South Australia

[Showgrounds]

In a nutshell, SAHRC owns Globe Derby Park but HRSA runs racing. It owes the Club in excess of $300k in rent and is refusing to pay up. Instead HRSA is doing everything it can to have the Club declared insolvent and wound up. No doubt the juicy tracts of real estate the Club is trying to sell along Port Wakefield Rd are in HRSA's sights. It does not seem at all interested in promoting harness racing. That's why you get ludicrous situations with a meeting being run several hundred kilometres apart.

Kevin Seymour's financial backing has given the Club some ammunition to right off HRSA and bankruptcy. If the best HRSA can do to promote the sport is use Gaita as it's pinup it's already backrupt. Morally, at least.

[Messenger]

Catching up on some reading (from Dec 18)

SAHRC EXPELLED AS MEMBER OF HRA

http://www.harness.org.au/NEWS/news2...A%20181220.pdf

[Messenger]

We are all accustomed to the old 9.99 trick to make things sound cheaper
But why would Globe Derby have 6 races for $4,999 tonight instead of $5,000?
I will send you the $6 if you really cannot afford it
They're not alone in that Tamworth have 6 races for $5,999
Tamworth also have a couple of races for $8k+
Sad when NSW's secondary meet for the night has GD beat

[aussiebreno]

Can only find the original release of Net Ratings, assume prizemoney brackets must have changed and the $5000 and $6000 races may give the winner an extra rating point?

[Messenger]

Wondered that too
So change the brackets to $5,001 etc

[Messenger]

Lets Get Shorty apparently raced as Jakes Sportswriter in R5 at Globe Derby last night (a race won by his stablemate) and was Disqualified from the event
while Jakes Sportswriter who was going to race as Lets Get Shorty in R7 was a late scratching

Was it all an incompetent mistake?
I have read suggestions that the betting needs to be analysed and that the horses look nothing alike
Add to this that Wayne Hill has driven them both more than once in the past, how could such a mistake happen and get past the stewards
Jake is NR 77 while Shorty is a NR 49

http://www.harness.org.au/racing/fie...s/?mc=GD040921

[Messenger]

Stewards Report

http://www.harness.org.au/racing/ste...l/?mc=GD040921

R5

[Showgrounds]

Amazingly efficient work to have the stewards report for this meeting on the website well within 24 hours. What a shame the report for the race in question reads like a script from Play School. Obviously, this has been written on the assumption everyone reading it is a simpleton. I guess it highlights the need for all stewards officiating at meetings need access to live betting data from all betting agencies, although I do not know how much "Jake's Sportswriter", the fake one, blew in the betting. Having just watched this race again, and previous ones of the real Jake's Sportswriter there appears no plausible way to me that "Shorty" could be mistaken by anybody closely associated with the stable, eg, a regular stable hand.

Shorty is, as his name suggests, short and the race replay shows him to be a small horse. Jake is taller with a more robust build. Any wrongdoing could have been immediately exposed by the stewards had the seized fake Jake's hopples and checked other gear. There is no mention of this occurring in the stewards report, so I assume a major oversight from lack of diligence has occurred. Again.

No detail is given regarding the veterinary inspection of Lets Get Shorty at "around 9:20 PM", just 7 minutes before it was due to race. The stewards report for race 7 states the horse was scratched at 9:25. The vet and stewards concluded the horse had been the same horse that raced less than an hour earlier. No kidding! It's damp coat with steam coming off it, flaired nostrils and heavy breathing didn't really need the vet's opinion.

The unanswered question of paramount importance is which horse was geared up and presented to race in race 7? If it was Shorty, stable representatives are immediately suspects of a cover up. And if it wasn't? Someone with a bold personality is hanging by a thread of fine cotton in hope that HRSA botches its investigation. If, by chance, it doesn't botch it the perportrator(s) might expect to receive re-education at an old fashioned royal school. Not much of a view, though, Yamaha in not renowned for its regal vistas.

[Messenger]

Don't the stewards check horse ID's before they go onto the track? I can't be sure that I always see this happen at the trots but I certainly see it at the gallops

[Beltane]

Andrew Rule and Mark Buttler commented on the situation above in their weekly column (8 September 2021) in the Sun Hearld:

DID SOMEONE FINALLY COTTON ON?

Cheeky harness racing fans are calling it “another Fine Cotton”.

They’re referring to a recent race in South Australia in which a well-backed horse won after the hot favourite was “taken on” by a stablemate of the eventual winner.

At first, it sounds like a simple case of illicit team driving, which is allowed in Europe but not here.

But this case is more serious than that, according to the grapevine.

The dogs are barking that the stablemate that did the hard yards to soften up (meaning tire out) the favourite was in fact an average horse racing under the name of a better horse: let’s say, for example, that Slowpoke Brown secretly stood in for Speedy Bay, whose name was in the race book.

According to the rumour mill, the plan was for Slowpoke and Speedy to be confused for one another right through the race meeting … the pay-off being that Speedy would run in Slowpoke’s place (and attractive odds) two races later. Allegedly.

If the switch was discovered, it might all be dismissed as a stupid case of mistaken identity because of the fact the trainer of the three horses concerned wasn’t at the race meeting, giving his deputies the chance to accidentally mix up two of his many horses.

Whatever the reason, someone might have rumbled the switch — or got cold feet — because “Slowpoke” was a sudden late scratching from its race.

Which was another leg of the quadrella.

For educated money, getting favourites beaten in two legs of the quaddie would be a chance for a betting bonanza, especially if such information reached exotic betting markets around the globe.

If the trainer of the three horses — Slowpoke, Speedy and Lucky — was a Sunday school teacher with a spotless record, the idea of a clumsy mistake might be credible.

But he is a lunatic with a record longer than Ivan Milat’s.

If the authorities don’t keep it all in-house, police might take a look at some people’s connections with organised crime. Bikies or mafia or both?

These hypothetical police might also have a long talk to those who worked at the race meeting. Horses can look similar to each other — but the big numbers freeze branded on their necks are very different.

Whether it was a mistake or huge rort, if the switch happened it means someone didn’t check the brands.