A Horse Named Shocking

… can go fuck itself.  And considering the size of a horse penis, that should be a fairly easy yet excruciatingly painful task.

I suppose I shouldn’t take out my anger on the horse.  I should take it out on two of my co-workers who tried to lead me down the path toward Gamblers Anonymous.  I got a little swept up with all of the excitement of the Melbourne up.  I really hadn’t been all that into it until I arrived at work on the morning of race day.  First up, the two aforementioned gambling addicts were taking everyone’s orders for bets so they could go down to the TAB and buy tickets for everyone.  I decided to do a modest bet – a few bucks on a box trifecta flexi bet  - naming the top 3 horses in whatever order.  So, I did a little research and picked some horses that had cute jockeys and reasonable odds.  I use the term “cute jockeys” loosely.  From the fairly poor quality pictures, most of the jockeys strikingly resembled Gollum from The Lord of The Rings, but a few seemed to be fairly attractive so I decided to make that my basis for betting.

Not the best idea, but I’ve had worse ones…

So, I picked my three horses (Shocking, Zipping, and Maluckday) and then noticed that everyone else was picking different horses.  Ok fine.  I’ll get a second box trifecta flexi bet and put three more horses down (So You Think, Americain, and Profound Beauty).  Those three were all ranked fairly high.  I didn’t look at the photos of the jockeys.  But in an interview afterward, one of them sure did look like a little troll creature.

Then we had the office sweeps.  You put in a few bucks and pull a horse from a hat (not an actual horse, but a piece of paper with a horse’s name on it).  We did one just for our team – 12 people with two horses each.  I pulled two horses that were unfamiliar to me.  That means they weren’t ranked high AND the jockeys looked like baboons.

And then there were the sweeps for the whole office – not just our team.  So there was a little more money, and again, I pulled out a no-name horse with a little troll creature riding it.

And then I had to go down to the TAB because the box trifectas weren’t the best idea and I should’ve bet on individual horses.  So I did.  I did a few bucks on Shocking – last year’s winner with a relatively cute jockey –and Zipping – another horse with a relatively cute jockey and halfway decent odds – and I did the bet where they only need to place (1st, 2nd, or 3rd) for me to win money.

Then, at 12:30 our team exited the building and walked down to the Belgian Beer Bar where we had a fancy shmancy lunch, several rounds of Chimay, and watched the race on their big screen.  But before that – the waitresses came around with the Belgian Beer Bar sweeps.  Ok, what’s a few more dollars?  Well, I pulled another shitastic horse.  Great.

And then they were off!  And a minute later they were done!  And I glanced at my tickets and realized that I had won zilch.  Nada.  Nothing.  Zero.

My sweeps horses didn’t do so well…

For my team sweeps, Monaco Consul and Zavite came in 14th and 22nd, respectively.  There were only 24 horses and one never started and one failed to finish, so really, my 22nd place horse was dead last.  Fail.

For the office sweeps and the sweeps at the restaurant, my horses – Holberg and Precedence – came in 6th and 8th – a nice showing but it didn’t do me any good.

Then there were my trifectas.  For my first trifecta, my horses finished in 2nd, 4th, and… 18th.  Great.  And my other trifecta:  1st, 3rd, and… 17th.  Even better.  I picked the top 4 horses and two stragglers ruin the whole damn thing for me.  Balls.

And as for Shocking and Zipping – the two horses that I bet money on?  Well, Zipping made a respectable effort placing in 4th – just shy of me winning some money.  And last year’s winner – Shocking – well, his performance was shocking.  18th place.  You know what that means…

The final damage tally:  I was out $52 for the day.  I’ll make it up next year…