Sport is made for betting

So after my recent post on the NBA scandal , there are a few more scandals on the horizon.  Turkish football The 'best' one has to be the Turkish football referee scandal . It seems that despite the advent of legalised sports betting in the country, nobody thought to check if the officiators of the country's most popular sport should be checked to see if they had any betting accounts! That's a pretty fundamental piece of legalised betting - bring in rules banning players and officials from betting on the sport they are playing, then actually check they are complying. While the more streetwise ones will find ways to mask their activity, none of this lot made any attempt at all to hide their betting habits! 149 referees and assistant referees have been suspended, 371 of 571 match officials were found to have betting accounts, with over 150 actively using them. Seven head referees and 15 assistants in the Super Lig were caught in the net. Like most betting accounts, many w...

This is the fourth and final piece of my Melbourne Cup preview. See links below for the rest of the preview. The Lexus Melbourne Cup 2025 Of AU$10,910,000 Group 1 Handicap for 3yo and up. Flemington Racecourse, Melbourne 1500 local time, 0400 GMT Earlier pieces with runner-by-runner comments The Visitors - The Expats - The Locals SUMMARY Weather - this is the big talking point. Monday and Tuesday will be wet in Melbourne, but are we talking a gentle soak or a proper storm? Opinions vary and every time I look at the BOM forecast (Bureau of Meteorology), it seems to have changed a bit. Accordingly, the track manager has decided to leave the watering, meaning the track will end up in the Firm 2 range on Sunday (high of 30C) before the rain arrives. Flemington drains very well, the only timing we need to worry about is during the meeting - that's when it soaks into the hoof marks and leads to the track chopping up. At this point, I'm assuming a Firm 2 on Sunday, Soft 5 at the sta...

A preview in four parts - PART III I'll break up the preview into three runner-by-runner sections: The Visitors The Expats The Locals THE LOCALS (by breeding, includes NZ) 14. Half Yours, 53kg (8) 5yo G St Jean - La Gazelle 14:7-3-0, $3,841,840 Track - fourth in Turnbull Stks at only start here, Dist - never run past 2400m where he is 2 from 2. T: Tony & Calvin McEvoy J:Jamie Melham Biggest Result - won 2025 Caulfield Cup The local hope, the Caulfield Cup winner who started a clear favourite there and won without much stress. One would think that automatically makes him favourite for Flemington - but maybe not... At Caulfield everything went right for him. After drawing gate two, he sat one-off the fence, just beyond midfield, behind a rattling pace set by Adelaide River. He had cover in front and inside & out, expending the minimum amount of energy possible. On the turn, Jamie Melham was able to peel off the back of the horses in front, come seven or eight wide to avoid ti...