KEY POINTS:
Remember back midyear when the TAB bookies did a stack of money on Harness Jewels Day at Cambridge?
The bookies bags' got emptied and they made the most of it.
We said, take no notice of the bagmen crying poverty, they'll get it back quicker than you can
walk to the corner.
They have.
Not that they needed the results of the past month, because the deficit was previously eclipsed, but northern raider All The Good winning the Caulfield Cup at a huge price, Maldivian finally coming right in the Cox Plate at odds, a 100 to one pay-no-one result in the Victoria Derby and a $45 to $50 Viewed Melbourne Cup upset turned pushbikes into BMWs for the odds-layers.
Except they weren't on pushbikes to start with. If you ever see a bookie on a bike, take a photo - no one will believe it happened.
So what happened, do you think, when Hoorang won Saturday's $250,000 Christchurch Casino New Zealand Cup at $47 - apart from the cleaners at the TAB building in Wellington complaining about the height of empty champagne bottles rolling around the floor at headquarters?
And just to ensure the cleaners' bill will be paid, Tell A Tale wins the 2000 Guineas at $9.60 and suddenly there's nowhere left to stack the money.
Hoorang?
Many won't remember, but when Simon De Monfort won the Wellington Cup at zillions to one nearly that many years ago, the headline on the late Jack Elliot's story on the back page of the Melbourne Herald the next morning read : "Simon De Who?"
Today's headlines could be excused for reading: "Who-rang?"
Sure, there's a few around that now say they liked Hoorang to win, but there's a very important statistic to tell you why that probably wasn't going to happen - seven starts on good tracks for zip. Not a win, not even a placing.
If you found Hoorang on Saturday, you deserved the $47.
That track wasn't just good, it was close to fast - the type of track Hoorang probably needed to avoid, yet she won far and away the biggest race of her career. Her owner and trainer, Ian Shaw said he was "confident", then changed it to "extremely confident".
Good on him.
Shaw, a semi-retired veterinarian, can not only take the New Zealand Cup home to Bulls to skite about, he can tell tales for the next year or two about how it was presented by the Princess Royal, Princess Anne, no stranger herself to horses and who has ridden in amateur races in Britain.
This was heady stuff for a 73-year-old who, by his own admission, has produced probably no more than 20 winners in total in the decades he has been playing around with a few odd thoroughbreds on the side.
Shaw bought Hoorang as a breeding proposition as much as anything, paying $3500 for the "fat filly" at a Westbury Stud deplenishing sale.
The vet liked the former outstanding stayers Straight Draw and General Command in her pedigree.
"I loved the fact her dam was by Rhythm [sire of Caulfield/Melbourne Cup winner Ethereal]. I think he's a wonderful sire of stayers."
Kelly Myers, breathless after the biggest win of her riding career, had only just enough time to catch some oxygen before a chat with Princess Anne at the presentation.
Yes, it was a day for the females.
And for bookies.
