Racing: $500,000 Pick6s would attract punter interest

Why are we not running $500,000 Pick6s on every major Saturday meeting?

With dollar turnovers a bit soft in the past 12 months, perhaps there is a good reason based around careful fiscal spread.

But the TAB needs to tell us about it.

With $100,000 and often considerably less, the Pick6 benchmark for the past year or so, everyone got a buzz about Saturday's floated $500,000 guaranteed jackpot at Te Rapa that stretched - through massive public interest - to $600,000.

That's got to be the telling point right there.

It's the clear message about what Joe Punter wants.

While we're on it, why not have running alongside that a Pick8, or Pick9 or, even, a Pick10 with a 10c betting unit.

Yes, the chances of picking eight, nine or 10 winners is minuscule, but the smaller the chance the bigger the pools will grow and with it increasing public interest.

The two biggest betting mediums in the last century were the English football pools and the New York numbers game.

You had little chance in either and that's what kept them going.

We're heading into winter racing and we need a focus for public interest - just like Te Rapa on Saturday.

And if it's about host clubs being unhappy, then make them happy. Congratulations to American network NBC for its Kentucky Derby coverage.

Superb.

Yes, the budget was robust, but so was the televised content.

Networks tender for the rights and we've seen wooden presentations some of the years in the past decade.

Not this time for the 136th running.

It rained so hard postponement was not ruled out on race eve, but NBC ignored all that and captured the moments brilliantly, even getting a female presenter to ruin a good pair of shoes to show how ankle-deep the sloppy track was in the back straight.

It caught all the emotion leading into the race of not only eventual winning trainer Todd Pletcher's grim 0-24 pre-race Derby stats, but of a very laid-back Bob Baffett, always good for stunning quotes, of the 25-strong syndicate of mailmen, drycleaners and car sales people who put together US$10,000 to buy their dream runner and a camera frontman who must surely win an award for his incisive delivery with a stunning relaxation about it that defied the momentous occasion.

One of the keys was having retired jockey Gary Stevens providing comment. Invaluable comment.

Stevens was probably the best jockey in the world through more than a decade and with an impressive economy of words he explained so much of what a jockey goes through in Kentucky Derbys.

Probably the two best pre-race interviews were with eventual winning jockey Calvin Borel and Texan Glen Fullerton, who had beaten out 55,000-something contestants to win a free US$100,000 Derby bet.

NBC made him their special guest on course, introducing him to a couple of the jockeys on camera hoping to provide him some help with what to bet on.

It did the coverage no harm when Fullerton plonked the hundred grand on winner Super Saver at $9.

The win was just short of US$1 million, but it should allow Fullerton to buy a new rug. Or, at least, a proper one.

Borel took the chocolates and not just out on the sloppy track.

He may look like he comes from another time, but it masks a truly brilliant horseman.

Gary Stevens' 4888 career wins included eight Breeders Cup races, three Belmont Stakes, two Preakness Stakes and nine Santa Anita Derbys.

He won three Kentucky Derbys.

Calvin Borel has won three of the past four.

You don't do that by accident.

Super Saver will now go to Baltimore for the Preakness Stakes, said trainer Todd Pletcher.

Ardmore trainer Stephen McKee was last night no closer to learning the cause of his collapse at Te Rapa races on Saturday.

McKee remains in the coronary care unit of Waikato Hospital awaiting the results of a raft of tests.

"He thought he'd be coming home today, but they won't release him," said father Trevor McKee.

"He's getting a bit frustrated."

Trevor McKee said his son has most of the feeling back to the many parts of the body that went numb with the attack.

Te Awamutu jockey Mark Sweeney was yesterday released from Waikato Hospital after being admitted on Monday following a heavy trackwork-related fall.

"Mark's fractured the bottom vertebrae in his back and the specialist has told him there's nothing he can do for him and that he should be fine," said his wife Debbie.

"He said if you're going to break your back that's the place to do it.

"It should be just a time thing, but they're going to reassess it in two weeks."