Minutes.

Attendance: Nooka counted nineteen members and two guests in attendance.  By some strange coincidence we had nineteen members and two guests present.  At least we did at the time that Nooka presented his attendance report.  Then, right on cue, Robbo turned up.  Our guests were Charmian Morris from Legacy and Charlie Northeast.

Meal: Meatloaf and, in the words of Malcolm, ‘a green’.  Delicious, 10/10.

Bob and James dropped the flag and we were away and racing for another week.  In reports;

·       Boré informed us that the Ukraine project is now complete and a bill has been submitted to the treasurer.

·       Bob reminded members that the $100 from the Golden Community Raffle tickets is now due if you haven’t forwarded it on to Bob yet.

·       Bob also reminded members that the May Races Myeloma Luncheon is on Monday and we will not have a Wednesday meeting next week.  40 hours of our labour will be auctioned at the luncheon, with all proceeds coming back to our club.

·       Nooka reported that ‘the big Sheila’ Gracey was leading the footy tipping with 40.  Dooka and Dillo had made up ground with 39 after another Melbourne victory.

Charmian Morris then kindly spoke to us about Legacy.  Legacy is 100 years old this year.  The organization looks after 40,000 partners and children of veterans killed or injured in war.  This work is done by 3400 volunteer legatees.  The Warrnambool Legacy branch looks after people right across our district.

Legacy is celebrating its 100^th anniversary with a torch relay from Poziers to Melbourne via much of Australia. Volunteers are being sought to assist with the Warrnambool leg of this torch relay.  The torch will be coming here on Wednesday the 13^th of September.  People interested in helping are asked to register online for the ‘flying squad, ‘muster point team’ or the ‘torch kiss team’.  Charmian noted that the torch kiss team needed to manage the torch handovers, where one torch is lighted from another.  She noted that this was the most tricky and dangerous of tasks but volunteers would be provided with ‘about thirty seconds of training’ for the role.

We thank Charmian for taking the time to talk to us about Legacy and the upcoming Legacy centenary torch relay.

Rotary Horse Racing report.

Overflow Miss debuted on Tuesday in the Callaghan Motors Stakes here in Warrnambool.  In a world in which we humans are at risk of being replaced by machines, the main purpose of the race sponsor seemed to be to remind the horses what it was that had replaced them.  Overflow Miss, whose name Shakespeare might have written as ‘thine cup that fails to runeth over,’ opened the betting as the highest priced horse in the race.  Thus, we went into the race with the expectation that the horse would come last.  Punters jumped on board and the horse’s price dropped considerably leading up to the race, another sign that the horse was likely to run poorly. 

Overflow Miss got out of the gates slowly and ran at the back of the field for most of the race.  Down the straight she put on the afterburners and stormed into second last place as they hit the line.  To paraphrase Lew, we came with very low expectations, and left with those expectations having been ever so slightly exceeded.    On this metric, we will declare Overflow Miss’ first run a complete success.

Power of Song had accepted in both the Prydes Easifeed Handicap on the Wednesday and the Ludeman Real Estate Handicap on the Thursday.  The Ludeman Real Estate Handicap was described in the race book as having ‘no sex restrictions.’  No wonder our Charter President was keen to sponsor the event.  Unfortunately, PoS ran in the Wednesday race, so our life-long attempt to win a Ludeman Handicap will have to be defered for another year.

Power of Song got out of the gates okay and travelled the journey comfortably midfield.  As they went down the straight PoS got progressively closer to the leaders.  Unfortunately, on the circular track, PoS was approaching the leaders from the wrong direction.  Fortunately, the finishing post arrived before our steed was lapped and a she greeted the judges in twelfth place. 

Another May Race Carnival, another somewhat disappointing result for Warrnambool Central Racing.  However, next year we should have Power of Song, Dirty Angel, Matrooshi and Overflow Miss all cherry ripe for the three-day event.  Pop the 2024 Ludeman Real Estate Handicap in your diary right now.

Ten Years Ago.

Ten years ago, all four clubs met for our traditional combined Rotary race week breakfast.  Your correspondent went to nearly all of them and thought they were very good.  There was no breakfast this year for some reason.  Not that we can complain; we were never involved in organising the event.