Musselburgh 22/7/25 - Some Might Say We're Gonna Live Forever

Family Fun Day at Musselburgh where the queue for the (free) ice cream generally outstrips the queue for the betting by a factor of 200 and this was no exception. In fairness we usually take a fair few bets but the average bet size is, of course, at the very lowest end of the spectrum.

In the long run, however, these types of days are essential to the long term future of live racing and we, personally, fully support them, even if we go through our own body weight in coins and cheerfully accept the odd 50p each way. Bigger picture and all that.

Viability wise it's a marginal one. Average bet size was £5.22 which is less than half our usual, though bet numbers are relatively healthy. Overall turnover probably too low, especially on smaller field sizes like we had here, but the betting tends to be spread across the whole field so book value is workable even if the raw figures aren't. And, as I say, we like to support these types of events where possible from a bigger picture point of view.

For the 2nd meeting running please read these figures through the lens of a turnover of around £450 a race when considering expressions like "jackpot" and "max liability" - both of which were "modest" numbers to say the least...

1) The opportunity to flex our gag muscles presented itself immediately with Oasis Diamond - we started with "good horse that, gonna live forever" and, when that drew mainly perplexed looks, we pivoted to "some might say it's gonna win" with marginally more success. Either way it was half max whilst Gillali Lass was a slightly more surprising max liability. Best (some might say "only") result in the book was Kunaa who got us off to a flyer (relatively speaking) and the jolly placing meant we had a small nudge forward on places as well. A combination of holiday, sickness and day jobs meant I was leaning on a worker for the 3rd meeting running and I was delighted to discover that his day's wages were to fund his Oasis ticket. Serendipity and all that.

2) Top 3 in market small winners, bottom 3 in market small losers on a teeny turnover and it was small loser, Sovereign Ocean, which set us back.

3) 5 losers out of 8, again all at the bottom of the market, but this time we had a decent-ish win on Ana Emaraaty, or so we thought until we put the places in when Jackrabbit undid most of our good work in the win book. Race 2 losses covered but no more and we were still ahead in the book but hadn't covered expenses. Or the eponymous Oasis ticket.

4) Ready Freddie Go as inevitable a loser as Jackrabbit was the race before whilst, slightly more surprisingly, we had a couple of small liabilities at the top end of the market with Our Absent Friends and Miss Brazen. Didn't really cash in on JM Jhingree; we wanted the fast finishing Good Point but it was still a move forward and we had the badge fee and the worker's Oasis ticket. No cigarettes or alcohol at this point though.

5) That's better! Top two again for half maxes and a solid enough result on Trojan Sun supplemented by a nudge forward place wise as we somehow managed to avoid laying outsider Young Merlin in the each way market at all.

6) The pattern of top or bottom of market continued and we had the bottom 4 all losers and the top 4 all winners - a stress free watch at the end and another nice profit and a dream place result meant we were finally contemplating wages over and above expenses.

7) 2 v 2 to finish off the day and our two winners went off too quickly and were pestering each other over the first half of the race. Our colleague in the end pitch had much the same book as us and we let out a collective sigh, especially when the jackpot (again a relative term!) Scarriff dropped away and hit a million in running. We hoped Elvetham had put in enough of a breather round the bend to be able to stay on up the straight and, as our losers found nothing, we knew we had it. Then Scarriff started finding again from nowhere and pipped the jolly on the line to give us a cracking end to the day.

Overall the book value was just about in the workable range and we got a few results which pushed us past that so, all in all, a good day for us in the context of a £3000 ish take. Will we do it again next year? Not definitely, but maybe.

Newcastle next for us. Until then...