I raise a beer!!

[Daddybang]

To the mighty Winx the GREATEST mare to ever wear a saddle in this country and perhaps the world!!!!
31 wins 23 group ones this mare is simply stunning!!!!

[Stix]

Well Daddybang...

I know stuff-all about horses, & even.less about horse racing...

But just because i have no idea what you're on about, doesnt mean i can sit by & let you have a celebratory beer by yourself...

So cheers cobber...

[Daddybang]

Good on ya stix!!!

[southwest shooter]

She's no Phar Lap , Winx is like a lot of boxers , beats up bums to pad her record.
Give me horses like Kingstown Town , Takeover Target and Saintly anyday of the week before Winx.

[Daddybang]

She's no Phar Lap , Winx is like a lot of boxers , beats up bums to pad her record.
Give me horses like Kingstown Town , Takeover Target and Saintly anyday of the week before Winx.

Yep cause they all won 23 group one races. ..oh hang on the ONLY horse worldwide in history to fo it is this mare...sorry mate but ya haven't got a clue!!!

[southwest shooter]

:lol:

She's no Phar Lap , Winx is like a lot of boxers , beats up bums to pad her record.
Give me horses like Kingstown Town , Takeover Target and Saintly anyday of the week before Winx.

Yep cause they all won 23 group one races. ..oh hang on the ONLY horse worldwide in history to fo it is this mare...sorry mate but ya haven't got a clue!!!

DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE .

[Daddybang]

I don't believe the hype mate I believe my own eyes and near on forty years being around horses of all stripes from thorough breds thru to stock horses my wife has also competed at a high level in in the Republic of Ireland so we've got a little bit of experience with nags

[bigrich]

this post is about horses ? i thought it was about having a beer and celebrating all that's good in our lives ATM

[Stix]

I was wondering how long it would take you to hear the pfffssst of a popping top & smell the ale...

[southwest shooter]

I don't believe the hype mate I believe my own eyes and near on forty years being around horses of all stripes from thorough breds thru to stock horses my wife has also competed at a high level in in the Republic of Ireland so we've got a little bit of experience with nags

Good onya mate but I don't need to know your personal history .
Opinions are like a£&holes , everyone's got one .

[Daddybang]

I don't believe the hype mate I believe my own eyes and near on forty years being around horses of all stripes from thorough breds thru to stock horses my wife has also competed at a high level in in the Republic of Ireland so we've got a little bit of experience with nags

Good onya mate but I don't need to know your personal history .
Opinions are like a£&holes , everyone's got one .

Awww cmon mate

[Daddybang]

Absolutely no reason why it can't be both Rich!!!
I'm not doing much shooting atm as my hands still a little f@#ked so been indulging my other main "passion" which is all things horse!!!

[bigrich]

I was wondering how long it would take you to hear the pfffssst of a popping top & smell the ale...

[bigrich]

Absolutely no reason why it can't be both Rich!!!
I'm not doing much shooting atm as my hands still a little f@#ked so been indulging my other main "passion" which is all things horse!!!

great to hear DB keep up the good work, and ,oh , have a beer cheers

[Ecobogan]

Good for you Daddybang, it's hearty for the mind n soul to have things to get excited about! Is what we live for in many ways. I'm with Stix in that I know bugger all about horses but Mum n dad were both pretty ok riders in their day, mostly stock work, bit of comp and they loved it.
To cut a long story short, this reminds me of when dad and his brother John, against all sound advice decided to buy a young and very hard mouthed thoroubred as a stock horse.
They named it Pettoo and it quickly became obvious that it was amazingly useless for what they wanted...as they were told.
It didn't get along with any of the other quarter horses on the farm, was even worse with people and would kick and bite at anything including the air around it so they let it out to the back paddocks where it basically became a wild pet....but it was ridable if you were game and it was very fast, about 17 hands and 3 yo.
About a year later, my Nan, also into horses and knowing full well what Pettoo was like, convinced dad and John that they should have a crack at the local Tumut races.
After a savage amount of beers one night and with all and sundry talking them into it, it was game on.....however nobody had even seen Pettoo in over 6 months.
It took a full day and a good number of other riders to find him in the 3500acres and get him back to the yards.
He was covered in so many twigs and leaves and crap that Nan told me he looked more like " one of those leafy sea Dragon things" and he was none too happy either.. we're talking somewhere in 1974, snowy mountains.
The races were that weekend and after a few hot laps at the farm he was deemed fit to race by all the non experts, John as the ballsy jockey, and was loaded in the float that Saturday morning....which took 2 hours.
No one knew, or didn't let on, that the races had become pretty gentrified in years they hadn't been going and they turned up to the tune of new Range Rovers, BMW's and all the fancy city folk gear like jodpers, actual proper riding boots and horses with funnily shaved legs.
They pulled into the unloading area to do all the paperwork..... by now Pettoo was in a white hot rage.
Apparently it was a hellishing mission for all of dad and John's crew to get him into the start gate and they nearly got disqualified in that exercise alone but he was in and the race was moments away.
You can probably guess the rest but according to dad and nan the gates flew open and all the horses bolted out including Pettoo...but not really.
He pulled a couple of 'monos' pig roots and wild uncontrollable thrashes metres out of the gate much to the utter amusement of everyone and John's work boots, flanny, Levi's and borrowed helmet only added to the spectacle.
But in all the odd turns that adventurous capers can take something deep inside Pettoo's golf ball sized brain registered and remembered he was a race horse, a fast one, and bolted hard after the pack.
It took the rest of that lap to catch up with the rear with a few more to go and he wasn't slowing down nor did John have a skerrick of control.

