Cup week

Melbourne Cup night was really good fun. I found it easy to stay awake and (reasonably) on the ball, and the racing was really enjoyable, even if history probably won't remember it as one of the more special Cups. Before Cup night, though, we had had a couple of race-days of our own, as Batgirl ran at Newmarket on Saturday and then Ethics Girl ran at Lingfield on Sunday.
Both performed creditably. Batgirl is still very big and leggy (as this photograph of her and Micky Fenton in the parade ring shows) and as such her run was pleasing: admittedly she was beaten a long way in the end, but she showed plenty of speed, which was very encouraging. Ethics Girl's run was very different: whereas Batgirl showed plenty of dash in the early stages before being beaten a long way, Ethics Girl showed none before finishing very close up. But that's the difference between a filly who is just starting out on the racing road and one who is nearing the end of a long and rigorous campaign:
Ethics Girl (seen in the Lingfield parade ring on Sunday with Alan Munro) still ran right up to her best form in being beaten a head and a length (with the fourth horse FIFTEEN lengths farther back), but she raced sluggishly, as horses do when all the freshness is out of them. However, the clock and the form-book both say that she is running as well as ever so, while she'll clearly need a spell before too long, it's not unrealistic to think that it might be worth having one more go with her this preparation: it takes long enough to get a horse to his or her peak, so while they are still sound and still running well, there's every reason to keep running. She's so genuine, though, that we won't overtax her and, as she came home from the race quite tired, I'll wait for her to tell me when she's ready to run again. So no firm plans have been made as yet - unlike for Batgirl, who will start her winter holiday tomorrow, leaving us to dream of her three-year-old season while she eats grass unaware.

Cup night with Matt Chapman was, as I've already said, a pleasure. I hope it was for the audience too, even if one viewer emailed in to complain that the programme was taking the spot of the usual Stateside racing action, which presents a punting opportunity, from a wide spread of tracks ranging from the exalted to the obscure, every few minutes. Compared to that, one race from Flemington every 40 minutes - with Matt and I waffling away in between times from this end and Bruce McAvenny, Simon Marshall, Richard Freedman and Francesca Cumani waffling away at the other end - was indeed very different. However, most of the other emails sent in seemed to suggest that the senders were finding the show at least tolerable.
I'd feared in advance that my opportunities to speak might be restricted by Matt's famed loquacity, but happily the conversational ball bounced back and forth between us very freely. What might have helped was the fact that early in the show a viewer emailed in to ask if Matt could make his signature noise (I can't remember exactly what it is - it used to be "YEEEE-HAAAAAA!!!!!" and it's still something along those lines) and he duly obliged with such gusto that he must have had a sore throat for the rest of the night!

Before ending this chapter, I must thank Problemwalrus for another good response. We're still no nearer, however, to coming up with a father-and-son team competing against each other as professional jumps jockeys. It must have happened somewhere at some stage prior to the O'Briens doing it recently - any clues?
I was thinking a bit more about it happening on the Flat and I presume that there were occasions when Alan Mackay rode against both his sons (Jamie and Nicky) in the same race. It came to mind again on Cup day, when the secondary TAB meeting in Victoria was up at Echuca; there was a 5-runner race there in which Garry Murphy (pictured, at his home track, Ballarat, earlier this year) rode against his son Sebastian. Garry won it with Sebastian (who had at least one winner on the card) third, so that would have been a race to enjoy.
And the next race for us to enjoy comes up at 3.55 tomorrow morning when our guest from the summer Clare Lindop (pictured on the top of Long Hill on Cape Roberto) rides Miss With Attitude in the VRC Oaks. I'm looking forward to watching that. Bart Cummings' Shamardal filly Faint Perfume looks pretty much a certainty, but you'd have thought that the Galileo (second dam by Mill Reef, third dam by St Paddy, which must help too) ought to stay well, so let's hope that she runs well. That would be a lovely start to the day.