They say horse racing can be a great leveller, where battlers have as much chance as the royals and oil-rich sheiks at sharing in the spoils.
Racing annals are littered with rags-to-riches yarns like that of the recently retired Takeover Target, bought by Queanbeyan taxi driver Joe Janiak for $1250 who went on to win more than $6 million in prize money in races all around the world.
Then there is the other side of the coin, royally bred gallopers who can’t run out of their own way, as evidenced by the support race at the big Balnarring Cup picnic meeting on Australia Day.
One local punter pointed out that two of the eight runners in the Rosebud Garden Supplies Trophy Handicap were bred to be anything.
The Cranbourne-trained Taqneen was sired by former Australian Horse of the Year Lonhro and his mum, Makybe Diva, was pretty handy on the track as well, winning a record three-straight Melbourne Cups and a Cox Plate as well.
Also lining up in the same race was Éclair Raider, whose mother Dane Ripper is also a Cox Plate winner. His dad, Irish champion High Chaparral, won an Epsom Derby in the UK and twice won the Breeders Cup Turf race in the US.
The prize money earned by both sets of parents on the track – excluding their massive stud earnings – totalled more than $28 million.
Yet their progeny were vying for a first prize cheque of $1380 at Balnarring – and could not get the job done.
Taqneen finished third and Éclair Raider came in fourth behind the ironically named, as it turned out, Earn A Quid!
