Favourite punting stories

any wise words for me o obe wan kenobi

i, never heard off tounge and cheek,advice is easy heeding is hard

wise are these words - yoda

Indeed, the force in young Robert, strong it is, but many the losing bookies tickets on the road to enlightenment there are.

BIG - BUT SHOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER!

One of my favourite stories highlights how punting ( and the pressure that often accompanies a bet ) can make us all of reckless, irrational and cautious -all at the same time.

In 1993 I experienced one of the events that you read about from time to time. I dreamed that Dancing Duel won the Durban July. No kidding - I woke up with the following matter-of-fact statement literally ringing in my ears : 'You realize, of course, that Dancing Duel won the July......'

Now I am sure that there are all sorts of psychological explanations to explain my experience. Clearly the race was on my mind when I went to sleep. But it all sounded so convincing. So off I went and punted the animal. And then punted it and punted it and punted it.........

Eventually when the feeding frenzy abated I totted up that I had lumped about R122,000 onto the horse - which in 1993 was PROPER money. Which left me with well over a week to squirm and second guess my decision and pray that the animal was not scratched.

On the day of the race I woke from a virtually sleepless night and paced around trying to kill time. This was before the advent of Tellytrack so there was nothing to occupy time until the broadcast - which included the curtain raising Administrators Champion Juvenile Stakes - began.

As I had nothing better to do I tried to figure out who would win the two year old feature. For me there was only one horse - Imperial Dispatch - whom I had seen win a previous race from tailed off. As both the Cape Town and Durban cards included both races in their Pick Sixes I idly calculated what they would cost if I went 4 fields bankering Imperial Dispatch and Dancing Duel. Both centres would have cost be about R800 each.

Now consider this for punting stupidity : The man has R 120,000+ on one horse so we must assume he expects that one to win! His other choice is well performed with Lloyd up and with, apparently, only Crimson Waves to beat. And he is suddenly baulking at R1600 more..........

The rest is history : Imperial Dispatch is tailed off, runs about 9 wide and then bolts in. Dancing Duel wins the July. The two Pick sixes pay approximately R60,000 combined.

Not that I noticed. I was too busy recovering from the shock of winning just under R400,000 on the July. Yet - if played a bit more intelligently - I could have won the lot for a fraction of the outlay.........

Happily I have never put that kind of money on a horse again. But I am pretty confident that I have given it all back ( and some ) in bits and pieces over the years since.

I was 21 when Flaming Rock won the July in 1991 and I won R55 000.You can imagine how much chance I ever had of getting out of racing after that.3 weeks later I backed Divine Master at 20-1 to win the Mainstay over 1800m at Clairwood.Glen Hatt managed to get him baulked at the rail 400m out and came too late by a neck to catch Olympic Duel.That would have been another R120 000.I think relatively speaking I was a bigger punter then than I am now,taking inflation into account.

Surfing home killed me.I maintain to this day that Pas De Quo would have won.I had backed him to win the Met at 33-1 when he won,and followed up in the July.Garth was cruising just behind Surfing Home,who shifted in out and,interferring with Pas De Quo twice.I have never smoked,but I had 5 cigarettes that night and have never felt so ill in my whole life except for the time that I got alchohol poisoning,but that's another story altogether.

MY OTHER PUNTING STORY

One of my happier memories goes back to the year 1976 ( ? ) when Gigantic won the Cape Derby. I had seen him fly up to finish fourth behind Sind in the Cape Guineas and believed the extra ground of the Derby made him a penalty kick. He was quoted at 3/1.

In those days I earned about R300 pm but scraped together R200 for a 'big punt'. Unfortuantely it rained on the morning of the race - which just underlined the horse's chance as he was NZ bred and relished soft going. The subsequent flood of money saw him shorten to 15/10. That left me with my thumb well and truly stuck up my nose as I was grimly determined to 'earn' more than a month's wages off the bet. So I 'looked on' when Gigantic hacked up by 4+ lengths.

The remainder of the afternoon was uneventful except that I blew half of my stake backing no-hopers to make up for my 'miss' on Gigantic.

Until we got to the last race - a 1000m 'A' Division sprint. Red hot favourite at 4/10 was the Durban visitor ( believe it or not - Durban horses used to clean up the Cape season! )ridden by Garth Puller. The only apparent threat was the Computaform Sprint winner Pyrmont from Jhb. But the latter was giving Abbey Boy somewhere in the order of 8-10 KILOS at the weights. And Abbey Boy was the Big Sprint Thing of that era.

Eventually greed and desperation got the better of me and I toddled off to the late 'King' Louis Miller's stand with my R100. ( In those days it required balls for a young 'unconnected' pipsqueak to even dare to ask Louis for a bet ). 'R600 - R100 Pyrmont' [ which I pronounced Purrmont ] please'. ( No stretches in those days ). Louis gazed down from his lofty heights and snorted :
'It's prononuced Pirrmont not Purrmont. But you have got R600 - R100.' Duly chastened I slunk off to the grandstand to watch the race.

I then witnessed one of the finest riding con jobs of the era. Bert Abercrombie on Pyrmont bounced him from the start into a one length lead over Abbey Boy. Garth sat with what appeared to be a treble handful until the 400m where he moved up effortlessly into a neck lead whilst checking his hairdo in the rearview mirror in anticipation of posing for an easy victory. Bert didn't flinch until the 200metre mark where he suddenly got very busy and miraculously reclaimed the lead on the line to win by a whisker. Whilst I screamed the grandstand down.

Feeling a lot more cocky I bounded off to Mr Miller where I suddenly discovered, to my horror, that I had lost my ticket. Fortunately for me King Louis remembered me as the idiot who mispronounced the horse's name. In addition the bet had not been claimed. Nevertheless I had to sweat 28 days before I was able to claim my winnings........

So my Derby Day turned out all right after all and left me with a fond memory of a legendary bookmaker.

Garrick...was "King Louis" the big guy who had pride of place at the old betting shop in Loop Street at the time of the big 4 and the 7 place bet on carbon paper?

Big 4 was classic. Mark your 10c combinations on the sheets with the horses names, insert cash and deposit at the tattersalls box- loop street.

Yip BDB,that's right.

I used to go with my old man to put on his jpt in Parow every saturday morning after we had visited my gran.I think that is where my passion for racing originated.He played every saturday,but only like R1 or R2 I think.He won about R3500 in 1968,which bought him a new car,a new washing machine and put down a nice deposit on the house my parents bought for about R12 000.

Aaah...reminiscing 'bout the good 'ole days...remember sitting in a train in 3rd class with my dad from Elsies River to Bellville reading the racing page of the Cape Times on a saturday morning when a neighbour on the same train asked me to give him a jackpot. Dad was bragging I "knew" horses. remember Puller rode a double on Foreign Ambassador (the guineass) and meet the press(20/1). Tipped the jackie for R2. Jackpot paid R2000.00. The guy came over the night and gave me R50.00

Thought bringing this thread back to life would be a bit fun for the CLAN, any more?