Today I was somewhat of a traitor and went to Stawell Races. I must admit that my past 'racing' experiences have pretty much been dining experiences in the Flem members or the MV dining boxes.

It was really interesting to compare what the 2 codes offer the same town (with me being a Stawell Harness regular)

Stawell Harness has little to fear from the gallops as it is a 7 day a week club with a TAB, pokies and dining room. The gallops had what I would call a goodish crowd by harness standards and it is school holidays after all (not that I saw a child there - surprising). I also found it surprising that although there was the offer of free sandwiches, there was NO dining room (it was not even open to sit in and view the races but the weather was good) and a fast food caravan was pretty much it for tucker.

On a nice day, the layout gave people nice areas to sit between races and the colour and close proximity to the horses and jocks made the mounting yard the highlight for me. As biased as I might be, I am not sure that in this area we can compete with the magnificence of the thoroughbred.

Funniest thing ever was the preposterous fact that 2 of their races were run over 1600m and the starting shute for this distance cannot be seen by the public - it is like they come onto the course from nowhere. Unbelievable that they would not simply choose 1500m as their mid distance

Surprising to see half a dozen bookies on course and also funny is that I rarely bet at the trots but I bet on every race today (and won!)