The first Tuesday of every November in Australia is Melbourne Cup day. The Cup is a race for Thoroughbred horses over a distance of 3200 metres, or 2 miles for certain European nations and Americans (well, 1.98838782 miles actually). The day is a gazetted public holiday in Victoria, whose capital city is where the race is held, at the Flemington race track.
Tomorrow morning the city will be alive with Cup Fever as the men dress up in suits, perhaps top hats even, and the women get that hot retro look with flowing dresses, high heels, stockings and suspenders and vast hats with all sort of weird floral arrangement. The Cup is not just a race, it is the race, a major cultural event for all of Oz, where even in the rest of the country where there are no gazetted public holidays, most workers will have the arvo off to hit the pub, place a bet and cheer on the nags and pray for a win to give brief respite from the idiot whims of a destructive business and government class.
Even the national Capital, Canberra, gets in on the act. Though our sheep station come zombie metropolis filled to the brim with the creme of the creme public servant stock, once had that day gazetted due to Union action, Canberran’s still get the holiday, though now on a different date which has been renamed Family & Community Day. Irony abounds in Canberra as two things it definitely doesn’t have are family or families in great abundance nor does it have a sense of community other than masses of public servants gorging at the taxpayer funded trough. And being the prototypical city of Public Servants its population definitely does not represent a general cross section of the Australian public nor will it ever serve that very same public. Quite the contrary: Public Servants in Canberra generally understand the term as meaning that the public will serve them, the Public Servants. But I digress.
When I was a boy every Melbourne Cup day meant being entered into a sweepstake, which is a form of gambling where the horse’s names, written on paper, are placed in a bucket or hat, you pay a nominated flat fee, say 50c to enter, and draw a horse sight unseen from the hat. 1st, 2nd and 3rd placegetters receive fixed winnings from a scale in descending order. Some sweeps will also give a winning for last place. This is the standard form of betting throughout most workplaces and schools in Oz, where there will no doubt be multiple sweeps to cover the numbers of punters. Back in those days we kids would all be assembled into common year classrooms to watch the race live on TV, which usually starts around 3pm. If you weren’t in a school sweep then mum would have you entered into a club sweep or Ladies Sweep, from the Cup day event she has attended with family and friends. Tonight in my family we’ll all be entered into our own family sweep (yes we have the numbers to cover the 24 horse field) and tomorrow the kids will take their own money off to school for the sweeps there.
Cup Day is also where all Ozzies get to pretend that they’re an old style punter and follow the form, the racing guide, and select their favourite after perusing the race guide, taking into consideration starts won, recent form, over what distance, jockeys, trainers etc etc. No matter how you approach it the fact remains, Melbourne Cup Day is a major cultural event in Oz reflecting community, mateship, gambling, grog, cheers, fun and camaraderie.
Tomorrow the MSM will be dedicated almost entirely to the Melbourne Cup, for what they love to call “The Race that Stops a Nation”. There’ll be much jingoistic fanfare about what makes Australia great, how we are the lucky country, about how we all unite for this one great day. And most of that is true. There’ll also be those who decry it, point out gambling addictions rates in Oz, how families are torn apart by such addictions and the social cost of this affliction for the national economy. There’ll also be much ado about how we all hail from many nations, many cultures will unite on this great Australian cultural event. And much of that is true too. What isn’t noted, is the fact that this uniquely Australian experience is born out of our Anglo-Celtic cultural and racial heritage. That racial and cultural heritage further forged by the peculiar and unique Australian environment and history.
No other country or culture celebrates gambling and horse racing in the manner we do. No other country would gazette a public holiday for such an event and even more, no other country would accept that where there is no public holiday the expectation is that employers will still pay you for an afternoon’s work even though you’re down at the pub with work mates drinking piss and gambling. That is a unique aspect to Australian culture. Australian culture is an Anglo-Celtic one, British fused with Irish, from the rabble and the mercantile echelons of those nations. That is our dominant racial mix which the Australian environment has forged. But that concept of a culture being forged from a racial, a genetic type, is shouted down in this country as “racism!”. Race has no impact on culture or outcomes, everything is attributed to environment. We are all equal, and any man can do anything. Genetic makeup does not enter into it as there are no genetic constraints, we are all equal in ability.
