Various Items

EI UPDATE

Firstly what terrific news that both the inflated temperatures in Tasmania and at Brett Cavanagh's stable in Albury tested negative to EI. This means containment is working to a point.

However, let's get a few things into perspective. The EI virus may be spread in various ways, through horses coming into contact with each other, by human's carrying it on their person or clothing, via horse transport vehicles or even through the atmosphere over short distances say no further than 5km. It must be said that the EI virus cannot jump Bass Straight, after of course hurdling the entire state of Victoria, to miraculously infect horses in the Apple Isle. The Ei virus also cannot fly through the air for over 300km to arrive at a thoroughbred horse stable in Albury, when the closest known outbreak of the disease was in Nowra. We understand every precaution must be taken, and all these horses with raised temperatures must be tested just to make sure, however EI infiltrating Tasmania is farcical to say the least. Not to mention the incubatiuon period is 5 days, so if your horse is EI free for 5 days, and has not come into contact with anything or anyone who is carryong the virus, then that horse cannot catch the virus. We wish this type of hysteria would follow on to precautions that should be being taken each and every minute of every day by anyone in contact with equines. So please feelf ree to be hysterical in taking every precaution to stop the spread of the virus.

We urge everyone who has contact with horses, especially thoroughbreds to take all precautions to stop the spread of the virus. We control our own destiny to a point in all of this. The virus will only spread with human assistance, and this includes keeping all horses away from others that may either carry or spread the virus. We can stop the spread, do you best to assist.

PUNTING

Been a very lean trot for us here at PASS in the past few weeks. We are on a six straight losing streak and our selections have not even been getting close lately. However this is all part and parcel of the punting caper and we have to be patient. After starting August sensationally, the middle part was woeful and we will be working hard to improve.

Form lines since the outbreak of EI may take a while to really settle down. Plenty of horses have missed work, some missing a full week and it will take some time for those horses to catch up. What we saw at Caulfield on Saturday was the majority of winners came from trainers who have their own private training tracks where their horses had not missed vital work. David Hayes with Miss Finland, Lee Freedman with Royal Ascher, even the $70 chance Shadow is trained privately and had not missed a days work. Be very careful in weeks to come, that horses like El Segundo and Haradasun don't improve dramatically on their performances on Saturday and turn the tables on the likes of Miss Finland. Please, we are not knocking Miss Finland, only saying she may have had a distinct advantage on Saturday in the Memsie Stakes.

Punters must also be careful once racing resumes in both Queensland and NSW. The meeting today at the Gold Coast is a typical example, with huge fields, evenly matched fields with punters having little or no idea which horses have coped with stable life and lack of work over the past 2 weeks. Put that together with plenty of horses drawing badly due to big fields, a bit of rain around, and it could be a disaster for the punter. The Sunshine Coast will be similar tomorrow although the fields are certainly not as large although the track will be rain affected.

So punters must bet with extreme caution over the next few weeks until form lines settle down and horses regain full fitness.

If you would like to receive our emails and text messages with our selections, please contact us here at PASS on profselections@austarnet.com.au and we will make them available to you.

Good luck and profitable punting to all and please, if you are in regualr contact with equines, then please take very advisable precaution to stop the spread of EI.