The legendary Australian horse feed specialists join us this week. One of their sponsorship initiatives is the introduction of a monthly “country trainer of the week” award.

“A trainer usually gets more bad news than good news, and most of the bad is beyond his or her control. You can’t be too hard on yourself and you’ve got to have a laugh. It’s easy to handle winners and success. Dealing with the bad news quickly, allows you to get on with the good things. A happy stable is a good stable.”

There were three breaths of fresh air to come out of an unremarkable winter meeting at Rosehill Gardens. Firstly apprentice Brock Ryan put behind him the horrors of a broken leg earlier this year, to ride four of the ten winners - a remarkable feat at such an early stage of his career.

Jenny Duggan wanted her return to race riding to be as low key as possible. After all she’d been off the scene for more than a year and knew her fitness and racecraft would need some fine tuning.

Mark Bradley was kind enough to send me a photo he discovered recently in the Bradley Photographers archives. This is a precious piece of racing memorabilia from the Wyong jockeys room in 1973.

When Graham McNeice stumbles upon a piece of priceless racing footage, his reaction is something akin to that of Howard Carter when the British archaeologist found the entrance to the tomb of Tutankhamun. “Shadow” came across some rarely seen black and white footage of Vain’s three Sydney race starts in 1969.

Grant Buckley’s decision in the late 1990’s to concentrate exclusively on the provincial and country circuit has proven to be a runaway winner for the indefatigable jockey. His reasoning was simple.

America’s victory over Japan in the famous Battle Of Midway in 1942, was no more comprehensive than Greg Hickman’s triumph with Our Bellagio Miss in the equine battle of the same name at Rosehill Gardens on Saturday.

Wendy Peel was paid the ultimate compliment by David Reynolds when he elected to entrust her with the ride on Rather Salubrious in Saturday’s Battle Of The Bush Final, even though apprentices were unable to claim.

“You can’t let the strength of the Sydney riding ranks play on your mind,” says popular jockey Sam Clipperton. “You’ve got to stay focused and bring your A game every time you go to the races.”

Surely the most unique winning double of the weekend was the one achieved by Muswellbrook trainer Jan Bowen. The horse loving grandmother was on cloud nine when her consistent three year old Casino Kid stormed home to win the TAB Highway at Randwick.

Steve Tregea had cause to worry when Anthony Allen made the snap decision to send Incentivise to the lead 1200m from home in Saturday’s Bm80 (1810m) at Eagle Farm.

“I’ll wake up one day and say that’ll do me,” was Greg Ryan’s reply when I asked about his likely retirement date on a podcast posted on October 27th last year. Amazingly that fateful day arrived just five weeks later.

When Rebel Rama completely dominated an 1850m maiden at Newcastle on March 30th, trainer Marc Conners made hurried plans to launch a two pronged attack on the Adelaide carnival.

If Ken Howard was feeling emotional when he walked into the 2GB broadcasting box at Randwick on December 31st 1973, he certainly wasn’t showing it.

Even though he’s still learning what it’s all about, Gleneagles will be given his chance in at least one stakes race over the Queensland carnival.

It’s not uncommon to see a winning jockey “pump the air” in the euphoria of victory, or shake his or her head when surprised by the dominance of a performance but at Kembla Grange on Saturday Blake Spriggs broke new ground.

Training partners Robert and Luke Price won’t forget day two of The Championships in a hurry. The father and son team brought only two horses to Royal Randwick, but came away with a healthy portion of the prize money and truckloads of satisfaction.

“I can’t allow myself to be stressed out because of my surname,” said Edward Cummings. “I just go about my job looking after the twenty horses in my care.

While Darren Flindell was weaving his own brand of magic at Royal Randwick on Saturday, a race caller from the previous generation was celebrating a unique anniversary at Warren - a tiny hamlet of 1500 people some 536 kms from Sydney.