An Autumn Adventure
There is something magical about this time of year. The sun shoots lower and the mercury is calm and we dream of Autumn romance and think liberating thoughts…
And most importantly, jumps racing is back for another season…
And what a spectacle, what an event it is. There is nothing like the sight of ten equine warriors stampeding towards the big ancient Warnambool fences, charging like the Light Brigade, mud jumping and splattering and spitting everywhere, riders being carried through exhaustion for mile after mile, driving hard and leaping high, hooves and hearts pounding hard, chaos and admiration of a packed grandstand and a watching nation, stretching and hurting for Grand Annual glory…
It is Grantland Rice who stirs me into this kind of grand hyperbole and wild emotion. The Dean of American sportswriters certainly knew how to set a scene, to build an event, to illustrate how sport transcended “the game” and had true meaning and feeling. And that’s why he is the Dean, I guess.
But that is probably by the by. Or maybe not.
His contribution to sports writing should never be underestimated, nor should his tales of heart and glory and goodwill. It was he who said that when “the One Great Scorer comes To write against your name, He marks- not that you won or lost- But how you played the game”. Well, he is probably right. And if not, he is certainly not wrong.
Alas, I seem to have taken the long and circuitous route, traveling down the tangent like a sailor in the night.
The point is, there is something grand and wonderful and meaningful in sport. Not in all sport or in all sportsmen or in every contest but in some sports and some sportsmen and some contests.
And jumps racing, on the whole, falls into the latter category. It is meaningful and courageous, full of heart and merit, rife with personal struggle and fight and overcoming the odds.
I fell in love with jumps racing many years ago when a horse called Tennessee Oak won the Cup Day hurdle. He came from well back with a withering run, jumping like Red Rum, as they say. I couldn’t tell you the year-my memory is shot from years of whiskey abuse- but it’s not that important at any rate. Andrea is frantically looking for the Miller’s Guide now but there is a deadline only forty minutes away and I don’t have the time or wits to be concerned with details…
Like many, I had shelved jumps racing as an outdated and archaic institution, a novelty and nothing more. I was recalcitrant and intransigent in my thoughts on the up-and-overs, as an old punting friend wisely noted.
And then Tennessee Oak came with his sturdy jumping and a contemptuous burst as I swayed drunkenly near the bird cage with a pretty young housewife from Geelong whose name is long forgotten and whose husband, by my reckoning, is bald from worry and fury. I yelled myself hoarse, for no real reason bar the spectacle.
I’d given jumps racing a chance and now I was in for life.
When I’d calmed down, the jolly round fellow next to me-sublime with pipe and porkpie hat- leaned across and nonchalantly remarked, as follows, “There’s nothing like a jumps favourite is there old son”.
“Ho ho…well, you seem like the kind of esteemed gentleman who would know” I replied, smiling.
“I am” he responded solemnly, “and I also know where they stashed Harold Holt”.
I hustled off quickly after that comment, thinking the bastard was a liar and a queer. But, with the benefit of time now on my side, he was right about jumps favourites, so he may well know where they stashed Harold Holt.
But I shouldn’t be worrying too much about that now. There is a deadline that goes crunch in twenty eight minutes and Harold Holt won’t be popping up any time soon, I would imagine.
Again, straddling the tangent like a stalker on heat…
Yes, Tennessee Oak opened my eyes to the wonders of jumps racing. And just as importantly, to the best bet of all…
You can disregard whatever preconceptions and notions you have had about jumps racing in the past. Throw them out like a cork on the tide. Thoughts of poor quality and bad betting races are wrong and words like “riskier” and “danger” should hold no place in your thinking.
When you bet a “good thing” in the jumps, they face the same Great Uncertainty of Racing that all horses face in all races. But, for some simplistic and historically disproven reason, it is generally believed that betting the jumpers is riskier, that some kind of premium is required purely because the race is a jumping event.
Rubbish of the highest order.
So, as a result, you can usually get well and truly over the odds on the good thing over the sticks. When Specular was unbeatable a few years ago, racing against the same whackers race after race, and he started black figures every run bar one. Six consecutive hurdles win and he just kept coming up black…
Unbelievable.
And when Dawson Road won on debut at Pakenham after winning a string of flat races and trialling spectacularly, he got out to 5/4. Wow.
Now don’t get me wrong. Not every jumps favourite is a good bet. You still have to use the same judicious thinking you normally would, looking for value and The Right Bet. You still have to do the form and study the tapes and have a good eye…
But when you’ve found The Right Bet…bet heavily and bet with confidence. You will, more often than not, be getting substantial overs. And that is half the battle.
And that, sticks lovers, is that.