Crazy Craig will back a winner on Saturday…

HA, APRIL FOOL’S!

So here we are, the first weekend of April and a rare Saturday of April Fool’s Racing, and yesterday we got quite a piece of devastating news that multiple Group 1 winner I’m Thunderstruck, a horse that Crazy Craig and myself both had great success backing over the past couple of seasons, had died after a catastrophic knee injury while he was waking up from a general anesthetic, during arthroscopic fetlock surgery, not even a fortnight after running in the All-Star Mile.

Devastating is a simple way of summing up this moment, Thunder is gone far too soon, and it’s just the full stop on a pretty ordinary month for Australian racing.

So as we try and grapple with that news, this weekend is meant to be one of the great weekends of Australian racing, as we mark Day 1 of The Championships at Randwick, with the track a 99.45% chance of ending up a Soft track by Race 9 despite no rain being forecast until very late in the day, and as always the highlights of Day 1 are the popular Country Championships Final, plus the four Group 1s of the Inglis Sires for the juveniles, the Australian Derby, formerly the AJC Derby, the TJ Smith Stakes, featuring a once good horse called Nature Strip, and the Doncaster Mile, the second most-famous mile in the world…

Behind Eminem’s 8 Mile.

Then you’ve got the other less important meetings of the day, namely the Bendigo Golden Mile meeting out in the Victorian Goldfields, where 4 degrees Celsius is considered tanning weather, the Manihi Classic and the Clare Lindop Stakes at Morphetville, and for some reason the Roma Cup is on this weekend at Ascot, having been brought forward a good 6 weeks for some odd reason…

Could be to do with that slot race The Quokka in a fortnight.

So it’s on to Crazy Craig, and it appears that drought-breaking winner a few weeks back was an outlier rather than a new normal, because last Saturday he managed to pluck out 2 more second-placings, plus a 4th place, restoring his status as the Luckless Lunatic…

Maybe it’s time he returned to the other Elvis Presley song he used to use willy nilly, GOOD LUCK CHARM!

P(r)ick No.1: Sequestered (No.3, Barrier 2) in Race 4 at Randwick (SR4), 1:55pm AEDT

2000m Group 3 Quality Fillies Adrian Knox Stakes

Trainer: James Cummings, Jockey: James McDonald, 58kg

Hello hello hello everybody it’s Craaaaaazy Craig TBFB, Scratchie King of Bairnsdale, and just when you thought the Luckless Lunatic had climbed over the hump and was ready to start firing winners out of his arsehole, I FOUND TWO MORE SECOND PLACINGS!

How crazy is that… But, as they say, that’s racing, and that’s what money back for 2nd place is for!

Anyway, I’m starting off with the feature meeting of the day at Woyal Wandwick, and I’m staring at the lead-up race for next week’s ATC Oaks, the time-honoured Adrian Knox, and the favourite Sequestered, helmed by the Jameses, appears to be following the Collette lead-up from 2020, which worked an absolute treat for Godolphin back then:

Broke her maiden in the provincials, followed that up with another provincial win next start

Goes straight from that last-start provincial win up several rungs in grade to the Adrian Knox with an eye for the Oaks

So…. I guess you could say that Sequestered was sequestered away to the provincials before being unveiled in town this weekend!

P(r)ick No.2: Is It Me (No.12, Barrier 13) E/W in Race 7 at Bendigo (MR7), 4:15pm AEDT

1400m Listed Bendigo Guineas

Trainer: Daniel Bowman, Jockey: Declan Bates, 58kg

Hello, Is It Me!

I’ve thought about us for a long long time!

Maybe I think too much but something’s wrong
There’s something here, doesn’t last too long
Maybe I shouldn’t think of you as mine

It’s important to meeeeeeeeeeeee
That you know you are freeeeeeeee
‘Cause I never want to make you change for meeeeeeee!

P(r)ick No.3: Osipenko (No.21, Barrier 1) E/W in the Doncaster Handicap at Randwick (SR8), 4:35pm AEDT

1600m Group 1 Handicap

Trainer: Chris Waller, Jockey: Michael Dee, 49kg

First emergency, Waller and Dee, two Kiwis with a Kiwi horse, 3-year-old BOTTOM WEIGHT, guaranteed a start with Kirwan’s Lane scratched from the race, he skipped the Randwick Guineas and ran in the George Ryder instead, he drops 7 KILOS off that run…

I don’t think including him in the numbers it sounds as insane as I’m putting it, don’t you worry about that!

Anyway, I know nothing else about the horse, other than the fact he sounds like a tennis player from Latvia who somehow won a French Open title by playing the tennis equivalent of John Daly’s grip it and rip it.

P(r)ick No.4: Super Smink (No.1, Barrier 7) E/W in Race 7 at Ascot (PR7), 4:05pm AWST (7:05)

1100m 2YO Fillies Group 3 Gimcrack Stakes

Trainer: Daniel Morton, Jockey: Chris Parnham, 56.5kg

“Tappy, I’m happy to take No.3, Shuper Shmirk!”

“Uh Kenny, it’s Super Smink.”

“Well shit mate, it’s still a bloody horse with an S in it’s name!”

Enjoy your Saturday folks, stay safe, stay negative, gamble within REASON, KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD, and remember, I’m Crazy Craig, and that’s why they call me Craaaaaazy Craig!