Or I might be sleeping. Sorry, but I slept through most of the day.
Anyway, the results:
1st: 10 - Viewed. Win $45.50. Place $14.00
2nd: 12 - Bauer. Place $6.50
3rd: 4 - C’est La Guerre. Place $7.80
Quinella $553.20. Exacta $1156.30. Trifecta $22,324.20
Full list of finishers:
1st: Viewed
2nd: Bauer
3rd: C’est La Guerre
4th: Master O’Reilly
5th: Profound Beauty
6th: Moatize
7th: Mad Rush
8th: Nom du Jeu
9th: Zipping
10th: Newport
11th: Ice Chariot
12th: Guyno
13th: Littorio
14th: Varevees
15th: Boundless
16th: Red Lord
17th: Prize Lady
18th: Septimus
19th: Barbaricus
20th: Alessandro Volta
21st/Last: Honolulu
Did not finish: Gallopin
Scratched: Yellowstone, Zarita
And that means that, as usual, the owners of the horses that I tipped should have just packed up their bags and gone home:
Nom Du Jeu: 8th
Littorio: 13th
Alessandro Volta: 20th
It’s that time of the day on the first Tuesday in November when the owners, trainers, jockeys and other connections start refreshing the page on this blog constantly, waiting to see if their horse is one of the three which might as well go home. Yes, it’s time for me to tip three horses which I think are likely to come first, second and third in the Melbourne Cup.
My tips:
Nom Du Jeu
Alessandro Volta
Littorio
If you can’t be near a TV or radio at 3PM, but still want to hear the race, then there are a number of webstreams available. As usual I’ll link to a few because they’re likely to hit their listener limits around race time and if you can’t get on to one, you may be able to get on to another one. Sport 927 Melbourne 2KY 1017 Sydney ACTTAB Radio Canberra 88.7FM
As usual I’ll be providing results as they happen, and will have the full list of finishers from first to last as soon as it’s published (I’m usually ahead of the news websites and Channel Seven with that one!) so if you’re running a sweep and need that list to see who came last, don’t change the page, just refresh it!
If you’re betting today, good luck, and please bet with your head, not over it. If you need help with a gambling problem, give Lifeline Canberra a call on 13 11 14 or your local gambling helpline.
I managed to find a good point about having the Olympics on at night and Seven’s AFL coverage delayed until 7:50am in New South Wales…if I sleep for thirteen hours from 6pm on Friday, I can wake up on Saturday and still see most of the AFL.
Anyway, the Dennis Cometti quote (and I had to decide between a few…it seems that letting Dennis loose to call all the action without Bruce McAvaney next to him results in far too much amusement, not that I’m complaining of course). Dennis referred to Ryan Hargrave as looking “fresh”, and then a minute or so later Hargrave looked quite exhausted, which prompted a number of Dennis’ co-commentators to have a bit of fun at Dennis’ expense.
Not long after this, Ryan Hargrave was off the field with ice wrapped around his ankle. One of Dennis’ co-commentators (possibly Nathan Buckley) noted that Hargrave didn’t look very fresh any more, prompting Dennis to say “if he was an avacado, you wouldn’t buy him”.
All of the swimming in Beijing has reminded me of the day that I came to the conclusion that swimming just wasn’t for me.
I was in primary school and was reluctantly taking part in the weekly school swimming trip to the AIS pool in Bruce. For one reason or another I was relegated to the half-length pool and the supervising teacher encouraged me to swim from one end to the other and back again. I’m not entirely sure why, but I decided to try to swim that distance as quickly as possible…perhaps I thought that the quicker I did that, the sooner the torment would be over.
Anyway, swimming as fast as I could, I managed to swim the entire 50 metres in just over five minutes, which means that I had reached the incredible speed of just under 10 metres per minute. It may have only been five and a bit minutes, but it felt like half an hour.
Not surprisingly, the teacher also agreed that swimming wasn’t my forte. I still had to go on the weekly swimming trips, but I didn’t have to enter a pool again.
Incidentally, whilst reading that, did you read “forte” as “for-tay” or “fort”? You may be interested to learn that technically, the correct pronunciation is “fort”. Answers.com explains with help from the American Heritage Dictionary:
USAGE NOTE: The word forte, coming from French fort, should properly be pronounced with one syllable, like the English word fort. Common usage, however, prefers the two-syllable pronunciation, (fôr’tā’), which has been influenced possibly by the music term forte borrowed from Italian. In a recent survey a strong majority of the Usage Panel, 74 percent, preferred the two-syllable pronunciation. The result is a delicate situation; speakers who are aware of the origin of the word may wish to continue to pronounce it as one syllable but at an increasing risk of puzzling their listeners.
