Platinum Racing

FORMER JOCKEY NOW CANBERRA TRAINER John "Nissie" Nisbet cracked it for his first city win as a trainer when Beyond Expectation, ridden by Tommy Berry, won the last race at Canterbury today.

Since retiring from riding a couple of seasons back and turning his hand to training Nisbet has had a steady flow of winners on country tracks but today's win with Beyond Expectation may well take his career to a new level.

Beyond Expectation is a very nice horse and has now won four of his only six starts.

THE HOO-HAA over the new whip rules was probably put into it's right perspective by Racing NSW Chief Steward, Ray Murrihy, on air with SKY Sports Radio's Greg Radley earlier this week, when he said that it is wrong for people to assume that the whip was in fact "the accelerator."

Of course, everyone jumped on the bandwaggon after Daniel Ganderton was heavily fined and suspended following a winner at Randwick on Saturday where many believed that Ganderton's vigour as opposed to Corey Brown's staying within the new whip rules on the runner up, meant the difference.

I also agree with Murrihy's assertion that community standards and expectations have changed dramatically over the past few years and if racing had not moved to introduce whip regulations they would have been forced upon the industry with perhaps an even harder regime.

Similarly the head stip got ot dead right when he said that the community would no longer accept the "fur being belted off a horse in the name of gambling."

On all counts Murrihy is right and everyone just has to fall in line with the new regulations.

As an owner of over 40 horses, I do not want to see them flogged unnecessarily and somewhere along the line it may cost me a race, but I feel it will win me more than it costs me.

I HAD A very successful meeting with the head of licensing for Racing NSW, Mr Maurice Logue, and Racing NSW board member Arthur Inglis yesterday at the Inglis complex at Newmarket to discuss the vagaries in the current immigration system in Australia that prevented trackwork riders and jockeys coming to Australia to live and work.

Maurice, a former top jockey in his own right, has done a trememndous amount of work on this matter in the past couple of years and only last week I made a trip to the "big house" (Parliament House in Canberra) to meet with Immigration Minister, Senator The Hon Chris Evans' senior policy adviser, Mr Tim Friedricks.

Our half hour meeting appertained to racing-related immigration and I got a very fair hearing from Mr Friedricks and we (Platinum, Racing NSW and other interested racing peak bodies) are putting together a full on template to take back to meet with Mr Freidricks and the Minister.

I get the distinct impression that the Minister's office is ready to take some initiatives that can only benefit the racing industry, and in particular racing in rural and regional Australia.

Maurice, Arthur and I hope to have the template completed by the end of September and hope to have something on the Minister's desk before the end of the current parliamentary year.

I HOPE THE ANNOUNCEMENT that SKY Channel is about to launch a thoroughbred racing only channel - SKY 1 - will not see a further silly escalation of the simmering discontent between SKY Channel and TVN. In reality, SKY 1 will only really take up the void that currently exists if it broadcasts every galloping race that the TAB operates on.

Hopefully this will see the current nonsense that exists between these two "opposition" channels finally put to rest. It is simply not good enough to have races in Hong Kong and Singapore not shown on SKY and similarly for TVN to ignore the majority of Australian TAB meetings and "pat" a day out with as few as two meetings and a whole heap of waffle.

Somewhere sanity must reign and a full on racing channel with less waffle, less replays of Lonhro's or Octagonal's Australian Cup wins, less Warragul trots and dogs from The Gardens can only benefit the industry.