The crowd went berserk in the typical aussie backing the underdog kind of way as he worked his way to the front and took it out, first place. Needless to say they landed the $500 first prize for that race with a 'respectable margin'....probably half an inch.
Thoroubreds are more a long distance breed and that's what helped him win as the others weren't pure bred...so I'm told.
Pettoo threw good levels of hissy fits getting back into the float and the comedy routine followed them all the way back to the farm....where he went back to being a leafy sea dragon in the back paddocks.
Mum, dad, John and everyone spent the $500 on a massive party that night and went back to being as broke as they always were the following week...just like good Australians.

Now this story was told to me once when I was very young then again about 10 years ago so no doubt has been tuned up a bit along the line....but he was there, did win and this story still comes out at the pub apparently.

Just thought I'd share this with the underdog horse lovers.

[Daddybang]

top story ecobogan
We used to spend our school holidays at the track with my pop when we went to brissie to visit and have seen a few funny things and the old style bush meets were always good for a laugh. Horses have always been a big part of my life even on the occasion when I didn't own one myself I would be seeing someone who owned them or using them for work etc.

[Sergeant Hartman]

[Stix]

Yep...

Good yarn...

[Ecobogan]

Thanks mate and I sure got a kick out hearing it for the first time in all of it's animated glory.

It's easy as a kid to see your parents as being born 40 years old and boring so hearing about their young and wild was always a good thing.
I got into dirt bikes as soon as I could and both my sisters did a fair bit of enduro racing on horses, some were Arab crosses from memory.
There was the never ending horse vs bikes debate between us, as was the case everywhere.
In the late eighties a well known dirt bike magazine called the challenge...quarter horse vs motocross bike in a barrel race...to put the debate publicly to bed.
Can't remember where it was held exactly but loads of folk turned up and saw the A grade pro racers on current model factory tuned RM250' get absolutely flogged royally stupid everytime.
The utter best of the best needed near twice the time as the horses.
All came down to traction, the bikes couldn't get power down or turn nearly as quickly no matter what they did.
Quick shut me up I tell you.
They're certainly enigmatic animals and have played a big part in pretty much every civilization.
This is a bit debated but I've read from a few sources that, back in the day, industry needed to quantify machine output and James Watts in the early 1800's came up with horsepower.
You probably know that torque is measured in weight over distance i.e how many pounds can be lifted using a bar 1 foot long...ft/lbs and horsepower is essentially how quickly that can be done.
So 1 horsepower is anything that can lift a man's weight (about150lbs) the height of a man(about 6 foot) in one second....so the story goes.

So being on the way to Brissy you might've passed through Toowoomba? I grew up there and is where the whole horse/bike caper started.
Do have very fond memories of having horses around and a few mates around here are right into it.
Take care mate it's the old school adrenaline sport!

[Patriot]

Yep.....she’s a faast horse

[Daddybang]

I had plenty of mates riding bikes when we were kids that used to laugh at me preferring to ride horses ....but that stopped around the time girls became interesting then they'd be asking me to teach them!!!. To me bikes are a hell of a lot of fun but I'll always prefer to grab a saddle than a handle bar

Yep patriot Winx is fast but it's also the way she moves and her composure and the way she uses that speed. As I said she is just an amazing mare. I watched that race on Saturday and couldn't believe the nonsense the commentators were spouting about her being pushed the only way she's gonna be beaten is if she falls over

Yep ecobogan I know the toowoomba oakey area not well mind you but have mucked around down there a little (gets a little too cold for me!!! )
To be honest I'm not sure about horse power or the origins of but I thought I'd heard it was something about horses being attached to a revolving spindle???
Anyway hope ya have a great day

Edited to add
Just looked at wiki and yeah watts used draft horses attached to a mill wheel to compare the output of his steam engine to the amount of horses needed to put out a certain amount of work in a certain amount of time (very basic explanation of the origin of the term without all the maths which I suck at!!!!! )

[Rod_outbak]

Two different beasts; both called Horsepower.

I recall the power measurement of 'Horsepower' being to do with a horse lifting a 1Hundredweight block to a certain height in a set time.
[This fits in with Ecobogans' description]

And then there were the machines called 'Horsepower's.
In the Montgomery ward 1894 mail-order catalogue we have here, they list machines known as a 'Horsepower', 'DogPower', and I think there might have also been a 'Goatpower'.
They often came in one and two-animal versions. Most variants had a long wooden shaft mounted off the top of a heavy toothed cog, which then had a series of reduction gear, and then a driveshaft exiting out the side. One variant had the 2 dogs (looked like St Bernard in the pic) walking on an endless track in a cage, which looks like it wouldnt have the torque of the big flat ones.
Mum used to also refer to these as a 'Whym', but we think this might have been a brand of Horsepower.

When I visited Sovereign Hill in Ballarat in 2006, they had a couple of working Horsepowers in the Wheelwright's shed, where he was working on a wagon wheel. Their Horsepower was a shipload bigger than the ones here, though.

We have a complete Horsepower on the dump here; yet another thing I'd love to resurrect to working status.