The amazingly amusing statements coming out of the Chinese media are just too good to resist:
The People’s Daily, a newspaper controlled by the ruling communist party, has made the rather bold declarations that last night’s opening ceremony is a “potential turning point in world history” and “will become an important page in the history of world civilisation”.
Meanwhile The China Daily (with information courtesy of official Chinese news agency Xinhua) reports that:
Beijing fired over 1,000 rain dispersal rockets on Friday evening to blow away rain clouds for the smooth opening ceremony of the 29th Olympic Games at the National Stadium, confirmed the local observatory on Saturday morning.
It was the largest rain dispersal operation in China, and the first time that such technology has been used to ensure the weather condition for Olympic opening, said Chinese meteorologists.
“We fired a total of 1,104 rain dispersal rockets from 21 sites in the city between 4:00 p.m. and 11:39 pm on Friday, which successfully intercepted a stretch of rain belt from moving towards the stadium,” said Guo Hu, head of the Beijing Municipal Meteorological Bureau
Apparently the weather bureau had forecasted rain which leads me to wonder why, if they were so confident of their technological achievements, they didn’t issue a forecast of “it would rain, but we’ll make sure it doesn’t”, and why we have only been told about the 1,104 rain dispersal rockets after the event.
Perhaps this perplexing sentence explains it:
“Under such a weather condition, a small bubble in the rain cloud would have triggered rainfall, let alone a lightening,” said Guo, whose team had monitored the movement of the rain cloud heading for Beijing from 7:20 am Friday.
With English skills as excellent as those, a forecast of “rain avoided due to rain dispersal rockets” would probably have come out as “fire of rockets raining away” which could very easily have alarmed the international media who had already reported on a terrorist threat against the opening ceremony.
As much as I really don’t care about the actual sporting events of the Olympics, I have to admit that the reporting of it and the bizarre stories being produced by China’s bizarre media are most enthralling.
I was watching the replay of the Western Bulldogs’ victory over the Melbourne Demons on Prime Television in the early hours of this morning, and was quite amused by Dennis Cometti’s description of one of the Melbourne players:
He’s built like a fire hydrant, which is good unless you’re playing the ‘dogs
Next week the Bulldogs are up against competition leaders Geelong and I’m going to be out of town at the time. 2EC are the 3AW Football relay station near Wollongong, covering much of the South Coast on four frequencies. It looks like I’ll either be delaying my return to Canberra or enjoying a lengthy detour so that I can hear the full match, as called by Rex Hunt and Dennis Cometti.
(Oh, and congratulations Dennis, your amusing quote is the reason for the two-thousand-three-hundredth post on Samuel’s Blog)
2CC are broadcasting a Canberra Raiders match and you’re more interested in the Brisbane V Parramatta match, and you can’t stand the Channel Nine commentary team, so you mute the television, listen to the 2GB webstream, and use a PVR to delay the television coverage of the match by about ten seconds to bring it in sync with the 2GB webstream.
I’m glad that 2GB are able to stream their coverage of NRL matches (unlike the way the AFL’s radio partners are treated…a case of “you can’t stream the match, but we’ll stream your station through our website”)…if it hadn’t been for the webstream of Andrew Moore, Steven Roach and Peter Psaltis’ call of the match, I probably would have just gone to bed.
When it comes to sport commentators, a lot have a habit of making me find a way to silence them, but not Channel Seven and 3AW’s Dennis Cometti whose impromptu wit manages to amuse me and keep me watching a game, even when I’m not really interested in the game. Tonight’s AFL match was a good example…
“He’s seen the team hypnotist” said Dennis, in reference to a player who took a mark, instantly turned around and kicked a goal, the latter two actions almost without looking.
I was quite interested in Dennis’ appearance on the SBS genealogy series “Who Do You Think You Are” earlier this year. I have been planning on writing him a letter about that for a while…I really should do that soon.
During the week I noticed a handful of media outlets referring to the location of last night’s Titans V Raiders NRL match as “Skilled Stadium” which had me somewhat confused as Skilled Stadium is in Geelong and I can’t understand why the NRL would want to run a match in Geelong, especially seeing as the field is oval shaped.
I was intending on checking the accuracy of this claim during the week, but forgot, only to remember a few hours ago when I heard the result of the match. As it happens, the game was actually played at Skilled Park on the Gold Coast, a much more suitable location for a Gold Coast Titans home match.
