Kensington

In racing, it's Everest and Caulfield Cup week.

We'll discuss the biggest storylines heading into two of the big spring feature races, as well as concerns about Randwick's Kensington track and the latest political developments surrounding the delayed hazard review.

And in wagering, Pointsbet and Entain provide a fascinating insight to how Australia's bookmakers are navigating tougher regulatory environments and operating environments.

Tim, let's start with what was a landmark week for the ready-to-race market, particularly landmark day for Inglis yesterday.

But, oh my goodness, like, don't get me started into the narrative in the Melbourne Racing at the moment about tracks.

It does drive me a little bit spare on occasions.

But there have been some also discussion around the Kensington track, which obviously is not in use this weekend.

But as a midweek venue, it's a really big, important track, or A really important track for the industry, New South Wales industry, in terms of that midweek turnover.

Um, but I had an opportunity with Tolley Scott and Tolley, um, Pat Tokshu and Nev- Neville Falkenberg were running, uh, Tolley Scott and Tolley those days.

And they were owned by United Distillers, which in turn was owned by Distillers Company, and they decided to, um, [tsk] uh, combine, uh, consolidate all their bottling operations to, uh, Kensington in, in Sydney, where they had 10 spirit lines and they wanted to add Australia's first, um, closed gas, closed inert gas, uh, covered, um, bottling operation for wine.

And, um, at 22 I took the job because I wanted to go to Sydney.

Yep.

And then there's the James McDonald runner, Wonka.

Last start, 15.50 on the Kenzo.

Didn't use any speed early, hit the line hard, giving you a confidence level that it's going to like this distance.

But for me right now, Genesis runner is the one.

I understand that.

But that run, it's an 8.50 trial.

They're all on the Kenzo.

But the good thing is we can line them all up that way.

Yes, there was no speed.

Yes, the horse is going to be back, but I feel that the horse, if you look at that run on the Kenzo track when it was a second lifetime start, you just look at that setup, 1.5 lengths below benchmark, You take that as a sort of a guideline about where the horse could technically be positioned if it had no choice.

And then you just look at the way that runner closed out the last 400 with a plus 4.6.

This has a huge GMU of 8.9. at 1300 with giving the ground so i just sort of sit back here say we don't know what your limit is i feel that that 6.4 above benchmark last 400 last start can be repeated off a much faster pace So the challenge will be how much of a head start and what will Damian Lane do? Will Damian really smoke himself all the way to the back or is he going to try and find a spot? I don't reckon he will go all the way back, Robbie.