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Turf Deli Dud Of The Week
Excellerator- Better than Bank Interest? 17/03/01

The old racing adage states ' Better than bank interest' - the story being that in the golden days of racing those who worked in professional financial circles could 'borrow' from the safe for the weekend, plonk on the very short priced favourite, collect the 'interest' and return the money on the Monday morning. Of course in more recent years this has dropped from popularity as the same professional and responsible financial people realise they could just take the money full stop, and the worst that would happen would be having to spend 6 months in a minimum security country village with a continental breakfast and morning strolls.

Anyway, obviously someone was harking back to the good old days at the night meeting at Canterbury on 17/03/01. The short, very short priced favourite in the 3rd race, the Gai Waterhouse trained 2 year old Excellerator, going for his 4th win from as many starts, up against only 4 opponents started at MONEY BACK $1.00 Win and $1.00 Place. Apparently this is the first time on SuperTAB that a horse has started money back at a metropolitan meeting. Only problem his - he got beaten.

What was more bizarre though was that according to the TABCORP website results, Excellerator was still only showing money back 15 minutes before the start of the race. This could mean that someone put so much money on early that is completely squashed the pool (and severely misjudge their bet in that case) - with the other money unable to cover their bet. The other, and rather disturbing, possibility is that people were still betting KNOWINGLY on a horse that was only showing money back. Considering that most of the money on a race comes in the last 10 minutes or so, this is a quite real possibility - as he did not drift from the $1.00 return.

Then again, considering that the term 'bank interest' means little in the modern world, and that any bank is going to slog you account fees, transaction fees, carpet usage and pen ink fees, maybe actually managing to get your money back (and not less than the amount you invested) is the modern day equivalent of 'Better than Bank Interest'…





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