Incidentally, if some of the letters in this post are jumbled, it’s because I currently have a blindspot just to the left of my visual focal point, so it is quite difficult to see entire words. I don’t recall looking at a bright object so I’m not sure where the blindspot came from…I just hope it doesn’t do what it did earlier in the year and expand for a while to the point where I could barely see a thing and had a rather unpleasantly large headache.
Yesterday’s one-day international cricket match between Australia and India at The Gabba was washed out by rain. The weather forecast for the next two matches has me concerned.
Match Two (February 5): Sri Lanka V India at The Gabba (Brisbane): Rain 23°C-26°C
Match Three (February 8): Australia V Sri Lanka at the SCG (Sydney): Showers 21°C-25°C
The fourth match is the first one to have a good weather forecast.
Match Four (February 10): Australia V India at the MCG (Melbourne): Mostly Sunny 14°C-26°C
The next match is in Canberra on the 12th of February, at this stage Canberra is in for rain until the 10th by which stage it will start to clear, in a couple days we will know more.
According to India’s cricket captain Anil Kumble, yesterday’s victory by Australia “should have been a draw”. According to him Australia did not play in the spirit of the game.
It’s nice to see that Mr. Kumble is capable of losing a cricket match with some dignity. There’s a term for it…”sore loser”.
Legendary Australian horse race caller Bryan Martin is retiring. Tomorrow’s meeting at Sandown will be the final race meeting he will call in a career which has spanned 36 years.
Bryan Martin has been a prominent voice in the racing industry, and in many cases has been the voice of the racing industry, and will arguably be most remembered for his call of the 2006 Cox Plate where he called Fields Of Omagh, a horse he part owns, to victory.
I don’t know an awful lot about Bryan Martin, except for the fact that just about every time I have taken any notice of horse racing, his voice has been there. For me at least, Bryan Martin is synonymous with horse racing. However, as I don’t know much about him, I will defer to the good people at racingandsports.com.au and their article on Mr. Martin’s retirement.
Bryan’s close call to the end…
Wednesday, 14 November 2007: Australia’s number one race caller Bryan Martin will hang up the binoculars this Saturday 17th November at Sandown, after a stellar 36 years in broadcasting. Loved by both television viewers and radio listeners alike, Martin is best known for calling his own horse, Fields of Omagh, to win two Cox Plates.
Beginning his unofficial career by calling plastic horses on string on the family kitchen table, Martin quickly developed a love for the sport of racing and a passion for broadcasting – “I started my career as the mail boy at 3AW in 1966, anything to be involved in the profession!”. From there he moved to 5DN in Adelaide, back to Melbourne at 3UZ, 3DB, Sport 927 and finally switching mediums to head up the charge at Racing’s own station – TVN.
Taking Australian Racing to an International level, Martin has called in many countries around the world including Dubai, Hong Kong, New Guinea, Canada New Zealand and every state of Australia. But his most memorable international call was of the 1990 Japan Cup, where he was broadcast to every English speaking nation in the world, only to call Australian favourite Better Loosen Up across the line “Before a crowd of 187,000 fans, it was like calling at the Olympic Games of Racing”.
His thrill at calling horses he loved was taken to a new level, when in 2003 he called his horse Fields of Omagh to win the W.S Cox Plate, for television, radio and on course. His dream was to be repeated in the 2006 Cox Plate, when Bryan called FOO in the horse’s last race before retirement “I knew deep down he could do it, and though it was close to call, I just knew in my heart he had got there”. While the champagne flowed, so did the accolades for a most professional race call against the toughest of odds.
Recognised by not only the public as brilliant in his field, Martin was awarded the Australian Sports Medal for Services to the Horse Racing Industry, twice awarded the “Bert Wolfe” Award for Media Excellence, and has been an Australia Day Ambassador for five years in a row. Most recently, Martin was awarded the Kingston Town Award by Moonee Valley Race Club for Services to the Cox Plate.
While ever present in the racing media, Martin has worked behind the scenes with his passion for the sport driving him to set up many racing programmes. He was a critical part of establishing the Australian Racing Hall of Fame which he has chaired for the last five years, Champions - the Racing Museum, and Living Legends – a rest home for retired Australian and International racehorses, and home of Fields of Omagh. When Bryan calls Correct Weight for the last time this Saturday at Sandown, it will be with a twinkle in his eye “Maybe I’ll join Fields of Omagh and the other retired racing champions at Living Legends!”
For the record, Bryan is photographed with his wife Jill in the second photo.
Official results:
1st: 6 - Efficient - Win $22.40 - Place $7.00
2nd: Purple Moon - Place $1.80
3rd: Mahler - Place $4.00
Quinella $76.10
Exacta $176.90
Trifecta $1431.00
Dividends are Super TAB dividends which are used by ACTTAB, the Victorian TAB and a few others. Dividends may vary in your area.
