An enjoyable 3 working weeks in Sydney ended with an extremely pleasant evening at Harold Park as guest (again!) of Robert and Gina Marshall. Robert is on the NSW Harness Racing Regulatory Body but is no longer head of the Inter Dominion Council under the new arrangments. Only one trot on the card but that was an improvement on the situation a few years ago! Robert also took me out to the new 1400 meter track at Menangle, where he arranged for me to start the last race - correction sit beside starter Paul O'Toole in the gate car. A nice despatch and the result took me back to my betting system evaluation work nearly 4o years ago... bet the drifting favourite in the last usually had a positive return. Of course the concept of the 'last race' has virtually disappeared with Trackside showing about 20 races an hour for 20 hours a day...By the way Menangle is a minimum of 1 hour's drive from Sydney and more like 75 minutes and will never be a replacement for HP in terms of crowds and functions. But it's a very nice and very fast country track. (Sadly it's called Menangle Park Paceway, even though there was a trot with 9 handicaps earlier in the day I went.)
No comments:
Post a Comment