February 18, 2010

Racing
 

Blue Diamond Stakes Day

Feature racing this week comes from Caulfield with the Blue Diamond Stakes and Oakleigh Plate leading a first class card that also includes the St. George Stakes, the Angus Armanasco, the Schweppervesance Cup, the Carlyon Stakes and the Mannerism Stakes.

The undefeated Paul Messara colt Beneteau in the pre-post favourite ahead of Psychologist and Star Witness. Beneteau won by 2 ¾ lengths on debut on Australia Day before scoring a dominant 2 ½ length win in the Blue Diamond Prelude when he came from well back to win on the back of a sweeping run.

Favourites don’t have a great record in the Blue Diamond, however, with Alinghi in 2004 the last favourite to win. Since then the shortest priced winner has been Sleek Chassis at $8.0 with every other winner double figures. Punters looking for a push could do worse than follow Dwayne Dunn, who won four Blue Diamond’s on the trot between 2005 and 2008.

 

NBL
 

NBL Playoffs

The NBL playoffs kicked off this week and the Perth Wildcats are the hot favourites to claim their first title since the 1999-2000 season. A Wildcats victory would make the Perth club the first team in NBL history to claim five titles.

Led by star centre Luke Schenscher and skipper Shawn Redhage, the Wildcats wrapped up the best regular season record on the last night of the season with a win over Townsville at home. The Wildcats will host the Gold Coast Blaze in the first round of the playoffs with the Wildcats expected to stop a Gold Coast team who has struggled on the road all year.

Townsville and Wollongong are playing in the other series with the Hawks marginal favourites.

Flemington Sportsbet loves its hoops and will offer a full range of series and individual match betting options for all of the NBL finals match-ups.


 

Dogs and Trots
 

Those fancying a wager on the dogs or trots any night of the week will have no problem getting set at Flemington Sportsbet.

Flemington Sportsbet takes bets on all the important dogs and trots meetings with one of the best deals in Australia. Place your dogs or trots bet and you will get the middle tote across the board, no exceptions. You won’t find too many more competitive deals than that.

So if the dogs or trots are your game or you just fancy a little bet on a Monday night at Wenty Park or Saturday night at Angle Park, look no further than Flemington Sportsbet.

 

BET NOW !!!
 

Grandest pay-out

”One punter was pulling rabbits from hats on Saturday night when two last minute tries gave him a nice multi win. The keen bettor had taken the New South Wales Waratahs ($1.40) in their opening Super 14 clash of the season against the Queensland Reds into the Indigenous All-Stars ($2.35) to down the NRL All-Stars in the inaugural All-Star match. The multi tallied to $3.29 with the punter having a nice crack at it. “He certainly got away with that one” Flemington Sportsbet head bookmaker Jason Sylvester said with a wry smile. “The Waratahs score in the last minute to beat the Reds after being behind all night and then Jamie Soward scored a length-of-the-field special to kick the Indigenous boys home. Good luck to the punter but I’m pretty sure he would have rushed out to buy a lottery ticket the next day after stealing the cash at the death.”

Eye on the prize

”Blue Diamond Stakes specialist David Hayes is the man to follow again in the big race this year with the champion trainer of juveniles having three runners in the group one feature. Hayes, who has prepared five winners of the race including three straight from 2006-08, has $14.0 shot Shaaheq and $21.0 chances Legalistic and Evidentia. The best hope according to Flemington Sportsbet’s top form analyst Jason Sylvester is Evidentia. “For starters, Hayes has flown leading Hong Kong rider and champion big race hoop Brett Prebble in to ride Evidentia after Glen Boss was suspended last Saturday. Her breeding is impeccable. She is drawn perfectly. And her race form is just fine with a win on debut in Adelaide before running a good race at Flemington when finishing 2 ¾ lengths behind Star Witness. She has plenty of talent and she has been set for this all along. Another David Hayes win in the Blue Diamond would not surprise in the slightest.”

Tales of the turf

When bar conversations turn to great upsets in Australian racing, the name Dandy Andy is inevitably mentioned. And rightfully so as the victory of Dandy Andy in the Australian Cup of 1988 was one of the great boilovers in the history of Australian racing.

Dandy Andy was given little hope by punters. He eased from 33/1 to 125/1 in the ring with betting focussed on the two favourites. Topping the board was the mighty Vo Rogue, a beloved front runner whose racing pattern endeared him to many punters and racegoers. Even money was bet about Vo Rogue, who had won all five starts in the preparation leading up to the Australian Cup including the group one Futurity and William Reid. Second favourite was the mighty Bonecrusher at 5/2. Having won the 1986 Cox Plate, Bonecrusher was already an icon of the Australian turf.

Punters expected a match race. They didn’t rate the horse trained by the unfashionable old timer named Jim Cerchi. He was just there to make up the numbers.

That wasn’t how it played out though. Vo Rogue strode to a big lead as he always did. And he fought and whacked and tried all the way to the line. It wasn’t enough this time though. And it wasn’t Bonecrusher running him down. It was this no frills type called Dandy Andy, the despised outsider. It left the stunned Flemington crowd silent. A 125/1 shot had won one of Australia’s biggest races and there weren’t many on.

Dandy Andy is the number one parable of the turf though: Any horse on any day can win. That, in a nutshell, is why we all love the racing game.