Yet no one would even imagine applying such a logic when selecting the horse they’ll bet on, from the 24 in the Melbourne Cup field. It’s horses for courses and form rules all. As my favourite quote from Damon Runyon plays on Ecclesiastes: “The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way to bet.”
And the Melbourne Cup is a unique race in Oz due to length of the distance traveled. It’s a race for Stayers. Many of the local horses have never gone anywhere near the two mile mark as the great bulk of races in Oz are over 1600 metres. Even if there was a gun horse like say, race favourite So You Think, who’s had 8 wins from 11 starts and won all 5 straight this Spring campaign the question still remains, will he travel the distance?
As Kenny Callander says:
“I WANT to tip So You Think to win the Cup, but I can’t. I want to be the nine-year-old kid again who cheered home the champ of the day, Rising Fast, in a Woolloomooloo classroom in 1954.
But racing’s not a fairytale, it is hard and tough and brutally honest – and the hero doesn’t always win.
I love a champ and I want So You Think to win just as much as every boy and girl in Australia, as much as the young women in the offices, the old men in the pubs.
But he has a hell of a job in front of him.
Rising Fast, like So You Think, won the Cox Plate and the Mackinnon before his Cup. But he was an out-and-out stayer who had also won the Caulfield Cup and the 3200m at Flemington was right up his alley.
Like a 5000m runner trying to win an Olympic marathon, the Cup, its distance and its gruelling running have been too much for so many other brilliant middle-distance wonder horses.
He is trained by Bart Cummings, but So You Think has not even raced beyond 2040m. That is a huge statistic against him.”
The problem is that of the 5 starts and wins for So You Think this year, none of them have been beyond 2,040 metres. Coming back in August 2010 was a win in the Memsie Stakes over 1400 metres. Then came wins in the Underwood Stakes (1800 metres), and the Yalumba Stakes (2000 metres) to top it off by smashing the field in the prestigious race of champions, the Cox Plate (2040 metres). Last Saturday So You Think again blitzed the field in the last of the major lead up Spring Carnival races to the Melbourne Cup, in the Mackinnon Stakes. If he wins The Cup, as Callander says, he’ll be marked for ever more as a deadset champion up there with the national horse hero Phar Lap. But how to know that he’ll do the distance? What can your average punter look for to give some indication that So You Think has that staying quality that only a select few have. Why it’s all in the bloodlines of course! That genetic mix that all syndicates, owners and punters look for when buying or informatively tipping a horse.
So You Think was sired by High Chaparall who was a champion stayer in his day.He’s won the Epsom Derby twice (2423 metres), Breeders’ Cup Turf twice (2414 metres), Racing Post Trophy (1609 metres), Irish Derby (2414 metres), 3rd in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe (2400 metres), all against the best international field that breeding and training can provide.
High Chapparal was getting charged out at a rate of 25,000 Euros a go in 2006, and is currently on stud duty at Coolmore for a cool AUD$88,000 a pop (ibid). That’s a lot of money to invest don’t you think? And wouldn’t you think the people laying that sort of cash out for a sire to mount their mare would know exactly what they want? They want the genes of a champion combined with the genes of another. That’s what stud’s are all about. That’s what many regular types, knock about Ozzies, will travel to QLD for to watch the Magic Millions sales on the Gold Coast, or choof off for holidays to NZ to watch the Millions in Auckland. Horse racing is all about breeding.
The term itself, Thoroughbred , means a horse specifically bred for racing. In fact:
“The Thoroughbred as it is known today was first developed in 17th and 18th century England, when native mares were crossbred with imported Arabian stallions. All modern Thoroughbreds can trace their pedigrees to three stallions originally imported into England in the 17th century and 18th century, and to 74 foundation mares of English and Oriental (Arabian, Turkoman or Barb) blood. During the 18th century and 19th century, the Thoroughbred breed spread throughout the world; they were imported into North America starting in 1730 and into Australia, Europe, Japan and South America during the 19th century. Millions of Thoroughbreds exist worldwide today, with over 118,000 foals registered each year worldwide.”
