THE FORECAST: Moving Day

THE FORECAST: MOVING DAY

I’ve only ever moved house once. It wasn’t great. I did all the work and spent the next week moving things around the new house in a never ending game of furniture Tetris that very nearly put me in an institution.

In Quebec, Canada’s favourite city, they celebrate moving house on Moving Day on July 1st every year. It’s a festivity of putting stuff in boxes, loading them into cars and driving them somewhere new. Fat Bill – the iconic removalist character associated with the celebration – comes to visit, losing boxes of prized possessions, breaking stuff, and smoking ciggies while leaning on his magic truck Winston.

Then everyone eats pizza sitting on the floor by candle light drinking cask wine.

It’s also Canada Day so the entire population is also legless by midday, it’s a win-win situation if you enjoy chaos.

Racing fans celebrate their own moving day at Flemington every October, with the Turnbull Stakes marking a fork in the road for Cox Plate and Cups players; who is up to the grade, and who will be leaning on a truck out the back smoking ciggies and telling yarns when the big races are run?

VIA SISTINA needs to remind everyone that she’s a Cox Plate player. She’s world class, anyone who can read a form guide can see that, but if you saw her flapping around in the mud in the Makybe Diva would be a little wary. As long as the track is decent come race time, she can bounce back – just like these seals.

WARMONGER needs to put in another good late closing run to show he’s on track for the Cups, but old mate ELIYASS will be a long way in front of him – who will be better off around Caulfield on Cup day? Then there’s PLACE DU CAROUSEL who they reckon might have swallowed her tongue last start – not ideal, oxygen is kind of important for athletes.

Bit going on at Randwick too, even though we won’t get to see AUTUMN GLOW who is off to have knee chips removed. I hear this bloke is doing the surgery.

CEOWULF – the horse, not the 5th king of Wessex – is bang on to get the job done in the Epsom and from there he may well end up in a Caulfield Cup. Old mate Might And Power took that route in 1997 and we all remember what he did at Caulfield.

Is there a Melbourne Cup winner in The Metropolitan or the Bart Cummings? All the big stables have decent stayers taking their chance, SERPENTINE, ZARDOZI, LAND LEGEND, BERKSHIRE BREEZE, SAINT GEORGE and POINT KING are all on that path.

BEST: Randwick R9 No. 7 CEOWULF

BEST EACH-WAY: Flemington R10 No. 9 MISS ARIA

BEST ROUGHIE: Randwick R8 No. 4 QUE TEMPESTA