From our pal down under, Konrad Marshall: The horizon here is a craggy ridge of open cut coal mine, the blue sky above and the Muswellbrook Race Club below. Magpies arc on the breeze this recent Monday morning, warbling at nothing in particular. A whipper-snipper whirs near garden bed of sweet peas. No roses.
This is where Robert Thompson will ride on the first Tuesday in November. He won’t saddle up for the Melbourne Cup (as he did in 1986 on Reckless Tradition, finishing seventh to At Talaq). He will ride in the Muswellbrook Cup.
“He’s won it four times,” grunts a bookmaker. “He’s won everything four times.”
Thompson describes Muswellbrook on a Monday as having “no atmosphere at all”, but he is wrong. Small chestnuts and big blacks and the odd grey step from floats and clip clop to the “stables” – one long orange brick wall with a tin visor for shade.
There are perhaps 100 people here from this hardscrabble town, a mixture of diehard punters and befrocked ladies celebrating a 60th birthday.
Trainers, strappers and owners flick through race books filled with advertisements for backhoes and skid steel loaders. They scan posted sheets to find out which horses are wearing blinkers, pacifiers, tongue ties, bubble cheekers and lugging bits.
This is not the image you see on spring racing carnival commercials but this is what racing looks like. There are 992 jockeys in Australia, along with 3678 trainers. They race at 368 tracks, hosting a grand total of 2725 race meetings.
The nation stops for one race, yes, but throughout the year there are 19,510 others.
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