*Here’s a quick one about 2 punters who had Lady luck shine down on them...

It was 2001, and our Punter, let’s call him “Crackers”, was living in the North West.*

We’ll let Crackers take it from here…

I’d been interested in the Horse flesh industry for a while, so when the local Country Racing Club held a raffle where the first prize was a Thoroughbred, including training fees, etc - I thought “this’ll do me”. The tix were fifty bucks, so not to bad really.

I purchased mine and sat back waiting for news of the winner, and did a bit of pre-emptive bragging for the next month or so about how I was going to win, and claimed once or twice I’d ride the thing to the local boozer to celebrate.

Anyway, turns out, I didn’t win… and that’s the end of that.

No, just joshin, ya.

As the date neared, a mate of mine decided he wanted a piece of the action,too. So he purchase a ticket as well, and the two of us agreed we would combine our tickets, and if either of us had the luck, we would be joint owners of the new nag.

I was working on the night of the raffle, but the good news was my ticket (213) was drawn first SO WE’D WON! Mind you, we had no knowledge of the horse or it's abilities, so decided to have fun for 3 months, see how it went, with no expectations...

In short, the horse’s name was OPTIMIZER. He was actually horse of the year in 2001 (in the North West) with 4 wins from 4 starts.

We took him to Broome for 2 starts and 2 wins... then to Carnarvon for the Carnarvon Cup where he ran a very short nose second, he won mid-week at City events and was never worse than 4th for the duration of our ownership...he went on to win more than $86,000 in prize money (net figure) over 18 months..

And, we won him in a raffle 😮...

Awesome period of my life...

Optimizer was retired to the local Country pony club in 2003...I still travel the 1200km once a year to visit the old fella and flick him some sugar cubes...

What a legend he is...

LOVE IT Crackers. Great yarn, Buddy.

We've flung you $50 Bonus Cash for contributing.

Paul Morello

I'm Paul, and I model my life, laugh and hair on Mark Bosnich. There's no animal, athlete or team that can carry the weight of my money.