I was on the horns of a dilemma yesterday.Either a very good meeting at Port Macquarie or an equally good one at Scone.

It was a lovely cool day and I like the drive up the New England Highway through all of those lovely old Hunter Valley towns,so Scone it was.

Emirates Park,,,,jesus,, you can smell the money.It is picture perfect.Set in a natural amphitheater I think it must be the most beautiful racetrack in Australia.A lot of fellows wearing big hats and moleskins and women hefting bodyweight in gold.

Free admission,,free racebooks,,great tucker,,punters paradise.

Lolol anyway,,what I meant to say was that even though Choimar started around 8/1 on the tote all of the local hardheads knew that it was going to win.The (three) on course bookies kept it so safe that I doubt if they took a bet.

It followed Paul Perry's modus operandi.It's previous run was at a metropolitan track,totally outclassed,the horse was ridden "upsidedown" and finished accordingly.Paul does this quite frequently,he sets his bread and butter horses to win money and he is pretty good at it.

Nothing illegal,,just crafty.My point is that its fun to follow racing throughout the country,however,if you can specialise in one region,study the trainers and jockeys,it's possible to predict their manipulations and win a few bucks...

Cheers Bill.