the things that I find are the most interesting things. While ever there is this huge public mindset about gambling being promoted everywhere it is hard to cut across the usual expected perspectives. When the sturm und drang are all over, there is space for a different view.

Gambling – or let’s say, taking risk for the sake of deriving a cash money profit – is a much slower paced thing than most people realise.

 

The 'Chautauqua Belle'

- paddle steamer.

Hanging out late into the summer dusk, on the river boat tied up at the Murray Bridge dock down the South West in Western Australia, after the race day at Pinjarra way out in the Australian bush – more or less - has finished...

So now horses have died at the big city meet. Whenever there is such big money as what the 6 million dollar Melbourne Cup involves, everything that happens in or around it is automatically suspicious.

Now I am not a person whose interest in race horses is confined to the animals themselves – I am very much interested in the money that goes along with the whole racing business. I’d say my interest is about 50/50 - the horses, and the money.

Take note of this pic above of the New York located steamboat ‘Chautauqua Belle.’ What a beautiful picture.

It may become important again when the Southern Hemisphere’s autumn comes around. Can you wait that long? Will you even remember by that time?

‘Chautauqua...’ ‘Chautauqua...’ I hope no one tampers with this horse. I might have to sell a silver spur to put money on this horse, but I will be putting money on it when the time comes. Horse racing is all about time. One minute and ten seconds can actually take several years...

This horse is probably going to run in the Darley Classic this coming Saturday and will be worth watching.

After The Race

In a few hours the running of the 2014 Melbourne Cup will take place.

One of the runners for tomorrow

This is not a race I personally ever consider seriously betting in because there aren’t really enough lead up races over the distance of two mile over which it is possible to make fair comparisons of the form of all the horses in the Cup field itself. As a handicap race too, with too little ‘exposed form’ for the runners going into the event, it is thus somewhat of a lottery in many respects.  At the same time, those horses that appear to have good form over the rather specialised distance of 3,200 metres can often be far too short priced in the betting to offer any kind of decent risk proposition.

But it is a great spectacle all the same.

After it is all over, bodies are often lying all over the grounds! Usually from the effects of alcohol – that could be an omen this year since there is a horse in the race called ‘Who Shot the Barman.’

I’m certainly not tipping that horse to win but what a great name it has all the same.

Heroes and histories are made in a race like this. The entire nation of Australia literally stops as the race is run and the whole thing has a feel of tremendous occasion.

 

Illuminati?!
No - Aussie bookmakers!

After the race it is very usual for the newspapers to come up with some amazing story about the winner, which, had we all but known beforehand, would have made our task of finding the winner completely simple!

When I am not gambling in a particular race, I am observing the people. Some of the wealthiest people in the world will be attending the Melbourne Cup. Dozens of celebrities too.

Sometimes a huge long-shot outsider wins the race.

For a professional gambler – as I am – the Melbourne Cup is a holiday. I could have something on an outsider, but I would not be disappointed if one of the favourites won.

When a racehorse gets into a big race like this, it will demonstrate its prowess. It will be able to back up its claims to speed, endurance, courage, bravery, heart, skill, talent, intelligence. Not many things can do the same. Modern politicians, for example - by comparison, despite the fact they claim to be human and of a higher grade of life than horses - are cowards in every sense of the word.

 

Risk + Fail = Good

When in 2008 Ben Bernanke decided to tamper with monetary cycle algebra, virtually -, by assuming there was some sound reason to grant liquidity to illiquid banks, what he actually did had a major impact in this area of human psycho-socio economic behaviour.

When business people cannot make accurate monetary and velocity flow assumptions, then one of the main issues that arises which is rarely discussed, is the human social tradition of avoidance of failure...

Right now there is no real knowledge in the hands of any market economist anywhere about the immediate, much less the mid-term future. It is not predictable what the consequence of QE actually means for corporate dividends. And it is especially not predictable what the consequence will be for the ending of QE.

AClub of Rome? Federal Reserve Committee?
No - Haig Welcome Club.

But what is most certain and visibly demonstrable, is that business owners, managers, and entrepreneurs have stopped learning. And this is because on the whole they fear failure, and they won’t take risks when the future is as unknown as it has just now become – compared to the past structure of monetary cycles.

This unwillingness to take risk is of course, a huge mistake, although it separates out the true entrepreneurs from those who had been in the role previously but were relying on the predictability of economic growth rates (whether positive or negative) determined by monetary policy fed through actual market pricing of money, to take calculated risk.

In fact, the acknowledgement of the possibilities for failure, but the understanding that managers must be in a position to learn from failures – is what permits leadership and unique successes in the long run.

Profit-seekers must take risk, and against a background of greater unknowns about currencies and money pricing than ever before – but they must accept when they encounter failure and learn from it and go back and try again.

The one big unknown is however will policy makers deal with the coming discounting of four trillion dollars of QE money, and the subsequent increases in market interest, and which will most certainly break governments as we have known them...