It was a rare day on August 14, 2010: I was at a racetrack on a Saturday. These days yours truly is very much an entrenched stay at home punter. However, fellow PPM contributor and good friend, The Optimist, was able to secure a couple of passes and an opportunity to spend time together for the Caulfield "shoot out" was too good to pass up.Apart from the pleasure of spending a day at the track with T.O. the day presented three other highlights, as far as I was concerned, and one sad mo

It was a rare day on August 14, 2010: I was at a racetrack on a Saturday. These days yours truly is very much an entrenched stay at home punter. However, fellow PPM contributor and good friend, The Optimist, was able to secure a couple of passes and an opportunity to spend time together for the Caulfield "shoot out" was too good to pass up.

Apart from the pleasure of spending a day at the track with T.O. the day presented three other highlights, as far as I was concerned, and one sad moment. The sad moment came with the defeat of Tinamou as we both anchored him as a key player in our days betting. We had every chance and he just wasn't good enough on the day.

The first highlight was the amazing win of the thirteen year old Mustard. The oldest horse I remember winning on the flat, in my 42 years on the punt, was Jester Boy when he won a race at Moonee Valley in the early 1980's, I think, aged twelve. I remember a jumper called Contract wining a steeplechase at thirteen at Flemington and that is about it at that end of the age scale. The connections must be so proud.

The second highlight was the win of Shoot Out whose sprint to win the race looked outstanding. It is the sign of a very good horse that can put a race away in the twinkling of an eye. How far can he go this spring? I certainly believe the WS Cox Plate is there for the grabbing but can he truly be considered a Melbourne Cup chance? Only time will tell but at this stage I believe he might just be too brilliant to handle the slog of the Cup at the end of what will be a fairly long campaign.

However, my ighlight for the day was the win of With Ice in Sydney. If you ever wanted to see courage in a racehorse, and don't we all, find a replay of the win and ask yourself what price you would have laid on Betfair at the 300m mark and then again at the 200m mark. I only backed her for the place yet at the 100m mark I was just hoping for something ahead of her to drop off so I could slot into third! The win really fired me up and it wasn't just the issue of collecting.

It was a day to be remembered.