Horse racing is built upon the select breeding of a genetic type best adapted to racing. Fast or over distances, they are all selected for special genetic characteristics passed on through sire and out of dam. This is not a random occurrence but something that investors will pay large amounts of cash for all with the expectation of a return on that investment. Genetics are at the root of horse racing.
In this Melbourne Cup there are, as it happens, four Thoroughbreds sired by that same stallion High Chaparral: So You Think, Shoot Out, Descarado and Monaco Consul. That’s no coincidence. They were all deliberately bred and selected for, all came out of his “first New Zealand crop” (ibid). And all have performed brilliantly with my pick* of that crop being Shoot Out, winner of the 2009 Victoria Derby (2500 metres) and Spring Champions Stakes (2000 metres).
And in the rest of the field we have other champions sired by their champion fathers. We have the mighty Kiwi sire Zabeel fathering Zavite, Precedence and Maluckyday (the lowest weight at 51kg, being touted as “one to watch”). Zabeel sired two Australian greats in Might and Power (winner of the 1997 Melbourne Cup) and Octagonal. From the US we have the champ Danehill siring Zipping (fourth in the 2007 Melbourne Cup) and Profound Beauty. Also out of the USA we have Halling siring Bauer (2nd in the 2008 Melbourne Cup) and Holberg.
The race second favourite and top weight (57 kgs) Shocking (winner of the 2009 Melbourne Cup) was sired by the Irish horse Street Cry, who covers (sires foals) at US$150,000 a pop and in Oz AUD$110,000 a go. In “five seasons in Australia, he covered 425 mares to produce 319 foals” (ibid) which, going on the preceding rate, would have earned AUD$35,090,000!
I think we can safely conclude that, when it comes to horse racing, genetics dominate selection and return on investment.
So where does environment fit in? For as we’re always being told by our masters of the Left, we humans are all equal in our abilities and genetics plays no role in determining outcomes (unlike race horses) and that it is our environment, or even socio-economic environment that determines all outcomes. From this belief comes the ever constant cry for eduction! Education eradicates all differences and that if only all social and economic circumstances were equal, with all gaining access to the same education then racial disparity would cease to exist.
Well we know that’s not the case for Thoroughbreds, as it isn’t for any animal species and, given that humans are animals too the logical expectation is that genetics should and does determine outcomes. But, not all. For even with the best of breeding environment does have a role to play. Environmental factors will and do contribute to outcomes in the horse racing world just as they do in the human.
In tomorrow’s cup the punter’s favourite So You Think is trained by the greatest trainer in Australian racing history, one James Bartholomew ‘Bart’ Cummings. In a racing career as a Trainer spanning 1953 till the present, Bart has won the Melbourne Cup a record 12 times. There is none better. This is the man who’ll get the best out of your horse and make the inferior superior. Bart is our “environmental factor”.
Of course along with Bart comes the stable he works for, the jockeys, the feed, the conditioning, the advice, the stud etc etc. Though breeding bloodlines are a dominant predictor of capacity, there can be no doubt that environmental factors like those preceding do enhance and affect the demonstration of that capacity.
Take the case of So You Think’s half brother, Shoot Out. Back in April “…despite his shock defeat as favourite in the Rosehill Guineas (2000m) last start” “…trainer John Wallace … elected to push on to the Derby (2400m) and not bring Shoot Out back in distance to the Doncaster Mile (1600m)…” (source) Prior to the race Wallace received advice from Jockey Stathi Katsidis “Stathi kept telling me to take the pacifiers off him and I was bit stubborn but I finally listened.” The combined environmental factors of trainer and Jockey brought off a stunning victory. “He could be a champion,” Katsidis concluded. “I know it’s a word that’s thrown around a bit but he’s got the breeding, he’s won over 2400 metres now and he could even run two miles (3200m) down the track.” (ibid)
In that very same race were the two other High Chaparral stallions Descarado and Monaco Consul, coming in second and third. Their two trainers Gai Waterhouse and Mike Moroney declared respectively:
“We are as delighted as if we had won it, it’s just as good,” Waterhouse said.
“We bought him as a Melbourne Cup horse and that’s what he’s being set for.”