Where they all finished:
1. Efficient
2. Purple Moon
3. Mahler
4. Zipping
5. Dolphin Jo
6. On A Jeune
7. Blue Monday
8. Master O’Reilly
9. Sculptor
10. Lazer Sharp
11. Douro Valley
12. Sirmione
13. Princess Coup
14. Tawqeet
15. Eskimo Queen
16. Scenic Shot
17. Black Tom
18. Sarrera
19. Blutigeroo
20. Railings
21. Tungsten Strike
Scratched: Gallic, Maybe Better, The Fuzz
If you need help with a gambling problem call Lifeline on 13 11 14 in the ACT, or your local gambling support service.
As I’ve said half a dozen times in various places already in the last twelve hours, I’m usually quite hopeless at picking Melbourne Cup winners, so I was going to let the computers at ACTTAB pick three random horses instead, but then I had a nap and woke up with three numbers stuck in my head for no apparent reason, and therefore my tips are:
1 - Tawqeet
3 - Blutigeroo
15 - Scenic Shot
I will be putting these three numbers in as one of ACTTAB’s $15 cup packs which will provide me with a $1 win and place bet on each horse, and a boxed quinella and trifecta with all the horses. The bottom line with this is that I will get some of my outlay back if one of the horses comes first, second or third, and I will get more for combinations of first, second and third.
If you decide to have a punt, do so with care, only bet what you can afford to lose, and all the best with it.
The race takes place at 3pm Melbourne time (GMT +11) and will be broadcast live on the Seven Network and affilliates, Sky Channel, most radio stations (in Canberra 2CC and 2CA have access to the official radio feed of the Melbourne Cup from the official radio partner Southern Cross/Macquarie/Fairfax Broadcasting (depending on who owns that bit of the company right now)), and will also be live on the various webstreams such as ACTTAB Radio, 2KY Racing Radio and Sport 927. All the webstreams will sound the same but I expect some of them to hit capacity, which is why I provided multiple options.
The race results will also be published here, just like they are every year.
If you have a gambling problem call Lifeline in the ACT on 13 11 14, or the relevant gambling helpline in your jurisdiction.
This morning I had a conversation with John Kerr around the time that a French Open tennis match was concluding. During our conversation John interrupted with the final result of the tennis match, and innocently asked me a leading question about the tennis players involved. I’m certain that the answer to this question was “yes”, but I didn’t really know and could only inform John that there a few sports I find more dull than tennis.
I really don’t care about tennis, the scores are mildly interesting, but the matches go on forever…twenty minutes is about the limit for me when it comes to watching tennis, after this I just can not possibly watch that ball getting hit backwards and forwards any more.
Oddly I can watch similarly repetitive sports, such as cricket, golf and lawn bowls for hours.
As the morning progressed, I started thinking about other sports which bore me to tears…the one that instantly sprung to mind was synchronised swimming which, to me, is probably the single most boring Olympic sport currently in existence.
However, when I mentioned it to myself, I accidentally said “synchronised dimming”, and this got me thinking, only a week or so ago the International Olympic Committee were considering adding skateboarding (another sport I can’t stand) to the Olympics in an effort to appeal to a younger audience, and naturally this got the more light hearted talkback radio shows discussing other sports people would like to see in the Olympics. This morning, after thinking of “synchronised dimming” I started to work out what it would entail as an Olympic sport.
The premise is actually quite simple. Teams of an arbitrary number of people compete in a light dimming competition. Each team member controls one dimmer switch attached to one light, and together the team have to put on a light show in synchronisation with whatever music they choose. I haven’t the faintest idea how the scoring would work, but I would imagine that if the dimmer switches were on a wall, bonus points could be awarded to the team that does the best dancing whilst controlling the lights.
I wonder, if I was to submit that idea to the International Olympic Committee, would there be any chance of seeing it in the 2016 Olympics?
Legendary Australian horse race caller Bryan Martin is retiring. Tomorrow’s meeting at Sandown will be the final race meeting he will call in a career which has spanned 36 years.
Beginning his unofficial career by calling plastic horses on string on the family kitchen table, Martin quickly developed a love for the sport of racing and a passion for broadcasting – “I started my career as the mail boy at 3AW in 1966, anything to be involved in the profession!”. From there he moved to 5DN in Adelaide, back to Melbourne at 3UZ, 3DB, Sport 927 and finally switching mediums to head up the charge at Racing’s own station – TVN.