September 2020 Meeting

This was our first Christ Church Hall meeting since the lockdown in March and duly complying with all rules and instructions the Nutfield Wine Club was extremely pleased to be able to gather for our Race Night. Val welcomed members and one guest who were all suitably spaced with the hand sanitiser readily available. Kent had kindly organised this, with help from Graham and Caroline who had provided the projector.

There were 8 races and each race had 8 runners. At the start of each race the list of runners and each horse’s racing odds was shown, from which we all had to make educated guesses who would come first, second or third. Points were awarded as follows for placing the horses in the correct order, 1st – 3 points, 2nd – 2 points and 3rd – 1 point.

So, under Starters Orders we were off with the first race, the Pantomime Chase. This included runners entitled Fee Fi Fo Fum, He’s Behind You and Oh No He’s Not!! However, the winners for this race were Aladdin’s Lamp, Idle Jack with Twanky’s Widow coming in third. Further races were Old MacDonald’s Farm Handicap (with runners including WoofWoof, BaaBaa and MooMoo), The Villains Dash (Lord Sauron, Professor Moriarty and Count Olaf) and the Pasta Memorial Chase (Linguini, Fusilli and Cannelloni).

However, halfway through, Graham H. suggested a new way of scoring. Instead of awarding 3, 2 and 1 point for each correctly placed horse, the points would be based on the betting odds of the horses, so a horse coming first with odds of say 7 – 1, instead of just 3, the total would be 21 points (7 x 3), a horse coming in second with odds of 25 – 1 the total would be 50 (25 x 2), etc., etc. After 4 races, the leader with 11 points was Ian, but with this change of scoring, Angela picked a rank outsider at 33 -1 (Linguini in the Pasta Memorial Chase) and scored a winning 99 points!! No-one else could catch her!!! Pam came second with 80 and Graham B followed with 37 points. Francis picked all the right horses in race 3 and Chris selected all the right horses in 2 races but in the wrong order. Bad luck Chris.

Many thanks to Kent, Graham and Caroline for a very entertaining evening and to Francis for ensuring that all correct procedures were adhered to.

Our October meeting will be on Tuesday, 6th October, when we will be having a wine tasting evening with guest speaker, Max Conrad who is a Buyer for Sainsburys.