Monaco Consul’s trainer Mike Moroney said he would be set for the Queensland Derby.
“He wanted to lay out coming down the straight but he’s a lot better back in Australia than he was in New Zealand,” Moroney said.
“The Queensland Derby is the aim. He’s only had four runs and we’ve been purposefully spacing them out.” (ibid)
You can see the intent here. The breeding is critical but needs be compounded by the best environment in order to gain the most out of that inherent capacity. And it shouldn’t go without mentioning, and by doing so noting, the names of the trainers again: Cummings, Wallace, Waterhouse (nee Smith) and Moroney. They are all British or Irish ethnic names. Indeed, if one should glance through any Oz form guide you’ll see such names dominating.
In short, human races are merely an extended family. The racial type you marry and breed with will determine to a large extent the capacity of your offspring. That child will be further nurtured and developed by the environment within which they are brought up and developed. Naturally if that environment is constituted by predominantly your extended family, your broad kin extension, a unique culture will be produced and in a form of feedback loop reinforce cultural aspects of that genetic type. Of course some cultures produce a positive feedback loop and others a negative feedback loop. Though the Leftist will say that such judgements are subjective, history disproves such nonsense. So just as we see the obvious evidence in horse racing that genetic’s determine so many outcomes, but not necessarily the outcome in its entirety, we can likewise conclude the same for the human race.
Any observant man knows it. There’s not much to guess about why Africans dominate running, whether sprints or long distance. They have a genetic predisposition for the type of body that will excel in those areas. One easily knows that Asians are intelligent and servile, far more so than any other race, the Chinese more so of the lot. And it’s not hard to see the giftedness of Jews, especially Askenazis. Likewise one can observe thoughout history right up till today the dominant inventive intelligence of Whites: Nordic- Germanic-Anglo-Celts etc. Yet, just as the Melbourne Cup is the race that stops a nation, equally so these simple observations and conclusions form the basis of the racism that stops this nation, as our elite Left eternally keep chastising us about.
Race is real, it determines much. It is not the whole story but a major part of it. Any nation that ceases to observe what the basic rules of genetic selection imply ceases to remain in the race.
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As for my own tip for The Cup? I’m laying $10 on the nose for Shoot Out and $5 each way on Monaco Consul. Shoot Out has the breeding, and he’s won at 2400 metres. The trainer has been gunning for this race, and though he’s no where near the class of Cummings it’ll make a great Cup story. He’s got Sydney’s top hoop, and last year’s Melbourne Cup winner aboard in Corey Brown, who says:
“One thing I know is that Shoot Out is shaping like a true 3200m horse,” he said yesterday.
“I had to push him up in the Mackinnon Stakes (on Saturday) and he came back under me, he is settling beautifully in his races now and that is really pleasing.
“I knocked back other offers to be aboard him and I am still happy to have the ride. “
He’s got the genetics and environmental factors just right. *Plus my old man gave me a rambling drunken call about a fortnight ago extolling the horse’s virtues for a full 20 minute speech. Of course my Dad has dropped off that tip now, which is always a good sign since he is known in these circles as “the kiss of death”.
The US horse Americain is a standout, especially since it has won it’s last three starts, two at this distance (3000 metres).
Regarding So You Think’s prospect’s at stud Tom Reilly of the Sydney Morning Herald totally stuffs up in his article “You Think He’s a Stud? Not if He Wins the Cup“. Reilly says that “…victory in the 3200-metre showpiece might be no good thing. No one in the breeding industry wants to say it out loud, but it is possible a win in the Cup might reduce his value as a sire.” Yet in the very same piece his only quote that isn’t anonymous contradicts his entire piece: “…the head of Arrowfield Stud, John Messara,…” says “I don’t think he’d be worth a cent more because he’s already won the races that breeders care about. ”If he wins it will be because of his natural talent rather than him being a stayer. And I think he could take on the best over sprint distances … too.” So much for Reilly’s theory and so much for journalism in general. No wonder journalists by and large just cannot grasp the factual reality of race.
Still, the Melbourne Cup’s a lottery, given the massive field of 24 horses. What isn’t a lottery is the genetic selection that has produced this great array of talent.